diIettante
So, I'm 15 years old, I weigh around 130 pounds, and I'm 5 foot 6.
I do a s**t ton of cardio, since I'm on my high school swim team, I average around 2-5 miles in the water everyday. But due to me going on a cruise soon, I will be taking a 2 week break from swimming, and probably just running.
I have a few basic questions, the one who answers them with most detail and information will be given my affection and 10,000g.
Keep in my I want to get
toned, not bulky. I plan to exercise all my muscles, but I'll mainly be focusing on my abs and chest.
1. How many reps and sets should I do?
2. What amount of weight should I use? How do I know how much is too heavy/light?
3. How long of a break do I take between sets?
4. How fast should I try to do each set?
5. What happens if I over train my muscle?
6. Is there anything I should be aware of when weight lifting? Like never exercise the same muscles everyday? Or never use too much weight?
Thanks in advance.
Alright, let's get down to it! Firstly I want to say that you don't need to worry about getting bulky, getting bulky is
hard and you're not going to do it by accident. Secondly I would like to caution you away from concentrating on chest and abs. To explain why, allow me to drop some bro-science on you.
All your muscles are connected, all of your major lifts involve multiple muscles. I can't imagine working on your chest without the use of a bench press. So, assuming you're using one you should keep in mind that you'll be including the use of your triceps, shoulders, lats, and a variety of smaller support muscles. Building these muscles on their own will help you achieve your goals without injuring yourself. I would recommend full body training, but that's just me.
1. Ok, so you want to get toned. There are only two ways to do this. You can either build muscle or cut fat. Judging from your appearance in your signature I'm going to assume you'll be mostly building muscle. People are going to say you should do a combination of lighter weight and high reps. This is bad advice. High reps doesn't increase muscle tone, it increases endurance, which while great for sports, won't help you reach your appearance goals faster. For your lifts, you might want to try something between heavy/low reps and light/heavy reps. I tend to do three sets per exercise, 4 exercises per muscle group, sets go: 4 rep max, 6 rep max, 8 rep max. That'll probably be your best bet.
2. A weight is too heavy if, on your first set, you can't rep it at least 3 times and get a spot on the fourth. You don't want to be a powerlifter, no need to max out all the time. It's too light if you can do 12 reps, unless you want to build endurance, which is perfectly reasonable. Again, just based on your goals.
3. Just don't let yourself cool down. I typically break for 1-1.5 minutes using a stopwatch on my phone. Powerlifters will wait anywhere between 3-5 minutes and people running a circuit (which you might consider because you can burn fat better this way) will wait maybe 45 seconds tops.
4. Keep your joints in mind, weight lifting is high impact joint movement. Exploding your rep is good but keep in mind you don't want to be hammering your joints either. That'll lead to taking some time off for healing.
5. You'll look like a freak with stick legs and giant pecs, haha just kidding. If you're over trained just take an additional rest day but it's unlikely to happen honestly.
6. Reaching your fitness/physique goals is 40% diet, 50% training, %10 rest. You're 15 years old so let's say 20% because you can probably eat whatever you want and not put on any fat. But, keeping your protein intake high is super important. The Paleo diet will get you ripped up, it's worked wonders for me. We've covered training so lets move on to rest. Let me give you a personal example, my bench press routine goes like this 250x5 (I can't do 4 with 255), 230x6, 210x8 on days where I am rested I move on to inclined press from there and my first set is 210x4, on a Saturday morning after a night of raging at the bars and maybe some extra curricular activities afterward my regular bench is the same but that inclined press becomes 165x4. Because I'm whooped. So make sure you get your rest. That also means taking a rest day. You can't work out 7 days a week without hurting yourself in the long run. Most serious lifters won't hit it hard for more than 3-5 days in a row.
Make sure your form is correct. There are tons of instructional video's on this on youtube. Watch them and make sure you don't break form or you
will hurt yourself.
Work out competing muscles on the same day. E.G. chest+upper back, biceps+triceps, legs all in one day, shoulders+traps.
Want to get your abs ripped? Do a three day rotation. Day 1, 150 repetitions of dynamic upper abs. Day 2) 150 lower abs Day 3) obliques. Abs get used to a workout quick, keep it dynamic to continue building them.
Ok, let's talk about degrees of motion. Building tone has a lot to do with degrees of motion. Which means how free you are to move during a rep. A machine only goes up and down, a barbell goes up, down, left, and right, and dumbbells can move in 360 degrees of motion. Degrees of motion build your support muscles, which will help you tone faster, and with less over all bulk. That's why you can press more on a bench machine than you can on a regular bench press, and even less with dumbbells. I wouldn't say do exclusively dumbbell work but definitely don't waste time on machines until like your fourth exercise.
Finally, don't ignore your legs man. I know, you probably don't care about them, the girls don't care about your quads. No girl has ever looked at me and said, "Wow, how much do you squat!?" But I ignored them for years and now, at 24, I regret doing it. Strong legs are just so... functional. I've noticed so many aspects of my life get better since I started working on my legs. Work on your legs, you'll be rewarded for it.
Hope that was helpful!
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