Beginners: How much weight should you lift when starting?

This is a common question for those who are starting out at the gym, whether they are beginners or returning to training.

Conventional wisdom suggests that you should do many repetitions with lighter loads because this imitates endurance sports, but if you want to get the greatest benefit from your effort, your goal should be to lift heavy objects.

Heavyweight benefits

The heavier the load you lift, the more muscle fibers your body will need to recruit to perform an exercise.

• When lifting with maximum or near-maximum effort, your body must recruit almost all the muscle fibers in the active tissue to move that load.
• For this reason, strength training is such an effective method for improving your performance.

When beginners maximally recruit all their muscle fibers, they improve the neural pathway from the brain to their muscles and, over time, their bodies must learn to fire the muscle fibers in sync as efficiently as possible to lift a load.

Therefore, if you are a beginner, when you lift heavy objects, you improve your strength to a greater extent than when you lift lighter loads.

Here, the ultimate goal of strength training is to improve power output, that is,  Power = Force x Speed.

If you improve your ability to produce force at any speed, your power will improve, especially at higher intensities where greater force must be produced.

Do not lift heavy from the start

Strength training is a long-term practice that develops year after year, and you must continue dedicating time to it to obtain all its benefits.

As with anything else, you should not lift a lot of weight because your bones, tendons, ligaments, and muscles are not adapted to lifting heavy loads.

Although you may feel tempted to go to the gym and lift as much as you can, it is better not to try because, at best, you will end up too sore to walk for several days and will never return to the gym.

At worst, you will not be able to walk for several months because of an injury. So, take things slowly and start gradually to achieve the success you want by nourishing yourself properly with a healthy diet.

A beginner's routine

Your first gym sessions should be easy and should focus on mastering proper lifting technique. To do this, you should select high repetitions (12-20 repetitions) and light loads.

For a squat, this would probably mean using a kettlebell or an unloaded barbell, and each time you go to the gym during this phase, increase your load only slightly (2 kg, more or less, for lower-body exercises), following the principle of progressive overload.

You will progress quickly during this phase, like any beginner who follows their routine, which should last 3 to 4 weeks…

You will feel noticeably stronger every week.

Continue increasing the load so that you have a similar relative effort in each lift (approximately 6 or 7 out of 10). This approach will minimize soreness while your body gets used to strength training.

Then, you should reduce the repetition range to 8-10 and increase the weight. However, for each set, you should still feel that you have one or two repetitions left. If so, gradually increase the weight as you feel stronger.

Remember that you should not progress beyond this phase during your first “season,” or until you transition to the maintenance phase, since it is enough of a stimulus to improve your strength without risking injury.

As long as you have maintained your strength throughout the season, you can progress to even heavier loads. Your body will have adapted to lifting periodically, and your technique will probably be refined enough to lift heavier loads.

Then, you will begin the first few weeks with lighter loads (12-20 repetitions) and then move to 8-10 repetitions for the following two weeks.

Once you feel ready, it will be time to work really heavy.

• In this phase, you will begin with 6 repetitions per set, with the ultimate goal of progressing to 3-4, with long rest periods of 3-5 minutes to recover between sets.
• During this phase, you will track your performance and, by the end, you will be stronger than ever and ready to apply that strength to more specific training.

Do not lift to failure

This is a common mistake among novice and experienced athletes, who select a weight so heavy that it compromises good technique and training safety.

Remember that if you cannot complete all the repetitions with proper technique, the weight may be too heavy.  You should always feel that you can do at least one more repetition, regardless of how heavy you are lifting.

Research has found no additional performance benefit from lifting to failure in beginners, compared with submaximal lifting, while maximal lifting also comes at a high cost.

Lifting to failure is very demanding on the body, as well as extremely dangerous. If you lift this way all the time, your progress will stall and you could eventually overtrain.

Completing several sets with submaximal effort has been shown to provide greater benefits than lifting to failure, with less risk.

Heavyweight is not for everyone

People with certain pre-existing conditions and older athletes should avoid lifting heavy objects.

For beginners , however, there are other strength-training methods that can still provide significant benefits and help prevent injuries. This topic and other related subjects are discussed in the following video prepared by MASmusculo.