How heavy should I be lifting?

It’s a very common question I get, especially with new clients, about how much they “should be” lifting. So let’s talk about it!

Before even trying to figure out how much weight you can lift for any of the big movements (i.e squat, deadlift, bench press and overhead press), you need to make sure you know how to do all the movements with as good form as possible, either without any weight or just very light weights.

Because if you can’t do the movements properly without any weights, how can you expect to do it with weight (and without any injuries!)

A common thing I ask clients to do is practice the movements at home with a broomstick, mop handle or any other very light stick-like-object that can resemble a barbell.

There are a few great reasons for doing this:

1 – You can practice this at home without anyone else around so you’ll be less nervous when you try it with weight at the gym

2 – You can more easily film yourself practicing it so you can look back on your form (or send it to me to look at!)

Once you feel confident about your form, we can move up to the gym barbells! And we have more options for these:

1 – Use our gym studio bars with some weights on. Our PureGym studio bars weigh only 2kg with slide-on plates ranging from 1.25kg-5kg so you can more easily put together a lighter weight to keep practicing with

2 – Small Olympic barbell. The shorter barbell weighs 15kg so is another lighter option (and is more often free even on a busy gym evening)

3 – Bigger Olympic barbell. These are the more common ones you see around the main weights area of the gym and weigh 20kg

Your first workout shouldn’t be heavier than the actual bar itself (unless you’re practicing using the studio bars). And do not be discouraged if this is still too heavy, especially for upper body movements like bench press or overhead shoulder press. When I (and most other women) start out, I couldn’t bench press or OH press a big empty barbell!

The best thing here it to either keep practicing with a loaded studio bar or the smaller Olympic barbell, or to practice with dumbbells to build up the strength until you can graduate onto the bigger Olympic barbell

On the opposite end of the spectrum, if even the big bar seems really light, I’d still recommend finishing your first full workouts using ‘just’ the bar. Keep the focus on your form and mobility and leave the ego in the gym pods.

Whilst it is really fun and encouraging to be able to add more weight, I’d rather you make sure your form is spot-on with just the bar weight rather than learning slightly wrong form but with heavier weights as this is then harder to correct later on.

You can carry on using ‘just’ the bar for as long as you want! You pay exactly the same membership as everyone else there so are just as allowed to use the equipment as them!

Remember that this is a marathon, not a sprint! You don’t want to lift too heavy for your current skill and strength level, injure yourself and then risk not being able to train at all for weeks or months! Form > weight!

Adding some weight to the bar…

When you’re ready, you can start adding some more weight to the bar. The best options for this (which depends on the exercise and how heavy the empty bar felt) is the 1.25kg, 2.5kg or 5kg plates.

Try your next set (or even just a few reps) with this weight to see how it feels. If you’re able to complete these reps with good form and with a consistent speed that it takes to complete each rep, you can continue adding a little bit more weight each time until you find your sweet spot.

The weight you get up to just before your form starts to break down or the reps start getting really slow is a good guide to base your next workout off.

During this process of testing out heavier weights for the first time, never be afraid to ask for a spotter (someone who stands close to take the barbell off you if you can’t get it up) or use the safety bars on the racks.

Remember- marathon not a sprint!!!

You’ll likely see other people around the gym lifting some very heavy weights but I can guarantee these people would have been training for years to get to that level, and that there’s about a 0% chance that this is also their first day at the gym!

After the first few workouts…

Once you find your starting weight, we want to start using ‘progressive overload’ which basically means gradually increasing the stress on our bodies during training.

The most common way of doing this is to add more weight (But you can also add another set, add more reps per set, add a pause to the movement, use less rest periods between sets or slow the movement down a lot)

For beginner lifters, increasing the weight can often happen in every workout as the body can adapt pretty quickly to this added stress when you first start out.

So how much should you add when you’re ready to increase your workouts? It depends on how difficult your sets were last time. This is when tracking your workouts comes in handy- not only should you track the weight, sets and reps you lifted, but also how hard it felt per set. You can jot down if you went to failure, if you noticed your form breaking down, and your general Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) so you can base your next workout of that.

If all the sets felt light, you had good form and it felt easy, you can likely try adding more weight (or another form of progressive overload as stated above)

The best thing you can do is slowly add weight and progress consistently rather than progress very quickly but then plateau.

To summarise:

- The strongest lifters still warm up with ‘just’ the bar (myself included!)

- The strongest lifters focus on themselves and don’t care about how much the person next to them is lifting

- The strongest lifters take time to work on their form first before adding more weight

- The strongest lifters all started off as beginners at some stage as well!

So, start slow and add weight slowly. Adding a tiny bit of weights to your lifts every couple of weeks can add up very quickly!

And, as always, try to have fun with it!!