Many people want to get into lifting. However, they don’t always know where to begin. From a personal trainer, here are a few tips as to how to order your exercises if you want to begin lifting.
Multi-jointed to Single Jointed
You might be thinking: what on earth does that mean? I’m going to break it down with some examples. Imagine you are training your legs one day. You are planning on doing squats, lunges, leg extensions, and calf raises. When you are doing a squat you are moving multiple joints: your hips, knees, and a little bit of your ankles. However, in a standing calf raise, only your ankles are moving. You want to make sure you train by doing workouts that move multiple joints first, then finish off with workouts that move the least amount of joints.
Bigger Muscle Groups to Smaller Muscle Groups
This is similar to the joints, but this time we are focusing on muscle size. For example, if you are training your back and biceps one day, you are going to train your back muscles first. Your back is much larger than your biceps. You want to save your energy for the larger muscle groups because they need it more. So, if you are training your back and biceps, you want to do your back workouts first, such as pull ups, lat pulldowns and back extensions before you start doing bicep curls.
It is not always easy to follow these guidelines. I understand that a lot of people go to public gyms and the equipment they need is not always available at the time they need them. These guidelines will not always be followed perfectly, and that’s ok! These guidelines are just important to keep in mind to help you optimize your lifts as much as possible.
Written by GUADS staff member Emily
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