When you start your stop loosing muscle mass strength training routine you:
Start slowly!
You should start lifting light weights and you will make them heavier over time!
You persist and learn while you go!
Warm up and stretch first
Before you start any strength training session, you need to warm up and stretch your muscle parts to get them ready for lifting weights. Warm up for 7 minutes doing jumping jacks or walking briskly, jogging lightly or using any cardiovascular machine in your gym. Learn more about warm up here.
Than do few stretches for major muscle parts. You don’t have to spent too much time doing this. 5 minutes is enough. Here are some stretches you can do. Learn how to stretch properly here.
Start with light weight
Lifting weights is fantastic for your health and muscle loss prevention. But lifting weights can be also dangerous if you don’t do it right. You have to be smart about your weight training, you need to keep learning, start slowly and most important, you have to persist with your weight training.
Why is persistence so important? Because in order to get results you need to increase the resistance. And if you are not persistent, you will get hurt. In other words, you have to deserve to lift heavy weights. And you deserve it by being persistent and not missing your scheduled strength training sessions.
It works like this: you start slowly, doing your shoulder presses with 5 pounds weight for each hand. You will strength train with this weight for about a week or two, twice per week. Than, at the end of second week, you are ready to increase the load to 7 pounds and you are on your way to great results.
Now, in fourth week, you decide to take some time off and party all week like a rockstar and skip your strength training exercise. After a week of partying and not doing your strength training, you are ready to resume your stop the muscle loss workout. Now you can get hurt lifting those 7 pounds dumbbells, so you have to go back to 5 pounds weight for each hand. You have to step back before you go back to your heavier weight to lift with after a longer brake.
Prevent injuries
This is the single one major reason why injuries in the gyms happen. You come back to the gym after 2 weeks of break and you think you can lift the same weight as you did before. So you do. And shoulder gets hurt. Way too many injuries happen like this and they are very preventable with few steps back, before you reach your heavy weight again.
In order to stop muscle mass loss, you need to lift heavy weights. But in order to lift heavy weights, you must be consistent and slowly increase the weight. Too many people get hurt before reaching those incredible muscle building benefits. Don’t let that happen to you. Stay consistent.
Multi joint exercises
The most intelligent and effective way to lift heavy weight to stop losing your muscle mass is through special multi joint exercises. These exercises are actually not that special. They are just normal exercises where you lift weights using 2 or more joints at the same time. With that, you are employing more muscle mass at the same time, promoting bigger growth. And it is the most efficient way to stop losing muscle mass.
There are 5 main multi joint exercises:
Squat, shoulder press, chest press, pull downs and rows. For more advanced, consistent exercisers add another 6 exercises: push ups, pull ups, squat jumps, bar dips, bench press and bent over rows.
These are the exercises that work more large muscle parts at the same time. Making your body to prevent muscle mass loss and build more muscle more efficiently. These exercises must be at the core of every muscle loss prevention and muscle gain workout routine.
Build your muscle mass preservation plan, or let your trainer do it for you based on these multi joint exercises. And than you can add few single, not as important exercises to your routine. Like for example: biceps curl, hamstring curl, toe stands, lateral shoulder raises and others.
Repetitions and sets
A safe repetition count to start with is anywhere between 15 – 20 repetitions and doing them in 3 sets. The repetitions count could seem too high, especially when the majority of fitness magazines recommend 10 or 12 repetitions. The reason I recommend to start with 15 to 20 repetitions is simple. You can tyre the muscle, which makes it grow with lighter weight while doing more repetitions. And that means less chance or no chance of injury. Why would you lift 20 pounds 10 times with high risk of injury if you can accomplish the same with lifting 15 pounds 20 times. It’s simply safer and better, especially if you are just starting.
Over time, when you prove yourself, that you are consistent and muscle mass preservation is very important to you, you can decrease repetition count to lover amounts like 12 to 15 reps. And lift very heavy weight. But be careful. You really need to be very critical with yourself and intelligent too. You don’t want to end up with injury that will stop your strength training for several weeks or even months. You simply can’t afford it. Not doing the strength training at any stage of the adult life is a huge health related mistake.
Now, you build your plan that consist of mainly multi join core exercises and you do each exercise in 3 sets of 20 repetitions. Than another thing I usually advice people I train is, to mix push and pull exercises so you don’t waist too much time in the gym or working out at home. I know, we all have life’s to live and however important the strength training is, we want to get it done and move on as soon as we can. I don’t blame you. That’s why push and pull strategy is so important here.
Push and pull strategy
To make your exercise more time and intensity effective I recommend applying push and pull strategy. It means, that you alternate push exercises like for example chest press with pull exercises, like for example lat pull downs. The reason this strategy is so great is that, when you finish push exercise where you employ mainly push movement muscles – triceps, pectorals, shoulders, quadriceps and you move to pull exercise where you use mainly pull movement muscles – biceps, back muscles, forearm muscles and hamstrings, the push muscles are resting and vice versa.
Simple plan:
3X
Lat pull downs – 20R (Repetitions) – pull muscles involved – biceps, lattisimus dorsi – back muscles, forearm muscles
Chest press – 20R – push muscles involved – triceps, pectorals (pull muscles are resting)
Seated row – 20R – pull muscles involved (push muscles are resting)
Shoulder press – 20R – push muscles involved including shoulder muscle – deltoid (pull muscles resting)
3X
Leg press – 20R – push muscles on your legs working – quadriceps and gluteus – front thigh muscles
Hamstring curl – 20R – pull muscle hamstrings are doing the main work, calf muscles helping slightly (leg pull muscles are resting)
Squats with barbell – 20R – push muscles working, same as in leg press (pull muscles are resting)
You can create also this kind of strategy working your core at the end of the workout.
2X
Low crunches with ball – 25R – using abdominal – pull muscles
Back extensions – 25R – using lover back muscles – push muscles (pull muscles are resting)
Legs on ball crunches – 25R – using abdominal muscles – pull muscles (push muscles are resting)
This is just a very simple example of push and pull technique in weight training. You work out intensively one muscle group, while the other one is resting. Very effective and powerful way to resistance train. I will get into the more detail plan in another chapter.
Stretch
The saying goes – the strong muscle is also a long muscle and the weak muscle is also short muscle. Of course, you want to have strong, long – flexible muscles. I still remember learning in school, that strength training where you lift heavy weights is making a muscle short and thats why you have to stretch it. Later studies shoved that this is simply not truth at all. When you strength train your muscles, they not only get stronger, they also become longer – more flexible.
Anyway, I still apply stretching to my workouts and so should you. After circle of exercises, take a break and stretch those muscles. The reason you should stretch is not because you are trying to prevent your muscles from getting short from weight lifting. The reason for it is to have active break between sets.
Stretching brings more blood into working muscle, and yes you want to employ stretching as a further development of your flexibility. And we tend to loose flexibility and strength when we get older. It’s just a great habit to have. So instead of sitting on the bench or chatting with somebody in the gym while resting between sets, you use this break actively. You stretch.
Stop loosing muscle mass right now with diligent, consistent, overtime made intensive strength training. There is no any other more effective strategy to achieve this goal than with strength training. And if you want to stay healthy, strong and live up to your maximum potential you don’t have any other option. Happy lifting!
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