Working out with free weights

This first informational article is geared specifically for the girls on our Forge team, though much of the data is also helpful for guys.

You want to be sure you exercise each major upper-body muscle group every week. We are already going to be doing plenty of endurance work for lower body, so the best thing is to do general lower-body calisthenics such as lunges during the rest periods between upper-body weights sets.

A typical workout will consist of a light to medium cardio warmup on the treadmill, stationary bike, or stairstepper, followed by perhaps 30 minutes of weights sets. On these, always go from larger muscle groups to smaller, because the smaller (like arms) support the larger (like back or chest). If you exhaust your arms first, you will not be able to lift enough to exhaust the larger muscles.

The upper-body muscle groups are chest, back, shoulders, biceps, and triceps. Your major chest muscles are your pectorals; they meet in the middle of your chest and connect with your shoulder muscles. Your back has many muscles, the most dramatic of which are the latissimus dorsi, under your arms. These give a nice V-shape to your back when developed. Your shoulders have three deltoids - front, side, and back. Biceps and triceps have different "heads" as well, but it is simple enough to hit all of them at once.

Certain muscles act together to support each other. Pulling exercises work your back and biceps. Pushing exercises work your chest, shoulders, and triceps - but mostly your chest and triceps. So there are different philosophies for setting up a workout schedule. One program goes as follows: Back/biceps one day, chest/triceps a second, and shoulders a third. Another option is Back/chest, shoulders, biceps/triceps. And yet a third choice is back/biceps, chest/shoulders/triceps. I would suggest the first schedule to begin. So you would do back/biceps on Monday, perhaps; chest/triceps on Wednesday; and shoulders on Friday.

A simple setup is two exercises per body part, with three sets of each exercise, 10-12 reps per set. In between sets, you rest your muscles for a minute. During the rest times you can do lower-body calisthenics or stretch.

The exercises I showed Charis and Rachel for each body part were the following:
Back - Shoulder-width pulldown on the machine; one-arm dumbbell row
Chest - Flat dumbbell press; pushups
Shoulders - Arnold press; one-arm side/front raises
Biceps - Regular bicep curls (palms face forward); hammer curls (palms face each other)
Triceps - Overhead dumbbell press; bench dips

In general, you want the first set for an exercise to be at about a level 5 intensity on a scale from 1 to 10, the second to be a 7 or 8, and the third to max out your strength. It is those last few reps that give the majority of the benefit. The rest are just warmup.

So a typical back/biceps workout would go as follows:

1 set 10-12 reps pulldowns at level 5 intensity
rest one minute
1 set 10-12 reps pulldowns at level 7-8 intensity
rest one minute
1 set 10-12 reps pulldowns at highest intensity
rest one minute
1 set 10-12 reps one-arm dumbbell row at level 5 intensity
rest one minute
1 set 10-12 reps one-arm dumbbell row at level 7-8 intensity
rest one minute
1 set 10-12 reps one-arm dumbbell row at highest intensity
rest two minutes and switch to biceps
1 set 10-12 reps regular bicep curls at level 5 intensity
rest one minute
1 set 10-12 reps regular bicep curls at level 7-8 intensityrest one minute
1 set 10-12 reps regular bicep curls at highest intensityrest one minute
1 set 10-12 reps hammer curls at level 5 intensityrest one minute
1 set 10-12 reps hammer curls at level 7-8 intensity
rest one minute
1 set 10-12 reps hammer curls at highest intensity

Enjoy!