Episode 93 - Train with free weights

When looking for the best gym OKC offers you need to visit Colaw Fitness.

Welcome to the, you can do this podcast with Charles Colaw, the daily podcast that provides you with the proven path to fat loss and total body transformation. Get ready because you’re about to enter the, you can do this podcast.

Hello, this is Charles Colaw on the You can do this podcast. And today I’m going to talk about brain with free weights train with free weights. So see, the problem is, is a lot of people have never really used free weight like dumbbells and barbells and kettlebells and so on for lifting weights. They’ve maybe done some machines or they haven’t been very familiarized with freeway type motion stuff.

And so today I’m gonna talk about lifting weights with free weights and kind of like a beginner’s guide to kind of understanding what free weights are. And just some information on that. So you can get started lifting free weights and getting some better results. Whether it’s fitness or strength gain or whatever your goal is. So without further ado, what is free weights?

So free weights are basically a barbell. Dumbbells could be kettlebells, could be medicine balls could be like sandbags could be tires, but the big thing is it’s not a fixed machine or a fixed movement.

For example, let’s say you do a squat and a Smith rack. Your knees and hips are pretty much stuck with one trained range of motion. Cause there’s a guide bar that kind of guides you where to go. Or if you’re sitting on a, a chest press machine where you put the pin in on the machine and you just select the weight and then you press, there’s pretty much the fixed range path of motion.

And in the course of that, there’s pros and cons to each one of them. Some are like the machines are a little bit safer and a little bit easier to teach free weight motion. There’s some benefits for as in muscle stabilization and some more muscles can be recruited from that. And so on. So there’s some pros and cons. I’m going to talk about some of that.

So free weights are basically barbells, dumbbells, kettlebells, medicine, balls, sandbags tires, pretty much anything that you can kind of lift up and put down. And there’s kind of an endless range of motion. It’s not a fixed machine. It’s not a fixed machine with a guide rod or a fixed path to work at it. So why lift free weights is the next question? Why lift free weights?

Well, the benefit to free weights is there is an endless range of motion. There’s really no fixed rate of type of motion. It really benefits real life exercises or real life in general. So it’s very functional and it activates more muscle stabilizers in your body to hold the weight at the, at the, for example, like if you’re doing a chest press, the machine actually holds you in proper alignment.

If not, you press really hard, you still have to control that movement up or down inside the side. Where that guide path on a machine is just fixed. And so there’s benefits to stabilizers and so on. Another benefit to free weights is that it lowers the risks of muscular imbalances. If you’re pressing a machine like guess like press, you could technically be pressing more with one leg than the other leg.

Or you could be pressing with with a freeway, basically a lot of times, did you have to kind of stabilize that a whole lot more because there’s no fixed path on the leg press, the machine’s not gonna flip over on itself. So you could technically be pressing all your weight with one leg, or if you’re squatting, you push all your weight, you’re going to fall over to the side.

Yeah. I mean, there is a point where you have to balance, you have to stabilize it, right. Mix a lot of real natural motions in real life. So there’s some more benefits too. Next step is what I, I like what is your freeway plan or how do you know what to do for your freeway plan or, or so on? So I want to kind of give you some guidance on knowing what your freeway plan needs to be.

How often to lift is a very common question. And I recommend lifting weights with free weights anywhere from three to six times a week. Kind of depends on how often in what your goals are. And so I like to recommend at least three times a week to do your weightlifting and focus on certain types of muscle groups. And I’ll talk about that here minute.

You can also do that and then make sure you arrest just enough. You can actually hit that same muscle group sometimes again in that week and still have recovered and get great benefits. So if your goal is to gain strength or to get fit, that kind of thing you can actually sometimes hit a muscle group more than just one time a week. What’s your goal?

That’s another good question. What is your goal? Most people want to gain strength. I’m sorry. Some people want to just gain strength. They just want to get stronger. Some people are really doing it just for specifically sport performance. Some people want to do a weightlifting just cause it tones their body up and it looks better.

So they lose fat and they get more solid and they get some muscle tone to look or they actually just want to build a lot of muscle and bodybuilder become a figure fitness competitor, or they just want to look good at the beach or whatever, but they just want to look better and look more muscular or more fit.

And tighter town girls won’t look smaller and smaller, but more solid. And the muscle underneath that, once you lose the fat, having a tone physique, the skin hangs on that looks more athletic is always more appealing or a combo of all that could be strengthened. Crease sport performance could be looking better, a combo granted with weight training.

You’re going to get some of all of those effects. And which brings me to the next thing. How often will you lift a week? And I, this is what I said earlier, anywhere from three times a week to six times a week is lifting gentle. You only hit that muscle group up to twice a week. At the most. I like to work out daily. I, I have like a four day split.

So I always have at least three days in between each muscle group that kind of gives me the ability. Cause I just like going to the best gym OKC. It’s a good mental trigger for me. Wake up get do my little morning routine, grab my workout and get back plan my day, make sure I’m ready to execute on everything. So it’s a part of my daily routine.

That’s ingrained in my life. And so for me, I like to work out daily. It gets my brain stimulated, serotonin and dopamine are pleasure centers in the brain and so on. And for me, I use a combination of free weights and machines. Why just because it’s convenient. A lot of times I’m traveling or I’m at different locations. And I just try to hit certain muscle groups and I’m not always as all the free weights available.

Not always is all of the machines available. So I just kind of replace exercises with that, whatever that most equipment I’m training. So if I do three to four exercises on a certain muscle group. It may be a machine and maybe free weights, maybe cables. So there’s a lot of different options that you can use, but I use a combination of all of them.

Okay. how much time should you do free, like free weights? As far as weight, weight training it can be up to really, the biggest thing is, is it can be as short as 30 minutes. It could be as up to a full hour. I know powerlifters, you take a long time. They can be like two hours and really trying to max out weights and take lots of rest and stuff like that.

So most, most of the time it’s going to be around 45 minutes for most people’s workout routine. If they really just go in there and hit their workouts and get a great workout and get out. Other than that, you’re generally talking a lot or taking them way more breaks and you really need I suggest most people starting off at the beginners doing about 30 minutes and hit your muscle groups and get in and get out that way.

It’s not like an overdoing. It you’re not straining yourself. And you also aren’t getting burnt out. A lot of times, people are hard starters in fitness, fitness, and they’re bad finishers. So so anywhere from 30 minutes to one hour is what I recommend for people. And then how sorry. The next question is sample workout, like what does the sample workout?

So that way you can understand what to do. A really simple split is an upper lower split. This is where you take, you know, like six or seven exercises that are combination exercises for your upper body. And then, you know, a four to six exercises for your lower body. And one day you do upper and then one day you lower and then you can rotate that or repeat that.

Or if you just want to hit that once a week, they’d only be twice a week that you would be working out, but I’m an upper lower split has an example of, of what a lot of people do or that you can do. We have an upper lower split in the [inaudible]. We have a version of that on the C a 30 book. It’s a great combination just to come in and hit everybody exercises.

The next day you do lower bar exercises. Most of the time beginners aren’t really just totally destroying themselves cause they just don’t know how push their body that hard yet. So you have an upper and a lower split and then you repeat it over and over. And I think taking days off when you feel like your body’s just taxed is fine.

I wouldn’t take more than about two days off a week, if you really want to see changes quickly. Next step is you could do a three day split where you do a push day. It’s the pushing from the body with the upper body pulling toward the body is the second day for the upper body. And then a leg complex it’s push pull leg. So to opposition of pushing from the body.

So it’s like chest shoulders and so on. And that type of pushing away one day pulling to the, to the body the next day. And then the third day would be like a leg day or a leg routine. That would be another example split. And the types of workouts that you do on a lot of these is like dumbbell chest press on, I say, push debut, like dumbbell incline.

Chest, press dumbbell, flat press for the dumb for the Dumbo flat chest press dumbbell decline chest press. And you could also do that all in barbells. If you want to, it could be barbell incline, chest press. So those are all pushing from the body on an incline flat decline. You can also do the shoulder press. Those are all pressing type motions away from the body.

For example, like on day two, it’d be pulling, it could be like a lap pull down in front of your head, a lat pull down, or I’ve been over row with a bar or it could be a dead lift. The candidate is simulating three different pulling towards your body exercises. For, for example, pull workout.

So so it could be, for example, sample workouts, it could be an upper lower split upper body one day Lord by the next day it could be a three day split. It could be pushed a pull day leg day, or it could be a a four day split that’s I do a lot of four day splits. It’d be like breaking it down a little bit more and that’s like chest and triceps back and biceps, shoulders and traps, and then quads.

Hams and calves, and then abs are done pretty much every other day as well. So that’s kinda what I do. I do a four day split. So every four, sorry, every fourth day Justin tries back into by shoulders traps, quads, hams cast. Every fourth day going into the fifth day, I’m back into the, my, my same workout routine again. So four day split.

So thinking your weights, how do you pick your weights? How much weight to use and so on? Well, if you’re trying to just gain strength, not put on a lot of muscle mass or to gain muscle more, more muscle mass to the body if you’re just focused on strength, six reps or less and you can do anywhere from two to six sets.
So six reps or less two to six sets if you want to do muscle gain.

And you’re really trying to hypertrophy the muscle, you need to get the microfiber tear and a good volume to it. So that’s going to be more like eight to 12 repetitions. Not quite as long rests. It’s more like three to six sets. So for muscle gain eight to 12 reps, if you’re trying to really try to build like a lot of endurance in the body, not a lot of muscle size and not a lot of strength or muscular endurance.

If you’re a triathlon or a runner, or you’re just wanting somebody to get a little bit of toning and more endurance, 12 reps or more is a great workout. Maybe just two to three sets is, is very common for muscular endurance training. And then really what you have to figure out is what is the best workout for you?

What is your goal? Most of the time when I train clients, they’ll say combination one, I want to lose body fat. Basically I want to lose weight. And what that means is not just weight. They want to lose body fat, that ooey gooey, soft squishy stuff. I don’t know if I’ve ever trained somebody. Oh, well, maybe some young guys that are really, really lean, but hardly, rarely ever do you train a client?

And they say that they don’t want to lose some sort of body fat. So number one is body fat loss. Number two is muscle gain or toning up of the muscle of serotonin. So what I like to do is have a combination of a little bit more of a muscle gain, muscular endurance combination. Cause most times strength go loop goes along with that.

Just in naturally a lot of these all kind of if you’re even training for strength, sometimes you will actually, you’re going to get some more muscular endurance in the, in the process. So I focus a lot of clients on anywhere from eight to 15 repetitions. And this is where I’m going to talk about the, the question is how to find the best way to use.

How do you know how much weight to use on a dumbbell or a barbell? Well, the best thing for me is when D when a client really knows what they’re doing the right form, they need to fail somewhere between eight reps and about 15 reps. And so if you’re six and is going up really slow seven really, really slow, a really, really slow, you’re barely getting it.

And then you get nine really barely really. Then maybe, maybe squeezing half off of 10, that’s getting right in there where you’re getting a good muscle gain. You’re going to get enough volume for a good pump that gets the blood into the muscle to heal and repair and grow hypertrophy is if you get to like 14, 15 and 16, 17, it’s still too light.

You know, that’s where it’s so light. It’s not really giving it’s just mainly more muscle endurance, but it’s really not giving a good muscle gain. So focusing on weights for most clients, anywhere from between eight repetitions to where you fail to 15 repetitions. So just eight to 15 repetitions, you should give max effort and then the weight will not continue to move while you’re still retaining good form.

That’s what I recommend for most general fitness. So also guys that is, what I’m talking about is, is, is, is working out with free weights. And this is the article is actually called training with free weights. So this is more like beginner style, just to kind of inform you on a lot of this reminders real quick. Remember if you want to be successful in weight training or even weight loss or any type of fitness.

Remembering that 70 to 80% of success with getting stronger and leaner is going to be a lot of what you do in the kitchen. So apex 24 hour fitness and ASM Cooper Institute. I have a lot of different certifications in the past and trained over 5,000 clients in my past, you have to be consistently following a good nutritional routine. So reminding you 70 to 80% of results is the food.

So make sure you pick up one of our [inaudible] books. It talks a lot about the right foods to be eating, to build muscle and lose fat. Also best results are when people are consistent. So you can’t just do it one week and skip you. Can’t do it two days and then skip for five days. So best results are always when you’re consistent.

So you need to pick your three-day workout or your six day workout and just stick to it no more, no less than what your written plan says. And, and then encouraging people to keep their workouts when they first start off, keep it very, very simple and keep it the same routine is really the most important thing than just randomness.
At this point, when you first start off in fitness, keep it simple, keep it the same.

Really keep your intensity high, keep your diet really spot on. That’s the key to success. So if you want something that gives you complete mind, freedom on that. I have a book for you. It’s $10 at every one of our Colaw fitness clubs, or you can go to Colaw fitness.com and look up our CF30 book under some of our products that we sell, but it’s called the C F 30 books.

That’s Colaw fitness, the day books CF-30] book pick up the [inaudible] book, follow it exactly like it says no more, no less for 30 days. Let me know how you do anyways. Have tons of people there. You’re doing great on that program. Hundreds, thousands of clients I’ve had followed very similar principles to that had great success.

So that is the, the, the, the, the section I was talking about today on free weights. Some action steps for you. If you haven’t joined Colaw fitness, it’s only $1 down and as low as $5 a month for 24 hour use of fitness, tanning massage, free trainer instruction, free nutrition instruction. And you could bring a friend for free at Colaw fitness.

You can basically two people can work out. Yeah, tan and massage for only $5. That is our best option, probably the best option I’ve ever seen in the world. Our clubs are beautiful and gorgeous. We’ve got free trainer classes and orientations. I encourage you to go to those free trainer classes and orientations.

They’re going to teach you a lot about working out with weights and some free weights so that we kind of have somebody teach you some free weights. And I encourage you to jump into the best gym OKC classes. [inaudible]

Classes to free class. I encourage you to buy the book, do the class, follow the book that the class is free. The book is like $10. It’s a very simple to follow food journal, food plan, workout plan, just follow, like it says no more, no more, no less than what the book says. And you’ll do just great far as getting in shape.

Inside that book, I provide a lot of different daily words of encouragement for mental health and motivation. I encourage you to go to Google type in Colaw fitness reviews, go to Google type in Colaw fitness reviews, read our reviews. Learn a little bit about us. That cause what I want to do is motivate you so that my highest desire is your greatest gain.

I want you to get motivated into fitness, be consistent and fitness. Do that CF30 book and start calling a great plan, lose some weight, get in shape. I also encourage you go to YouTube type in Cola, fitness reviews, and YouTube go to YouTube type in Colaw fitness reviews, watch hundreds and hundreds.

If not thousands of clients that have lost weight, gotten a lot better shape at Colaw fitness, following these plans or similar plans, if not these exact plans. So thanks for listening to the podcast today. Today, we talked about training with free weights. You guys have a blessed day. Talk to you soon. Bye bye and see you soon at the best gym OKC has to offer.