General Principles of Weight Training- Part Two

Hamilton Personal Trainers believe that many added years of muscular health and fitness can be gained through proper training habits.  It is important to understand some basic principles about weight lifting.  This will allow you to get maximum benefits from your exercise  program, while limiting your potential for injury.   If you ever feel unsafe, or have any concerns about a given exercise of lifting technique, ask your Hamilton Personal Trainer or Fitness Consultant to clarify your questions before you continue with your program.

When performing any weight lifting exercise use slow, controlled movements.  One of the most basic laws of physics, when applied to weight lifting, states that if you lift the weight quickly, much of the “work” at the beginning of the repetition is done by momentum, not by your muscles.  It follows then that if you want to get the most our of your weight lifting workout you should not use momentum to assist you:  use slow, controlled movements.  Not only will this help you get the most out of your exercises, but it will also reduce the chance that you will injure yourself through over-exertion or by moving beyond your body’s natural range of motion.

Body posture, this is perhaps the most under-rated principle of weight training, especially among beginners.  Sure, everyone likes to be able to lift a lot of weight:  it can make us feel good.  But if you cheat when you lift the weight…. if you swing the weight to allow its momentum to assist you…if you contort your body so that you can squeeze out those last two or three reps… if you recruit larger muscle groups to provide extra power and momentum when you are doing an isolation exercise…. then in the end you are only fooling yourself while increasing your risk of injury.

It is very important when lifting weights to use your muscles the way they were designed to be used.  If the muscles and joints are not used in the automatically and bio mechanically correct manner, there is obviously a great risk of damaging  them.

Muscle balance is critical to joint stability and reducing risk of injury.  All major joints in the body are surrounded by at least two muscle groups, which act together to move the joint.  Normally, these two muscle groups act in opposition:  the agonist muscle contracts to cause the movement, while the antagonist counter-balances and controls the speed of the movement so that the joint is not damaged.  If overextended, for example, when the biceps (agonist ) flexes or bends the elbow rapidly, the triceps (antogonist) contracts to ensure that the rapid movement  will not exceed the limits of which the joint is capable.

In order to ensure that the relationship between the agonist and antagonist is balanced, both the muscle groups should be exercised in the proper proportions.  If a balanced weight training program is followed, optimal body posture and stability can be achieved.  This will help to improve both athletic performance and physical appearance, and again, the potential for injury will decrease.