Big Effort, Big Results

June 25th, 2010 by Amy Gonsalves Leave a reply »

When it comes to fitness, I’m always about working hard at something.  Even when you are resting, you are working hard to rebuild your strength.  I want you to be right there and involved in the effort you’re putting in so that you can not only achieve great results, but you can see how your work got you the results you want.  It will help you respect your body and respect your own discipline—two key factors that should go into any and every workout plan.

So, when you’re working out, I want you to be working out for a reason and I want your workouts to be as effective as possible.

When it comes to running or walking, you can get faster or go up a hill to continue to increase your challenge.  But somehow that same principle gets skewed when it comes to weights.  People continue to grab the 5lb free weights after years and years of doing the same activity.  It shouldn’t come as a surprise, then, when you wonder why you aren’t getting anywhere with your workouts—you have stopped challenging your muscles in order to get them to respond.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: GO HEAVIER! 

I include two brief explanations from Cathe Friedrich, a trainer whose videos I have exercised with for years and have gotten great results.

Why do I need to lift heavy weights?

When we weight lift our goal is to apply a load to a muscle that is beyond normal causing as many “muscle motor units” as possible to be activated causing their associated muscle fibers to contract.  A muscle motor is either turned 100% on or it is 100% off.  Through time and practice from birth your brain learns how many muscle motor units it needs to turn on to lift a small glass of water or something much heavier like a 100lb weight bar. In the case of the small glass of water your brain will only turn on a few muscle motor units, otherwise you would throw the glass of water through the ceiling. With the 100 lb weight bar many more motor units must be turned on in order to lift the bar. Since a muscle motor is either turned on or it stays at rest the weight you lift determines how many muscle fibers are worked. If you only workout with light weights you will only stimulate and work a small percentage of your muscle fibers and thus most of the muscle fibers in your muscle will not experience the wonderful benefits of weightlifting and your results will suffer.

Will [lifting heavy weights] bulk me up?

Perhaps the oldest myth in weightlifting is that lifting heavy weights will cause females to bulk. Women just don’t naturally have enough testosterone in their bodies to develop huge massive muscles. I can tell you from my our personal experience and from observing nearly a 1000 people each day using our health club in NJ  for the last 20 years that heavy lifting  only improves a women’s physique. Building muscle takes a huge amount of effort with no room to do much else than focus on lifting hard and heavy and eating constantly to support muscle growth. It is just not that easy to build bulk even for a male….or for those who are predisposed to this genetically.
[Lifting heavy] will enhance muscle definition, increase lean muscle density, reduce overall body fat, increase your metabolism, and improve your overall energy, health, and vitality. If you’re a female and want to look your best –YOU NEED TO LIFT HEAVY WEIGHTS!

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