In order for you to become a little stronger, be more resilient, look a little better, we offer you one of the means of achieving these completely natural aspirations. This will be weight training - one of the systems for improving the human body.

First, let's calm the most biased readers and dispel a few myths.

Myth one: doing weight training is harmful, lifting weights can damage your heart and make your blood pressure jump.

Answer: living in general is harmful. We are all mortal. If you lift excessive weights without training and without recovering, you can damage not only your heart, but also your joints, ligaments, and you can even tear your muscles. You can break through a wall with a barbell with the same success if you exercise at home. The main thing is to exercise meaningfully and competently - that's why you are reading this article.

Myth two: doing sports takes time away from everything else. In order to achieve results, you need to "swing" day and night, and I don't have time for that.

Answer: this is not true at all, to achieve serious results, it is enough to train for forty minutes - an hour three times a week. If your goal is to develop strength (and not muscle volume), then you can train even less often. Moreover, the main mistake of a novice athlete is too frequent and long training. And this is harmful.

Myth three: after stopping training, muscles turn into fat.

Answer: one person, very respected in the world of sports, when he hears this nonsense, answers: "And if you stop thinking, your brains also turn into fat?" Muscles are one tissue, fat is completely different. One cannot turn into another. It is absurd to even assume, for example, that fat can turn into bone. If you quit training, your body gradually returns to its original untrained state.

Myth four: it is very easy to increase strength and build muscle mass. It is enough to take the Schwarzenegger system (Dorian Yates, Lee Haney, Pete Vasin) and stupidly pull weights, as it is written there.

Answer: in the end you will not get anything worthwhile. The training system of each famous athlete is unique and most likely effective only for him, because it is oriented to his own physiological reactions and characteristics. That is why Schwarzenegger became Schwarzenegger, training according to his own methodology, and not copying the program of some champion who came before him. When in 1988 in Moscow a journalist, wanting to show off his sports erudition, asked Arnold: "Do you use the training principles of Weider?" Arnold answered rather sharply: "No. I have my own principles."

All of the above, however, does not mean that training with weights is wandering in a dark forest. There are immutable laws of physiology, common to most, there are techniques and recommendations tested by the experience of many. So the goal in these exercises is quite within the power of most people. To do this, you just need to be able to feel the reactions of your body, be greedy for methodical information, have the ability to critically interpret it, and of course have enough stubbornness for regular training.

So, you have decided that you want to become athletic, muscular and strong. It will not work out right away. You cannot wake up with 50 cm biceps after waving a dumbbell in the evening. Graduality is important in everything. To begin with, you need to enter a trained state of the body. We assume, dear reader, that you are from 14 to 20 years old, that you do not suffer from chronic diseases, and that your sports activity is minimal. That is, you regularly run after the bus, have wrestled with a friend a couple of times in your arms, and spend a lot of time in front of the TV or computer.

Our task is to first strengthen the body. As banal as it may seem, running will help with this. There is a good saying: "If you can run or walk - walk. If you can walk or stand - stand. If you can stand or sit - sit. If you can sit or lie - lie, and eat better."

It is best to run every other day for three to four weeks. Run out of the house about an hour after waking up. If you can't do it in the morning, you can run in the evening, but the main thing is not to rush out of bed and put on sneakers right away. By the way, about sneakers, it would be good if they had a fairly springy "step" and preferably high. If possible, try not to run along busy highways, because when running, the body works in the so-called aerobic mode, the blood is actively saturated with oxygen, and you absorb all the crap from car exhausts with your whole chest. It is best to run in the park. Do not consider yourself a sprinter or a marathon runner. You need to run at an even, not too fast pace. Focus not on the distance, but on the time - start with ten minutes. Believe me, at first and after ten minutes you will be sweating like a steelworker. Then increase the time to twenty minutes, and then to half an hour. This is quite enough. After the first three runs, do not be afraid that your leg muscles, buttocks and lower back will hurt. This is a normal reaction of untrained muscles. This "threading" of the muscles indicates that you have not been exercising. And that your muscles have slowly begun to grow.

After two weeks of pure running, we will add the first elements of athleticism to it. These are two exercises - pull-ups on the crossbar and push-ups on the parallel bars. Both are familiar to you from physical education lessons, but this does not make their value any less. Pull-ups develop the latissimus dorsi muscles (they are sometimes called "wings"), biceps of the arms, and shoulder girdle. Push-ups work the chest muscles, triceps and front parts of the deltoids (shoulders).

We think that you will find a horizontal bar or something similar. And as for the bars, if they are not in your yard or neighborhood, you can use the balcony railing and the windowsill of the balcony window. Leaning on them with your hands, you can do great push-ups, only you will have to bend your legs. Try to do this right after running. Mark the finish line of the run with a horizontal bar, and after taking a two-three minute break, start pulling up. If you can't pull yourself up, then try to grab the crossbar with your hands from below, towards you. It will be easier this way. If this doesn't help, don't hesitate, pull yourself up to half, to a third - soon you will suddenly find that you can do a full repetition. Pull yourself up to a complete "I can't". It will come quite quickly. Be careful with push-ups: a lot of load falls on the shoulder joints, so you need to push up smoothly, without jerks. Imagine that you are a part of a made mechanism that moves down without fatigue and in a measured manner. The main thing is not to push yourself. The total amount of load should not be overwhelming for you. Do not pull the rubber band. Go for a run tomorrow morning!