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Weightlifting is rapidly joining wild swimming, the Beckham family feud and lurching towards fascism as a national obsession. And with good cause. Also known as resistance training, pumping iron is about more than aspiring to look like a Love Islander. It’s been shown to boost your immune system, prevent cognitive decline and even reverse the ageing process. More than your weight or BMI, increased muscle mass is considered one of the strongest indicators of longevity, with one decade-long study finding that it correlates with lower risk of death from all major causes. Unsure where to begin? We asked the experts.
Will weightlifting make me bulky?
“This is a myth that has held women back for far too long,” says Elizabeth Davies, author of the forthcoming book Training For Your Old Lady Body: A No Bullsh*t Guide to Help Women Reframe Exercise. “For the majority of women, to build lots of visible muscle requires a hugely dedicated approach to your training and nutrition. It’s not something that just happens by accident. So please don’t let that be a reason not to start. If you find that you are developing more muscle than you’d like, just end your workout when you have a bit more left in the tank.”
Are you ever too young or old to start?
“We used to believe that if children engaged in strength training it might stunt their growth, but that has been debunked,” says Davies. “We know now that if they are being supervised, then age-appropriate resistance training is safe and beneficial for children and adolescents, helping to improve their strength, build bone density, develop coordination and boost confidence.”
And weightlifting as an older person? “It is true that an older muscle isn’t as responsive to weightlifting as a younger muscle, but that doesn’t mean you don’t get quite significant benefits,” says Leigh Breen, honorary professor of translational muscle physiology at the University of Birmingham. “Studies have shown quite dramatic improvements in muscle mass and strength in older adults who do strength training, with minimal to nonexistent adverse effects, even in those aged 90 and above.”
How often should you train?
“Guidelines from the chief medical officer in the UK state that adults should aim to do at least two resistance strength training sessions a week,” says Breen. “There will be benefits if you can lift three or four times a week, but there’s a risk that you start to neglect aerobic exercise, which also has numerous health benefits.”
According to Nick Finney, a personal trainer whose clients have included Robbie Williams and J-Lo: “There’s nothing to stop you exercising every day, but you shouldn’t be lifting weights every day. You need recovery time in order for your muscles to adapt, so it becomes counterproductive to hit the same muscle groups day after day. If you love exercise, that’s not to stop you doing cardio or yoga or mobility on the days that you aren’t lifting. I always encourage people to get the most out of the minimum, and to be consistent. For most people it just wouldn’t be realistic to train for five or six days a week and keep that up for years.”
How do you know how much to lift?
“Generally, people should aim to lift between 70% and 80% of what we call their warm repetition maximum (the load that they estimate they could move only once before they fail) for about 10 reps,” says Breen. “You can test this out. If, for instance, you can lift a weight 20 times at 50% effort, then your muscle is not working hard enough to grow. In that scenario, you would aim to increase the load until you can only manage 10 to 15 reps before you feel close to failure.”
Finney says: “If you want ultimate muscle growth, I like the final set to be five reps to failure – so that the last rep is a struggle. Prior to that you might have done a warmup set of 12 reps at a lower weight, and a middle set of eight reps at a medium weight. If you can manage eight reps on your final set, then you’re going too light.”
Are reps or weight more important?
“Assuming you’d like to increase your muscle mass, what’s important is volume,” says Breen. “Your muscle doesn’t know how you place high demand on it, it just knows it’s fatigued. You can do this in one of two ways; either by lifting a heavy weight a few times or lowering the weight and doing more repetitions.”
Davies adds: “Heavier weights are more effective for building absolute strength – the most you can lift for a single rep, sometimes known as a one-rep max. So, if I was trying to build my deadlift to get as heavy as possible, I’d need to practise with fewer reps and heavy weights. Part of building strength is skill, and part of it is neurological adaptation. So you need to practise working close to your max in order for your nervous system to adapt.”
Is it good or bad if it hurts?
“There are different types of pain,” says Davies. “If you are performing a squat and your knee is hurting, I would reduce the weight, reduce your squat depth and see if that stops the pain. Often when we experience discomfort after a workout, this is delayed onset muscle soreness (Doms). This is really common when you do something novel; for instance, if you’ve ever tried a new class and been very sore the next day. It usually kicks in 24 hours after a workout, peaks on day two and is resolved after 72 hours.
“I really encourage people to stick with the same exercises for at least eight weeks, because there is something called the repeated bout effect, which means that once you start repeating the same stimulus on the body, the Doms vanishes, even when you’re increasing the weight or the reps.”
Breen concurs: “The idea that soreness is the catalyst to muscle growth is false. If you have an injury that doesn’t go away, that requires attention from a physiotherapist or other specialist.”
How do you know when to progress?
“The core principle of resistance training is progressive overload, which simply means doing more over time,” says Davies. “The body is really, really adaptable – and to keep it adapting, you have to keep gradually increasing that stimulus. The really important thing is to work with a rep range, because otherwise it’s going to be complete guesswork. For a beginner, a nice rep range could be six to 12 reps per set, using a weight that feels challenging enough for that rep range. A beginner might be increasing that load every single week, and then there’s going to be a point where things slow down a little bit. But the goal, even years into training, is always applying progressive overload.”
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Are machines better for beginners?
“Machines can absolutely be a great starting point, because they can require less skill,” says Davies. “They guide your movement, which can feel much less intimidating. That said, using free weights gets you moving in patterns which really carry over well into everyday life; for instance, a squat is very similar to getting up off the sofa, a deadlift is very similar to picking up compost at the garden centre.”
Finney is an advocate of free weights, especially for newcomers to the gym. “There’s an argument that if you’re a beginner, you should be learning the basics and nailing foundational moves, such as squats and bench presses, rather than using machines,” he says. “If you’re unsure what you’re doing, it’s worth having one or two sessions with a personal trainer to show you the basics – even if they just give you one routine for upper and one for lower body. If you can afford it, seeing someone just once a month is helpful because they can do a check‑in and prevent any bad habits.”
Should I be taking creatine?
“There aren’t many sports supplements with bona fide claims about their efficacy, but creatine is one of them,” says Breen. “It effectively makes muscles more energy efficient and gives you a small increase in muscle growth and strength. More recently, people are talking about non-muscle health benefits of creatine, with a growing body of work demonstrating that creatine supplementation may have positive effects on brain health and cognition as well. That said, I wouldn’t advise taking it if you aren’t training. Most guidance states that you should aim for about 5g a day, which can be consumed in pill form or in a powder that dissolves easily in a drink. If you have an existing kidney issue then consult your GP, because creatine supplementation can alter some of the blood markers that are associated with kidney function.”
How should I structure my workouts?
“If you’re trying to hit the guidelines of strength training twice a week, then I’d make both full-body workouts to be sure you’re targeting all the main muscle groups,” advises Breen. “Within that, you want to ensure you’re doing as many compound exercises as possible – these are exercises that work many different muscle groups at once and include pull-ups, push-ups, squats, lunges and deadlifts.”
If you’re able to work out more than twice a week, Finney suggests thinking about a split that targets different muscle groups on different days. “The stronger you get, the more recovery the body needs. If you’re squatting heavy weights, you’re going to need to take a break of a couple of days before training legs again. Some people choose to do upper and lower body workouts, and some people split it into leg days, push days (chest and triceps) and pull days (back and biceps). Because these are opposing muscle groups, doing this means you can work out on consecutive days without them affecting each other.”
What are the best moves to master?
“The most important thing is to have a balanced programme that targets all the key movement patterns,” says Davies. “So I would love to see someone training a knee-dominant movement (eg a squat or a lunge), a hip-dominant movement (eg a glute bridge or a deadlift), a vertical push movement (eg a shoulder press), a horizontal push movement (eg a bench press or a pull-up), a vertical pull movement (eg a pull-up) and a horizontal pull (eg a bent-over row). If you’re including those movements, you’ve got a nice solid starting point.”
Is there a best time of day to lift weights?
“Chronobiology is a relatively new field,” says Breen. “There’s some suggestion that the time of day when animals perform strengthening exercises can alter the effect, but human studies aren’t very comprehensive. Things like your alcohol intake and stress levels will have a bigger impact than the time of day that you go to the gym.”
Finney adds: “In general, I would say exercise in the morning, because then it’s done and there’s less chance of you cancelling because you’re tired or something has got in the way. It also positively affects your behaviour for the rest of the day – you eat better because you’re conscious that you don’t want to undo the good effort that you’ve made, and you feel the benefit of the endorphins. That said, it’s about personal preference. If you love training in the evening, do not force yourself to train in the morning. And if you’re trying to get bigger, it can help to have eaten a couple of meals in order to power your lifts.”
According to Davies: “The best time of day to weightlift is the time of day that you can weightlift. If you are a parent and the only time you can do it is at 7pm, do it at 7pm. If you are somebody with a busy career and the only time you can do it is 5am, do it at 5am. Make it fit with your lifestyle.”
What should I eat before and after lifting?
“What you eat before isn’t of huge importance,” says Breen. “You just want to make sure that you are appropriately fuelled, ideally with a wholefood meal incorporating some carbohydrates and some proteins. If you’re aiming to improve your body composition by gaining muscle and losing fat, then having a sugary sports drink before exercise isn’t going to help.
“Your muscle metabolism remains altered for a couple of days after your workout, so you have a two-day window of opportunity to capitalise on that muscle response by ensuring every meal and snack includes some protein (which contains amino acids, the building blocks of muscle). It all depends on body weight, but the general guidance is to try and consume 20-30g of protein in each meal after a workout. Having said that, the most important thing to do is lift weights – that gives you the vast majority of the response you’re looking for. The protein is the cherry on the cake.”
