If you wish to lose fat and reshape your body, one of the best things you can do is lift weights. Diet and cardio are important, but weight training wins handily when altering your body’s appearance.

If you’ve hesitated to begin a strength training regimen, it might motivate you to know that lifting weights can:

• Boost your metabolism. Muscle burns many calories, so the more muscle you have, the more calories you’ll burn.
• Fortify bones, particularly crucial for women
• Make you more robust and improve muscular endurance
• Help you prevent injuries
• Increase self-confidence and self-esteem
• Improve coordination and balance

 Strength training may be confusing at first

• What exercises can you do? 
• What is the best sequence of exercises?
• Which machine to use, or is it better to use free weights?
• How many sets and reps? 
• How much weight should you be lifting for effective results? 

Your routine needs to be based on your fitness goals, available tools, and the available time for exercise.

If you’re setting your own program, which is not recommended unless you are an expert, you’ll need to understand some basic strength training rules. 

These basic lifting guidelines will assist you in utilizing adequate weight and determining your sets and reps to continue progressing in your workouts.

Weight Increase

To tone and achieve the desired results, you must utilize more resistance than your muscles are accustomed to. This is important as the stronger you get, the more your body can do, so you must progressively increase your workload to prevent plateaus.

In plain language, lift enough weight to complete the selected repetitions and finish your last repetition with difficulty and great form without working out to failure. 

We call this process matching the weight to the repetitions.

You must regularly increase your intensity to prevent plateaus (or adaptation). You can do this by increasing the weight lifted, altering your sets/reps, changing the exercises, and the sort of resistance. You can make these alterations on a weekly or monthly basis. Specifically, this principle means training for your goal.

If you wish to increase your strength, your regimen needs to be designed around that goal (e.g., train with bigger weights closer to your 4 RM (4 rep max)). 

Vary your routine

Select an assortment of repetition ranges to target assorted muscle fibers to slim down. Vary the routine by incorporating super sets, drop sets, and giant sets. 

Strategically alternating free weights, cable work, and machines help to stimulate various muscle fibers and put more blood into the muscles.

Light-weight / Hight reps won’t’ do it.

Contrary to popular belief, lightweight / high repetitions do not produce long, lean muscles! The weight ratio and tempo between exercises must be proportionate to create a balanced physique. 

Proprietary weight ratio system

One thing that differentiates Dr Fitness USA’s Body Design Formula Ergonomic strength training protocol is our proprietary weight ratio system that will enable you to raise your strength to 20 to 50% very rapidly and produce a beautifully balanced physique. 

Additionally, our proprietary system helps correct muscular imbalances caused by overuse injuries and, in time, gives you 15 years of your life back. 

And here is the unique part: our proprietary system will enable you to be potentially 100% pain-free if you have pain.

Rest days are as crucial as workout days. 

During these rest days, your muscles grow and change, so ensure you’re training different muscle groups two days in a row.

Before setting up your routine, keep the following critical points in mind:

• Warm up before you begin lifting weights. This helps get your muscles ready and prevent trauma. You may warm up by doing a light set of each exercise before moving to heavier weights, but do not stretch before working out; this loosens up your muscles, joints, and tendons, is counterproductive, and will set you up for injuries.

In the Body Design Formula system, the warm-ups are incorporated into the sequencing of exercises and in the proprietary weight ratio system to save you time. 

• Learn to control the weights; keep the weights from controlling you. For this, you must be grounded by staying focused and not multitasking. You’ll need to maintain your form at all times. Using some momentum is ok, but if you have to swing to get the weight up, the weight is most likely too heavy. 
• Don’t hold your breath, and use a full range of motion throughout the movement without overextending, which could irritate your joints and ligaments.
• Stand up straight. Pay attention to your posture, keep your neck in a neutral position and use your abs in every motion to keep your balance and protect your spine. Choose exercises that enable you to apply the “opposing muscle principle” to train your body towards good posture. 
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When in doubt, don’t just guess. If you were at sea and your compass was slightly off, you would naturally land in a different location. The same law applies to your body, your most valuable possession!

Dr Fitness USA’s Body Design Formula Ergonomic strength training system is the GPS to your ultimate transformation by taking the guesses out of the equation and providing the step-by-step roadmap to your results!