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If you want to lose fat or change your body, one of the most important things you can do is lift weights. Diet and cardio are equally important, but when it comes to changing how your body looks, weight training wins hands down. If you’ve hesitated to start a strength training program, it may motivate you to know that lifting weights can:

• Help raise your metabolism. Muscle burns more calories than fat, so the more muscle you have, the more calories you’ll burn all day long.
• Strengthen bones, especially important for women
• Make you stronger and increase muscular endurance
• Help you avoid injuries
• Increase your confidence and self-esteem
• Improve coordination and balance

Getting started with strength training can be confusing–what exercises should you do? How many sets and reps? How much weight? The routine you choose will be based on your fitness goals as well as the equipment you have available and the time you have for workouts.

The Basics

If you’re setting up your own program, you’ll need to know some basic strength training principles. These principles will teach you how to make sure you’re using enough weight, determine your sets and reps and insure you’re always progressing in your workouts.

1. Overload: To build muscle, you need to use more resistance than your muscles are used to. This is important because the more you do, the more your body is capable of doing, so you should increase your workload to avoid plateaus. In plain language, this means you should be lifting enough weight that you can ONLY complete the desired number of reps. You should be able to finish your last rep with difficulty but also with good form.
2. Progression. To avoid plateaus (or adaptation), you need to increase your intensity regularly. You can do this by increasing the amount of weight lifted, changing your sets/reps, changing the exercises and changing the type of resistance. You can make these changes on a weekly or monthly basis.
3. Specificity. This principle means you should train for your goal. That means, if you want to increase your strength, your program should be designed around that goal (e.g., train with heavier weights closer to your 1 RM (1 rep max)). To lose weight, choose a variety of rep ranges to target different muscle fibers.
4. Rest and Recovery. Rest days are just as important as workout days. It is during these rest periods that your muscles grow and change, so make sure you’re not working the same muscle groups 2 days in a row.

Before you get started on setting up your routine, keep a few key points in mind:

1. Always warm up before you start lifting weights. This helps get your muscles warm and prevent injury. You can warm up with light cardio or by doing a light set of each exercise before going to heavier weights.
2. Lift and lower your weights slowly. Don’t use momentum to lift the weight. If you have to swing to get the weight up, chances are you’re using too much weight.
3. Breathe. Don’t hold your breath and make sure you’re using full range of motion throughout the movement.
4. Stand up straight. Pay attention to your posture and engage your abs in every movement you’re doing to keep your balance and protect your spine.

Your first step in setting up a routine is to choose exercises to target all of your muscle groups. If you need guidance, you can:

• Hire a Personal Trainer
• Try Home Workout Videos or,
• Work with an Online Personal Trainer.

  For beginners, you want to choose about 8-10 exercises, which comes out to about one exercise per muscle group. The list below offers some examples:

  • Chest: bench press, chest press machine, pushups, pec deck machine
  • Back: one-armed row, seated row machine, back extensions, lat pulldowns
  • Shoulders: overhead press, lateral raise, front raise
  • Biceps: bicep curls, hammer curls, concentration curls
  • Triceps: tricep extensions, dips, kickbacks
  • Quadriceps: Squats, lunges, leg extension and leg press machines
  • Hamstrings: deadlifts, lunges, leg curl machine
  • Abs: crunches, reverse crunches, oblique twists, pelvic tilts

  Check out the strength training and cardio workouts available at Workout Central

  Sequence of Exercises

  • Make sure you choose at least one exercise for each major muscle group.
  • The muscles to work include: Chest, back, shoulders, biceps, triceps, quadriceps, hamstrings, calves and abdominals.
  • If you leave any muscle group out, this could cause an imbalance in your muscles and possibly lead to injuries.

  Most experts recommend starting with your larger muscle groups and then proceeding to the smaller muscle groups. The most demanding exercises are those performed by your large muscle groups and you will need your smaller muscles to get the most out of these exercises. But, don’t feel limited by that. You can do your exercises in any order you like and changing the order is a great way to challenge yourself in different ways.

  How Much Weight To Use

  The easiest way to determine how much weight you should use on each lift is to guess (not very scientific, huh?):

  1. Pick up a light weight and do a warm up set of the exercise of your choice, aiming for about 10 to 16 repetitions.
  2. For set 2, increase your weight by 5 or more pounds and perform your goal number of repetitions. If you can do more than your desired number of reps, heavy up again for your 3rd set.
  3. In general, you should be lifting enough weight that you can ONLY do the desired reps. You should be struggling by the last rep, but still able to finish it with good form.
  4. It may take awhile to find the right amount of weight for each exercise.
  5. In general, you can use heavier weights with larger muscle groups such as chest, back and legs. You’ll need smaller weights for the shoulders and arms.

How Many Reps/Sets To Do

You’ve figured out how much weight to use for your chosen exercises…what about the number of sets and repetitions? Your decision should be based on your goals. The American College of Sports Medicine recommends 8-12 reps for muscular strength and 10-15 reps for muscular endurance. They also recommend at least 1 set of each exercise to fatigue although you’ll find that most people perform about 2-3 sets of each exercise. In general:

• For fat loss: 1-3 sets of 10-12 reps using enough weight that you can ONLY complete the desired reps.
• To gain muscle: 3+ sets of 6-8 reps to fatigue. For beginners, give yourself several weeks of conditioning before going to this level. You may need a spotter for many exercises.
• For health and endurance: 1-3 sets of 12-16 reps using enough weight that you can ONLY complete the desired reps.

How Long To Rest Between Exercises/Workout Sessions

This will depend on your goal. Higher intensity (i.e., when lifting heavy) exercise requires a longer rest. When lifting to fatigue, it takes an average of 2 to 5 minutes for your muscles to rest for the next set. When using lighter weight and more repetitions, it takes between 30 seconds and 1 minute for your muscles to rest.

The American College of Sports Medicine recommends training each muscle group 2 to 3 times a week. But, the number of times you lift each week will depend on your training method. In order for muscles to repair and grow, you’ll need about 48 hours of rest between workout sessions. If you’re training at a high intensity, take a longer rest.

Where to Workout

You don’t have to join a gym to get a great strength training workout. A gym is nice because you’ll have access to both machines and free weights, so you have plenty of variety. If you do join a gym, it’s a good idea to incorporate both types of equipment into your workout routine for variety. What’s the difference? This article explains all.

If you decide to workout at home, here are a few items you might want to consider buying:

• Resistance bands are around $6 to $15. They’re small, light, travel well and you get get a full body workout with it.
• Dumbbells. They’re cheap and you can do a variety of exercise with them. Find them at your local Target or Walmart. Other options include a barbell set, an exercise ball and/or a weight bench.
• A step is more expensive (a good one goes for around $85 or so) but you can use for everything from step aerobics to weight bench to plant-holder (although I don’t recommend it for that).
• For more, see Home Fitness Equipment

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Something you require to keep in mind and never forget is that whenever you exercise, you are coaching for life. You still may spend an hour a day in the gym, whilst that will still leave another 23 hours or so for your muscles to function without using any fancy equipment.

Whenever you do any type of exercise, the movement of your body throughout the exercise is known as the range of motion. The more difficult the range of motion is, the more effective the exercise will be, because your body has to work twice as hard to perform the movement.

Take for the instance the classic dumbbell bicep curl. When you are not familiar with the exercise, it is performed through standing up straight with your palms facing forward, and a pair of dumbbells held down by your sides. You’ll contract your biceps to bring the dumbbells up to your shoulder height then repeat the exercise as many times as you wish.

Using that same movement for exercise on a bicep curl machine, you should sit down, brace your upper arms on a pad, grasp 2 handles that are in front of you, and then perform the same movement as above to move the handles in an upward motion.

Now, looking at the muscle contractions in this exercise, you are contracting essentially your biceps if you are using the curl machine, and that is pretty much all you are doing. If you use the machine you are sitting down, which will limit just how much your shoulders give. The machine has various muscles used in this exercise limited to the biceps, as well as the muscles in your forearms and fingers.

Most of the time, when using machine weights, you will always be limited as to what type of exercise you can perform. You must always follow a strict procedure, which is pretty much the same with free weights. Unlike free weights, machine weights offer a certain degree of resistance.

One of the best things about free weights is the fact that you move a little chuck around to select the weight you want to use. Instead of dragging it over to your exercise area, you simply select it on the machine. Whenever you are tired throughout a workout, this can be a blessing.

A lot of people argue in the fact that free weights are the best for your body. Although this is normally true, many people out there feel that machine weights are the best. There are pros and cons with both machines, while free weights have been around a lot longer and have been proven time after time to achieve dramatic results.

Body builders for example, have used free weights over the years to establish very impressive bodies. When you ask most of them about machine weights, they would believably laugh at you and tell you that you need to quit joking around.

In a nutshell, free weights will use more of your muscles than the machines do, which makes them more effective overall. This doesn’t mean that the machines are a waste of use, as they offer some great advantages. In some cases, it is best to stabilize the muscles that are being used in a movement, which is where machines are the best to use.

The decision on which to use for you should be based on what you want to achieve with lifting weights and where you plan to use the equipment, such as home or at a gym. Both systems are great for your body, though the free weights are best to use whenever you desire the best possible workout, and always ensure that your muscles are getting the correctly workouts they need.

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Worldwide, between 80,000 and 100,000 kids start smoking every day. Approximately one quarter of children alive in the Western Pacific Region* will die from smoking.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has compiled worldwide smoking statistics for the year 2002. The smoking facts and stats presented are sobering.

• About a third of the male adult global population smokes.
• Smoking related-diseases kill one in 10 adults globally, or cause four million deaths. By 2030, if current trends continue, smoking will kill one in six people.
• Every eight seconds, someone dies from tobacco use.
• Smoking is on the rise in the developing world but falling in developed nations. Among Americans, smoking rates shrunk by nearly half in three decades (from the mid-1960s to mid-1990s), falling to 23% of adults by 1997. In the developing world, tobacco consumption is rising by 3.4% per year.
• About 15 billion cigarettes are sold daily – or 10 million every minute.
• About 12 times more British people have died from smoking than from World War II.
• Cigarettes cause more than one in five American deaths.
• Among WHO Regions, the Western Pacific Region – which covers East Asia and the Pacific – has the highest smoking rate, with nearly two-thirds of men smoking.
• About one in three cigarettes are consumed in the Western Pacific Region.
• The tobacco market is controlled by just a few corporations – namely American, British and Japanese multinational conglomerates.

  Youth
  

• Among young teens (aged 13 to 15), about one in five smokes worldwide.
• Between 80,000 and 100,000 children worldwide start smoking every day – roughly half of whom live in Asia.
• Evidence shows that around 50% of those who start smoking in adolescent years go on to smoke for 15 to 20 years.
• Peer-reviewed studies show teenagers are heavily influenced by tobacco advertising.
• About a quarter of youth alive in the Western Pacific Region will die from smoking.

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Guy Fawkes Night is an annual celebration on the evening of 5 November. It marks the downfall of the Gunpowder Plot of 5 November 1605, in which a number of Catholic conspirators, including Guy Fawkes, attempted to destroy the Houses of Parliament, in London, United Kingdom.

It is primarily marked in the United Kingdom where it was compulsory, by fiat, until 1859, to celebrate the deliverance of the King of Great Britain; but, it is also celebrated in former British colonies including New Zealand,^[1] Newfoundland, South Africa, and parts of the Caribbean. Bonfire Night was celebrated in Australia until the mid- to late 1970s, when sale and public use of fireworks was made illegal and the celebration was effectively abolished. It is also celebrated in the British Overseas Territory of Bermuda .^[2] Festivities are centred on the use of fireworks and the lighting of bonfires.

In the United Kingdom, celebrations take place in towns and villages across the country in the form of both private and civic events. They involve fireworks displays and the building of bonfires on which traditionally “guys” are burnt, although this practice is not always observed in modern times.^{[citation needed]} These “guys” are traditionally effigies of Guy Fawkes, the most famous of the Gunpowder Plot conspirators. Although the night is celebrated in York (Fawkes’ hometown) some there do not burn his effigy, most notably those from his old school.^[3][4] In the past, before the fifth, children traditionally used the “guys” to request a “penny for the guy” in order to raise funds with which to buy fireworks. However, this practice has diminished greatly, perhaps because it has been seen as begging, and also because children are not allowed to buy fireworks. In addition there are concerns that children might misuse the money.^[5]

In the United Kingdom, there are several foods that are traditionally consumed on Guy Fawkes Night:

• black treacle goods such as bonfire toffee ^[6] and parkin ^[7]
• toffee apples ^[8][9]
• baked potatoes, more commonly and traditionally referred to as jacket potatoes, which are wrapped in foil and cooked in the bonfire or its embers ^[10][11]
• black peas with vinegar ^[12]
• potato pie with pickled red cabbage ^[13]

In the Black Country, it is a traditional day for eating groaty pudding.^{[citation needed]}

In West Yorkshire the practice of chumping is carried out by children in the days and weeks before bonfire night. This is the collection of wood and other combustible materials to make community bonfires.

In Sussex, it is a major festival that centres on Lewes necessitating the closure of the town centre. The night also commemorates the Glorious Revolution and 17 local Protestant martyrs that were burnt at the stake during Marian Persecutions by the Catholic Queen Mary I.^[14] The night begins with torchlight processions in costume by a number of local bonfire societies and culminates in six separate bonfires where effigies of Guy Fawkes, Pope Paul V and topical personalities are destroyed by firework and flame. The burning of an effigy of Pope Paul V is carried out by the Cliffe Bonfire Society alone and they are barred from marching with the main procession.

In Ottery St Mary, in Devon, burning barrels of tar are carried through the streets:

“Ottery St. Mary is internationally renowned for its tar barrels, an old custom said to have originated in the 17th century, and which is held on November 5th each year. Each of Ottery’s central public houses sponsors a single barrel. In the weeks prior to the day of the event, November 5th, the barrels are soaked with tar. The barrels are lit outside each of the pubs in turn and once the flames begin to pour out, they are hoisted up onto local people’s backs and shoulders. The streets and alleys around the pubs are packed with people, all eager to feel the lick of the barrels flame. Seventeen Barrels all in all are lit over the course of the evening. In the afternoon and early evening there are women’s and boy’s barrels, but as the evening progresses the barrels get larger and by midnight they weigh at least 30 kilos. A great sense of camaraderie exists between the ‘Barrel Rollers’, despite the fact that they tussle constantly for supremacy of the barrel. In most cases, generations of the same family carry the barrels and take great pride in doing so. … Opinion differs as to the origin of this festival of fire, but the most widely accepted version is that it began as a pagan ritual that cleanses the streets of evil spirits.” ^[15]

Guy Fawkes Night is less commonly celebrated in Northern Ireland, where autumn fireworks and bonfires are more commonly associated with Halloween.

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