Ask an Expert: Suggestions for starting strength training

Exercise and Fitness

Suggestions for starting strength training
09/12/2006

Question:

I`m a 26 year old female who needs to lose about 70 pounds to reach a healthy weight. I have lost 15 pounds by eating right and doing a lot of walking on the treadmill in my home. I am interested in starting some sort of strength training routine to become more toned and burn more fat. I`ve never done anything like this before and don`t know where to begin. I can`t afford a gym or overly expensive equipment. What do you suggest?

Answer:

Try looking around for household items that you can use as hand held weights (i.e. cans of soup, cans of fruit, etc.). You can use these for a number of different exercises such as biceps curls, shoulder raises, overhead triceps extension, triceps kick-backs, etc. Just look up dumbbell exercises on the internet and you can use the soup or whatever you have in the place of dumbbells. You can also begin to do a number of body weight exercises like standing squats, lunges, pushups, crunches, etc.

Lastly, ACSM guidelines suggest that you perform 8-12 repetitions of each exercise for 2-3 days per week or every other day.

Hope this helps and good luck.

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Response by:

Jayme Johnson, MS
Program Manager
Fitness Center at CARE\Crawley
University of Cincinnati