Why Won’t Anyone Tell Me How Much Weight to Lift?
Any good lifting program you find on the internet or in a book will likely list exercises, sets, reps, rest periods, and days per week, but will say nothing about how much weight to use. That’s because it’s your job to figure out the weight. And it’s not that hard, but it’s going to take some trial and error. Plan on your first week of a new exercise or program to be mostly about figuring your weights out. After that, you can put the pedal to the metal.
Here’s How
Get ready to do your first exercise. If you’ve never done it before, practice the form with the lightest weight possible. Once you’ve got the form down, choose a weight that seems reasonable to you. DON’T LOOK AT WHAT OTHER PEOPLE ARE LIFTING, just be conservative.
Let’s say you’re going to be lifting the weight for 10 reps--that’s a good number, if you’re not sure. If you can lift that weight 10 times like it’s nothing: rest, add 10 to 20% to the weight, and try 10 more reps. If you lifted it pretty well for 10 times, but it wasn’t a total cakewalk: rest, add 5 to 10% to the weight, and try 10 more reps. If you got to 10 reps just barely, or could only do 8 or 9 reps, the weight you’ve got is probably a good one to use for future workouts. Write that number down! If you only made it to 4 or 5 reps: rest, decrease the weight by 10 to 20% or more, and try again.
Keep in mind that form matters here. Lots of exercises can be done with much more weight if you do them with terrible form. Don’t go there.
Keep repeating this process until you find your working weight for that exercise. Then repeat the process for other exercises. This process might require your entire workout time; if so, that’s fine, you are working your muscles, after all. If you’ve got plenty of time left over, try a set or two more of each exercise before you go home.
What's a 1RM?
You may hear or read stuff that includes the phrase “1-rep max” or just the abbreviation “1RM”. Often, it will be something like “Use 80% of your 1RM for this exercise”. Your 1-rep max is how much you can lift exactly once; the absolute maximum amount your body can move. I strongly recommend you don’t actually test your 1-rep max on any exercise without a trainer’s assistance, because when you’re approaching the maximum amount of weight your body can handle, accidents and injuries can happen.
Instead, test your 3-rep, 5-rep, or 8-rep max and use a 1RM calculator (they’re all over the internet) to estimate your 1RM. Different calculators will give slightly different results, but they’ll pretty much all be close enough. This is the one I use: 1RM Calculator
Sorry I Couldn't Just Tell You the Answers!
When you start lifting, or start a new program, plan on your first workout(s) to be mostly experimenting to find the right weights. It might seem kind of loosy-goosy or inconvenient, but you might also start to enjoy this process. Certainly, there's no pressure to set any world records here!
Go get started!
The Friendly Lifter
