How Do I Start Weight Training? Explain it to Me Like I'm Five.

[Bacchus]

BUT what keeps messing me up from getting going with any program is how incredibly sore I get after lifting from just 1 or 2 workouts !

All the things I read on strength training say not to lift again when you are still sore, cause your muscles are rebuilding, but if that soreness lasts 2, 3, or 4 days, what do you do? (I foam roll, use a massage gun, drink lots of water)

Give it a few months of frequent enough workouts and you won't get sore.

And, working out while sore is fine, unless its reeeeeeeeal bad - Just take it a bit easier

 

[mopo89]

One time, after not doing any strength training for months and months, I went straight into a hypertrophy program and decided to lift as heavy as I possibly could for leg day. I'm talking like.... 40lbs more than I should have been lifting. I managed to do it and finished the 30 minute workout. I then couldn't walk, legitimately, for 2 weeks. Like, I'm talking tears whenever I had to walk down a flight of stairs or go to the washroom. Ever since then, I go low and slow to reduce muscle soreness at the beginning.

 

[Kelso37]

I paid $30 for a medical provider to do a virtual evaluation and then they emailed me the LOMN.

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Well omg ! I learned something totally new today! Thank you for sharing!!

Haha my hubby is gunna flip. He already thinks I have lost it with all my research haha
But he is super lucky and super tall and has never had to diet or anything to stay pretty thin.
He might not ever get it, and that is okay
He loves me no matter what, so it is hard to fault him for his great genetics
It is funny though because over the years I have always told him, we need to take whatever “works efficiently etc” in your metabolism & bottle it up as a med and give it to me!
And what do you know, GLP1’s ! We are in the future!
Now I must have my AI assisted trainer, form coach & magnetic weight Tonal machine!

 

[powerball]

Title is self explanatory. I'd like to start weight training. And for background, I'm late 40s woman, perimenopause, mid 150lbs, sedentary, have rheumatoid arthritis which affects my hand grip, joints and mobility sometimes.

Should I just buy dumbbells and start? Do you think I need a real life personal trainer to tell me the basics? Do you think I need a gym?

Are there any good youtube videos to watch or online guides of exercises to do?

Since you already have joint and mobility issues I wonder if weightlifting is not the best option.

If you have a pool nearby swimming might be just the ticket. It's a fantastic full-body workout while not being nearly so hard on your joints and should also help a bit with your overall mobility. Plus you won't be all hot and sweaty when getting out of the pool.

Honestly, I think it's one of the most underrated forms of exercise.

I'm not saying don't lift but consider maybe starting with swimming to improve your overall fitness before you jump into strength training.

One other thing to note, weights and gym memberships are expensive. I paid over 600 bucks for my adjustable dumbells and another couple hundred for my bench. A gym is going to run 30-70ish a month in most cases. I pay 190 a year for access to the facility where I swim or if I just pay each day I think it's like 6 bucks a day so swimming can also be a more cost-effective way to work out as well.

 

[hexagonal]

Resistance training will improve general joint and mobility issues. Tons of studies on this. It's a bit more mixed on specifically improving arthritis (study quality isn't great for a lot of them), but there's no indication it makes it worse, no indication that the other benefits of it are particularly impacted, and in some studies the subjects reported less arthritis-related pain.

If you can't pick up a barbell or get access to a machine, start with body weight, resistance bands, light dumbbells, etc. Swimming or some other form of cardio is also super important to health, but it doesn't take the place of resistance training and there's no reason most people can't start slow and steady on resistance training even if you have disadvantageous conditions like arthiritis

(Edit: The forum seems to be translating the links into russian, but they're just google scholar searches for "resistance training improve mobility", "resistance training improve joint pain", "resistance training improve arthritist")

Академия Google

scholar.google.com

Академия Google

scholar.google.com

Академия Google

scholar.google.com

 

[John316]

That's a bit misleading. Weight training is very safe for beginners specifically because you're not strong enough to lift anything heavy enough to hurt yourself yet.

Some resistance bands and a set of small dumbbells are good to start with. like 3, 4, 5, and 10lbs. You can do higher reps with low weights to work on the movement patterns until you get more comfortable.

If you want to join a gym a lot have those circuit training areas with machines. If you have no idea what to do at all you can just do a round with the machine circuits. Like 3 sets of 12 for full body every other day or twice a week. You don't need to spend much time, even 20-30 min sessions are better than nothing.

There are also good apps for training for beginners. You can get the fitbod app and put it on total beginner and even set it to all body weight. RP strength also has an app you can use.

I’ve been weight training for over 40 years and what Viki said is perfect