Episode 3: How to Do Resistance Training to Tone Your Body and Get Strong
In this episode, I’ll teach you how to start doing resistance training in your weekly exercise routine.
The best way to keep your muscles healthy is to do resistance training at least 2-3 times each week. As we age, our muscles naturally get weaker in a process called sarcopenia. This can lead to a decrease in coordination, balance, and bone density—which puts us more at risk of injury and certain illnesses.
By challenging your muscles every week, you can reverse the effects of sarcopenia and get stronger. Build your own resistance training routine, try one of my DIY programs, or work 1-on-1 with me for personal training.
Getting Started
To get started in resistance training, your first task will be to get on a schedule and set up a regular training routine. You should aim to do resistance training 2-3 days each week. Plan to spend 45 minutes to 1 hour and a half on each workout.
As a beginner, focus on what is called Total Body training—meaning you train muscles throughout your entire body in each training session. Later on, as you get more advanced, you can focus your training sessions on one muscle group (upper body vs. lower body) or movement pattern (push vs. pull) and also increase the number of training sessions you do each week.
In the first few weeks of doing resistance training, your goal should be to master the technique of the exercises in your program, first using light or no resistance and later using moderate resistance/weight. As a beginner, you should also focus on developing strength in your core (abdomen and back) while learning how to hold your body in alignment with good posture. Also, try to learn the names of the major muscles and their functions.
Workout Format
When training my clients, I divide each resistance training workout into 3 parts:
Warmup & Priming
Challenge Exercises
Mobility Exercises/Stretching
Each of these three parts is important and serves a different purpose to keep your workouts safe and effective. Let’s look at each in more detail below.
1 Warmup & Priming
Each resistance training session should begin with a warmup and some priming exercises to prepare the muscles for the challenge exercises.
Your warmup & priming should include 5-10 minutes of moderate-intensity steady-state cardio and a variety of light exercises and dynamic stretches done for 10-25 minutes.
The steady-state cardio portion of your workout serves to increase your core temperature and get blood circulating to your muscles. We don’t want to challenge the muscles while they’re cold!
The priming portion of your warmup can include myofascial release, dynamic stretches, and/or light exercises:
Myofascial release can help to relieve tension in tight muscles by putting pressure on the fascia using equipment like a foam roller, medicine ball, lacrosse ball, or other tool. This has a similar effect to getting a deep tissue massage on the affected muscles. Do this for 30-60 seconds per muscle group, but try not to spend too long on this portion at the beginning of the workout (otherwise, you risk bringing your heart rate and core temperature back down towards resting).
Dynamic stretches are like normal stretches, however, you only hold the stretch for a second or two at a time. The focus of dynamic stretches is to bring the muscles through their full range of motion (both contraction and extension) with light or no resistance. This allows you to identify and gently work out any tension or tightness in the muscles before putting them under load during the challenge portion of the workout.
Light exercises are sets of exercises you might use in the challenge portion of your workout, however in the beginning of the workout they’re done with light or no resistance. This gives you a chance to warm up the muscles involved in the exercise and rehearse the movement before putting the muscles under a challenging load.
Keep in mind that during priming exercises, your goal is not to fatigue your muscles. Instead, focus on connecting with your muscles and getting them ready to work during the challenge portion of your workout.
If you’re working with me or doing one of my DIY programs, you’ll notice that priming exercises are labeled in the workout as “(priming)” to help you know which exercises are part of your warmup.
2 Challenge Exercises
Once you have finished your warmup and priming exercises, then it’s time to challenge your muscles 💪
Key terms to know:
A rep (“repetition”) is when you perform the movement of the exercise 1 time, beginning and ending in the starting position.
A set is the total number of reps you complete before resting.
Your rest period may be as short as 30 seconds or as long as 2-5 minutes between each set or between different exercises.
The challenge exercises are the portion of the workout in which we focus on building muscle and increasing strength.
If you’re working with me or doing one of my programs, watch the exercise tutorial video for each new exercise and pay attention to the target muscle group of the exercise.
Then do 1 or 2 practice sets with light or no resistance—focusing on doing the movement with good technique. Perform each rep at a controlled pace, 2-3 seconds “up” and 2-3 seconds “down.”
Once you have practiced the technique of the movement, then you can begin to add more resistance (i.e., heavier weight or bands) to add more challenge to the exercise.
Keep in mind that your muscles need to be challenged to grow and get stronger. This means that you’ll need to fatigue the target muscles in every set of an exercise. You can do this by doing the exercise with an amount of weight or number of reps that leave the muscles feeling tired or “burning” by the end of the set.
Once you finish a set, rest your muscles for 30-60 seconds before doing another set or moving on to another exercise.
Over time, your muscles will get stronger and you will need to do either more reps, more weight, or more sets of an exercise to keep your muscles challenged. This is called the principle of progressive overload.
In my programs, I usually suggest a range of reps for each set of an exercise (for example 10-15 reps). In the first week of your program, try to find a weight or resistance that allows you to feel challenged with the bottom number of reps (in this case, 10 reps). As the weeks go by, try to increase the number of reps that you do in each set until the top number of recommended reps (15) becomes easy. At that point, increase the weight again until you feel challenged at the bottom number of recommended reps (10).
As you perform your challenge exercises, pay attention to the muscles that you feel working and try to name them. This will help you to develop the mind-muscle connection that is important for safe, effective exercise.
Make sure to record what you did for your workout either in a journal, fitness tracking app, or in the ABC Trainerize app (if you’re working with me or doing one of my DIY programs).
3 Mobility & Stretching
After you have completed each of the challenge exercises in your program, take a few moments to stretch your muscles and bring your body back down to a resting state.
This portion of the workout might include more myofascial release (i.e., using a foam roller) and static stretches. Static stretches involve holding a stretch for 10 seconds or more to promote relaxation and flexibility in the muscles. It’s a good idea to do static stretching at the end of a workout while the muscles are warm (both after resistance training and cardio workouts).
Stay Consistent!
Stick with your resistance training routine for a few weeks and you’ll begin to feel the results pretty quickly! Most of my clients to report feeling stronger overall within 2-3 weeks after starting their resistance training.
ABOUT JAYD HARRISON
Jayd Harrison (Jaydigains) is a personal trainer and content creator. She helps people to build muscle, burn fat, and clean up their diets with her online coaching programs and social media content. Check out some of Jayd’s coaching videos on Youtube, or join Jayd live on Twitch and follow on social media:
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