Guidance about weight training

This is another Visit to my Dream Studio, where I can consult my Older Self who's in her eighties and flourishing.

Intro:

I don’t know when I’ve felt so indecisive about how to do the weight-lifting. It started when I read The Power of 10 book and tried it. I did it for a little while – 6 weeks I guess – but kept skipping sessions and finally just tapered off altogether. Recently I looked at past weight lifting logs and concluded that I’d made the most progress using the BFL program. So I decided to go with that again, even photocopied the forms. Then I read that 1 set (slow 6 reps) is enough for upper body, while lower body progress is greater with 3 sets.

Now it’s time to fill out the forms for a session this afternoon, and I still feel completely stuck. I chose exercises for LBW, but the UBW doesn’t include forearm exercises, which I think I really need in order to protect my elbow. I’m starting to feel desperate. This feels ridiculous. So I decided to do a Visit.

Dialogue:

C: I’m so frustrated! How can I find out how to get going again with weight lifting? I believe that ANY weight lifting routine would be better than none at all, yet I still feel hung up about which one is the best one. So I thought I’d do a visit to ask you what you do, and what you advise me to do now.

Older Cathy: I’m glad you thought to ask. I do a simple routine, Mondays and Thursdays, twice a week. I do upper body on Mondays, lower body on Thursdays. That’s it.

C: So do you do a few slow reps? Or how?

Older Cathy: That’s where the variation comes in. I’ll do a sequence of slow reps, then fast. I vary it. If I were you, I’d start with the 8 to 12 again, then do the fast, then the slow. About 4 weeks for each. Then you don’t get bored.

C: What about Body for Life?

Older Cathy: You don’t really need to do it that way. You can do it that way if you want to, but it’s definitely overkill. Why not just do what you need to do? You have plenty of other uses for your time.

C: OK. So do you do just one set in each exercise? Do you do just one exercise per body part?

Older Cathy: I vary that too. For now, I’d start with one exercise, one set. Later, like the next time through the whole sequence, you could add an exercise or add a set. The idea is to keep changing it so your body doesn’t just coast. You can keep a summary log so you know what you’ve done over the course of a year or so. And if you want, you can make the cycle longer – do 8 weeks at 8-12 reps, 8 at 15-20, 8 at 6-8 reps. And if you want to do a series for 4 to 8 weeks that’s more complex, fine. But you don’t need to start that way. Start as simply as possible, then do more variations later to challenge your body more.

C: OK, and twice a week is enough?

Older Cathy: Yes, it’s fine. And you can leave off the abs and do that in the Core Program or whatever you do for stretching. Remember that that’s just as important as the weights. If you need to, you can do the Core Program on just the days when you don’t do weights – to save time. But if you can, do the Core Program or something like it, every day or evening.

C: OK. This seems much simpler than what I was trying to do. Thanks!

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