One of the most common questions that is asked first when starting to train in the gym is how much weight should be used in different exercises.
The truth is that coaches do not have an answer and our training does not include something like a range of weights suitable for each and every one of the exercises.
In this article we explain what you should take into account to answer this question for yourself and estimate what is the right weight to work.
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Don’t think about the right weight but about the right effort
Our body does not understand if the bar weighs 50 kilos or if it weighs 100, our body understands what those kilos mean in terms of stress.
Our body is a complex dynamic system that is constantly exposed to different stimuli and stressors. These stimuli can more or less unbalance your balance point, that is, your homeostasis.
In this way, the training stimulus must suppose a certain breaking point in our homeostasis. and the consequent recovery must ensure a correct adaptation. In other words, we end up getting stronger.
Thus, there is no predetermined weight that we must lift in each exercise since each person will find their breaking point in one place or another. What exists is a relative effort that any person must take advantage of to ensure a good stimulus and be able to progress.
The best way to self-regulate and know the appropriate level of effort
Having said all of the above, what we must do is establish adequate levels of effort when performing each series of each exercise.
The effort can be measured with different self-regulation tools, but the simplest is the repetitions in chamber or RIR for its acronym in English.
There is a consensus in the scientific community of sports sciences that establishes that an optimal effort when training or when doing a series of an exercise It is equivalent to ending it feeling that they could have done, at most, four more repetitions. Put another way, you should choose a weight that allows you to get to the last rep of the set feeling like you could have done four more at most. From there downwards, that is, it does not mean that you should always leave four repetitions in the chamber, but that that’s the least effort you can put into a set if you’re interested in getting an appropriate stimulus.
You might as well finish the sets with fewer reps in the chamber, i.e. three, two, one, or none. Or even fail, but that’s reserved for more experienced people.
Now you may be wondering how you can know what weight is right for you to feel that you have more or less repetitions left in your chamber at the end of a series. The solution is to practice and experiment. Learning to self-regulate requires experience.
The best thing you can do is to do two or three approach sets before the effective sets of an exercise, that is, if you have to do three sets of squats, for example, perform two previous series (which would be the approximation ones) in which you will increase the weight progressively to have reference values based on which to choose an appropriate weight for the effective series that you will perform next.
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