Fitness Tip - Weight Training, Shoulders, Chest, Triceps and Calves

Strength training will probably be the hardest thing to get started now that you have cardio under your belt. The tough thing about weight training for everyone is that they do not realize how hard they are pushing themselves in the beginning and end up being sore for four or five days afterwards. For the first few workouts just go through the motions and do not push yourself to hard so that your muscles can recover from these initial workouts.

The body can be split into eight muscle groups: shoulders, chest, back, biceps, triceps, Quadriceps, hamstrings and calves. We are going to start with a two day split right off the bat so that the workouts do not take as long and so that you can recover half of your body each day instead of the whole body. On Mondays and Thursdays you will work shoulders, chest, triceps and calves. On Tuesdays and Fridays you will work back, biceps, quads and hamstrings. Today we will look at the Monday/Thursday weight workout.

You probably do not have any weights and for the first while you will not need any weights you will simply use soup cans, pots, or partially filled milk jugs. The objects that you use to lift is not important, the action that is critical is to get into the habit of doing the weights.

Here are the exercises that you will do for each muscle group:

Shoulders: lateral raises, start with your arms down at your sides and then bring you arms straight up out to the sides up to shoulder level and then bring them back down to your sides again. Use a light weight that will allow you to comfortably do 12 repetitions of this action and do three sets of these twelve repetitions

Chest: Flyes, Lye on the ground on you back and hold your weights up above your face with your arms straightened out, lower your arms without unstraightening them so that your arms end up down on the floor so that your arms and body form a T and then bring your arms back up to the starting position. This is one repetition and with this exercise you should do 3 sets of 10 repetitions.

Triceps: Tricep Extensions. Start with your arm straight up over your head and bend your elbow without releasing your shoulder at all, after you have dropped your hand as far as you can then start bringing your arm back up to where it started. This is one repetition and you will want to perform three sets of 10 repetitions.

Calves, Calf Raises, do not have to be done with weights, all you have to do is stand on the edge of a stair with your heels hanging off and let your heels drop down as far as you can and then pull them up until you are on your tip toes. This is one rep and you will want to do three sets of twelve reps. To make this more difficult you can do this exercise one leg at a time instead of both calves at once, please do not try this for a few weeks as it will really hurt the next day if you over do it.