Getting Started

If you have a chronic condition or if you're over 40 and haven't been active lately, check with your doctor before starting a muscle strengthening or aerobic activity program.

Before starting a muscle strengthening activity, consider warming up with brisk walking or other aerobic physical activity for 5 to 10 minutes. Cold muscles are more likely to be injured than warm muscles.

Choose a level of endurance or weight enough to tire your muscles after about 12 to 15 repetitions. When you can easily do more repetitions of a given exercise, progressively increase your weight or endurance.

Many times we think that working our muscles only affects us in seeing ourselves more defined, with the most marked muscles, but perhaps we don't know the multiple benefits that this practice entails.

Research shows that a single set of 12 repetitions with the right weight can generate muscle effectively in most people and can be as effective as three sets of the same exercise. For muscles to have time to recover, rest a full day each time you work on each specific muscle group.

Also, try to listen to your body. If a muscle-strengthening exercise causes you pain, stop. Consider trying less weight or trying again in a few days. It's important that you apply the right technique to muscle strengthening to avoid injury. If weight training is new to you, work with a trainer or other physical activity specialist to learn the right technique and form.

You don't have to spend hours a day lifting weights to get the benefits of muscle strengthening. You can see a significant improvement in your endurance with just 2 or 3 training sessions with 20 or 30 minute weights per week. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommends incorporating muscle strengthening exercises from all major muscle groups into an exercise routine at least twice a week.

• Loss of body fat, with consequent weight maintenance and weight control. Weight control. Muscle is metabolically more active (burns more calories) than fat. Weight training or muscle endurance training increases muscle mass enough to accelerate metabolism.
• Increased metabolism. Muscle is metabolically active, so if you worry about increasing your percentage of muscle mass, you'll need more calories, because it's going to demand them itself.
• Increased calorie intake during weight training or muscle endurance training. Keeping the muscle in tension increases calorie loss.
• Increased strength for daily life. Exercising with weight can help both maintain and increase strength. Muscles shrink as we age and from lack of use. Many people lose freedom because they have lost the strength that allows them to move. However, with just a light weight-bearing routine, you can regain lost strength, or never lose it.
• Reducing the risk of diabetes. Studies show that weight training helps people with diabetes maintain normal blood glucose levels.
• Improved structural and functional integrity of tendons, ligaments and joints. A strong and resistant musculature allows to develop more strength and to obtain a better performance with less risk of injuries for muscles, tendons, ligaments and joints, avoiding the transfer of load to these last three.