what is this place?

by Mary C. Weaver, CSCS, M.S. on March 4, 2011

me in the locker room

I’m devoting this brand-new site to everything you need to know about strength training:

  • basic terminology
  • putting together your program
  • which exercises give you the best results
  • why you do not need to worry about getting “bulky”
  • the advantages and disadvantages of free weights, machines, and body-weight exercises
  • what weights do for your figure
  • the many health benefits of lifting
  • avoiding and working around injury
  • what to eat to gain muscle and lose fat
  • equipment you need (and don’t need)
  • and more!

What you won’t find here?

  • BS, celebrity opinions, or the fitness fad of the moment
  • attempts to sell you “miracle” diets, pills, or programs
  • cheesy pictures of fake fitness models with spaghetti-thin arms and legs. (I call them Twinkies . . . )

Please leave me a comment or e-mail me using the form here. I really want to hear from you, so I hope you’ll send your questions and thoughts.

Yours in strength,

Mary (P.S. Please check out my other site, PrimeFit.org. P.P.S. Yes, that’s me in the silly iPhone photo.)

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what to do between sets—for calorie burn

by Mary C. Weaver, CSCS, M.S. on March 25, 2011

woman on treadmill

What to do between sets? That depends on your goal at the moment. In future posts I’ll talk about resting (or not) between sets when your goal is muscle size, strength, or endurance.

When your goal is fat loss, you can use the time between sets to dramatically increase calorie burn. The idea is to stay in motion as much as possible. In other words, don’t sit on your butt on a bench, counting the seconds until your next set.

Strategies I like: [click to continue]

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good pain, bad pain

by Mary C. Weaver, CSCS, M.S. March 25, 2011
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Can pain be a good thing? When it signals that you’re injured and need to do something about it, yes. Pain is protective. Everybody knows the slogan “No pain, no gain.” What it really means is “no discomfort in the gym, no gain.” I like to distinguish between good pain and bad pain. Good pain [...]

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how many reps?

by Mary C. Weaver, CSCS, M.S. March 4, 2011

How many reps (repetitions) should you be doing of each set in the gym? That’s tricky to answer because you will probably want to use a combination of low reps, medium reps, and high reps, depending on your training goals at the moment. In fact, during a single workout, you may use all three rep schemes [...]

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the general warm-up

by Mary C. Weaver, CSCS, M.S. March 4, 2011
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Sometimes when you’re in a hurry, it’s tempting to skip the general warm-up—the preliminaries that prepare your body for a good workout.  Please resist the temptation. The general warm-up increases the temperature of your muscles, your body’s core temperature, and blood flow. Those effects provide faster muscle contraction and relaxation improved muscular strength and power [...]

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single-joint movements

by Mary C. Weaver, CSCS, M.S. March 4, 2011
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Single-joint movements involve—you guessed it—just one joint at a time. So when you do a bicep curl or a leg extension, you’re working just one joint and its associated muscles. These moves are also called isolation exercises because they isolate (focus on) just one set of muscles at a time. There’s a place in your [...]

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multijoint movements

by Mary C. Weaver, CSCS, M.S. March 4, 2011
lat pulldown

Multijoint movements are some of the most effective exercises you can use in the gym. Multijoint simply means the movement involves more than one joint. So, for example, if you do a squat (with or without a barbell or dumbbells), it’s easy to see that you have to bend at the hips, knees, and ankles [...]

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sets and reps (repetitions)

by Mary C. Weaver, CSCS, M.S. March 4, 2011

Let’s say I get onto the floor and do 20 abdominal crunches. I stop and rest for a minute or do something else. Then I do 20 more crunches.  I’ve just done two sets of 20 reps (repetitions) each.  Each set represents the nonstop performance of any movement. Once I stop, the set is over. [...]

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