Laying the Groundwork: Some Fitness and Weightlifting Basics

By Frank Fire Jr.

Welcome to the Fire Engineering monthly firefighter fitness column. I hope to use this space to educate and inform you about weightlifting, various aerobic workouts, nutrition, and injury prevention. In the first few installments, I would like to go over some basics just to make sure everyone reading has the same basic knowledge set. Eventually I hope to include some specific workout plans and advice.

Home gym vs. Health Club

This is probably one of the more important and difficult decisions you will have to make. There are pros and cons to each choice. The best way to make a decision is to be brutally honest with yourself. Home gyms are certainly convenient, but the initial expense can be considerable. Health clubs and commercial gyms should have all the equipment you will ever need, but the hours may not be ideal for your schedule, and there is always the travel time to think about.

If you decide to go with a home gym, you need enough space for all the equipment you intend to buy. Plus the obvious cost of whatever equipment you decide you need. There are any number of multi-station contraptions that will address the vast majority of exercises you want to do, but you could spend several thousand dollars for a nice one. You could also probably get by with a bench, squat rack, Olympic bar and a few hundred pounds of plates. It depends on your budget and what you are realistically going to get done.

Working out at home can make it tougher to have a spotter handy (needed for bench pressing and squatting, among others) whereas you can almost always find someone at a gym to give you a hand. Motivation is another factor, if you’re alone, you need to be highly motivated. In most gyms, if you are lacking in motivation, you can usually find a friend or partner to give you the kick in the butt you might need.

Free Weights vs. Machines

In almost every instance, free weights are a better option than machines. Of course, there are some exceptions; you may need to use a specific machine for injury rehabilitation, or due to safety concerns (lack of a spotter) you may choose to use a bench press machine instead of a bar and bench.

Understand that machines aren’t bad, far from it. It’s just that you can expect better results, as a general rule, by using barbells and dumbbells than with most machines.

Weights are lifted in a much more natural manner when using bars and dumbbells. Machines lock you into a set pattern or groove, which is seldom ideal, since any number of different sized people will be using them. You also don’t need to control the weight nearly as much when using a machine, and there are many functional benefits to be gained by “controlling” the weights.

How much protein do I need?

Typically, you can easily get all the protein you need from a good diet, especially if you concentrate on eating extra fish, chicken, and some lean red meat. Milk and eggs are also fantastic sources of inexpensive complete protein.

But you should think twice before going overboard on protein. The generally accepted maximum percentage of your caloric intake of protein should be no more than 30 percent. More than this amount in your diet could cause a buildup of ketones, which are toxic. Your kidneys will be forced to work overtime to rid the body of them, possibly resulting in dehydration.

As a general rule, you should never need to consume more than one gram of protein per pound of bodyweight a day. This is a maximum for highly trained athletes in an intense training cycle; chances are you’ll get by just fine with less.

The bottom line is, you just can’t force-feed protein into your muscles.

Core (multi-joint or compound) exercises are more effective than isolation exercises

Another way to think of this is “how much weight can I use performing the exercise?” As an example, the squat and leg extension both work the thighs, but you are able to use several times more weight doing squats than leg extensions (which are a very poor exercise all around) making the muscular stimulus vastly greater while doing squats. Squats are one of the very best exercises you can do for overall body power, leg extensions should almost never be done, except perhaps in a rehabilitation setting.

For the overwhelming majority of people, the best weightlifting exercises are; the squat, deadlift, bench press, overhead (shoulder press), and pull up (or bent over row / seated row). These exercises work the entire body, are all multi-joint compound exercises, and can be done with a fairly small amount of equipment.

These exercises should generally also be performed first in whatever workout you have planned that day. Large muscle groups need to be trained before smaller muscle groups.

Ignore the “Muscle Mags”

If you pay any attention to the popular bodybuilding/fitness periodicals, you no doubt noticed that most of them are nothing more than catalogs for supplements and equipment. Always be very skeptical of advice given by someone with something to sell! If even a small percentage of the supplements promoted by most muscle magazines did what they were advertised to do, everyone would be able to squat 750 lbs. and have 3 percent bodyfat.

Do something—Anything!

You have already made the decision to exercise, don’t get too hung up on “how much, how long, how often”. As a beginner, nearly anything you do will result in an improvement in your fitness level. However, the stronger and more experienced you become, the more difficult consistent improvement becomes.

When you plateau, change!

Everyone reaches a point where they no longer make the gains in fitness or strength they would like (if this weren’t the case, the world record for bench press would be several thousand pounds, and going up all the time!) The most important thing you can do when this happens to you is to change your workouts.

Change can involve increasing the total workload by increasing weight, increasing sets or reps, increasing the exercises—or decreasing the workload (you may have hit a plateau because of overtraining instead of undertraining).

The amount of rest taken between sets can be adjusted, the tempo of every lift could be changed, the exercises used for each body part can be changed, the order of the exercises could be rearranged. The point is, some sort of change must be implemented, and the possible changes are nearly infinite.

Everyone is different—Find out what works best for you

The principles and workouts we will present in this column are to be used as guidelines only. Although the basics are pretty much the same for everyone, different types of stimulus will affect people differently. Always give a new exercise routine several weeks to see what effect it has on your strength and fitness level.

As a beginner, there’s nothing wrong with getting ideas from other lifters and trying some new workouts suggested by people with more experience, but if you find something that works for you, ignore any “experts” who may tell you that you are doing everything all wrong.

What are “reps” and “sets”?

A “rep” is just short for repetition. And a set is a group of repetitions. If a workout calls for three sets of five reps, you will do five reps, rest for a few minutes, do five more reps, rest again, then the final five.

Reps and sets are some of the most easily and popularly adjusted variables involved in every workout. Typically, the lower number of reps (down to two or three) you perform per set will tend to increase strength more than hypertrophy (size). Higher reps (eight to 12) are used by people more interested in bodybuilding, because they emphasize size slightly more than strength.

How much weight should I use?

The short answer to this question is “as much as you can.” The more practical answer is that you need to find a weight that you can use for the lower recommended number of reps, and as soon as you are able to do the higher number, increase the weight five or 10 pounds.

For example, your workout may call for five to seven reps of the bench press with 200 lbs. This means that you should be able to do five reps with good form and unable to perform a sixth rep, ensuring that you are working hard enough. You are, of course, trying to do more, and when you are actually able to get seven good reps (this could take a few workouts or even a few weeks or months if you are fairly advanced), then it’s time to add weight again so that you can only do about five reps safely and correctly, and get stronger still.

Think of the weights that you use as a tool to reach your goals, don’t use the amount of weight as a goal in itself. This applies as long as you aren’t a competitive weightlifter or powerlifter, in which case you really wouldn’t need advice geared toward beginning and intermediate exercisers. The new guys in the gym who use more weight then they’re ready to lift to impress everyone look ridiculous; the newcomers who use the proper amount of weight (or even less) and use proper form gain the respect of the experienced lifters.

It is the amount of hard work you do that increases strength, not necessarily the amount of weight (especially if your form suffers by trying to use more weight than you should). It is possible to get great gains using less weight than your absolute maximum.

For example, if you can bench press 300 lbs., you can maintain or even increase your strength level if you only have access to a 200-lb. set of weights. If you keep the rest time between sets very low, or concentrate on a very slow tempo of lifting (perhaps take two seconds to raise the weight, and four seconds to lower it), you can stimulate the chest, shoulders, and triceps enough to still make significant gains, even though you aren’t using as much total weight as you can.

Work hard and always try to improve

Think of it as trying to set a record every workout. The record could be total amount of weight lifted, number of sets, number of reps, etc. The only way you’re going to get in better shape, stronger, and more fit, is to work hard. For physiological reasons, the last rep or two of a set (the toughest ones) are by far the most productive. If you just go through the motions, you won’t improve at all.

One of my favorite quotes is “if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always be where you’ve always been.” You won’t necessarily be able to make measurable improvement every workout, but the important thing is to try to improve.

In future columns all the above exercises (and hundreds more) will be explained and analyzed. The variety of combinations of exercises, rep and set numbers, order of exercise performance, tempo of each lift, rest between sets, and much more can all be manipulated in order to stimulate muscular growth—we will address all of these variables as well.

Sample beginner’s workout:

Resistance training has been shown in study after study to be the most effective method for developing muscular strength, and it is currently prescribed by many major health organizations for improving health and fitness. Weight lifting, especially when incorporated into a comprehensive fitness program, reduces the risk factors associated with heart disease, non–insulin-dependent diabetes and colon cancer; prevents osteoporosis; assists with weight loss and maintenance of healthy bodyweight; improves balance and preserves functional capacity.

Frank Fire Jr. is a 19-year veteran of the Cuyahoga Falls (OH) Fire Department. He spent two years service with the Canton (OH) Fire Department. He is certified by the National Strength and Conditioning Association as a personal trainer and is his department’s certified fitness coordinator. He has been a competitive powerlifter for more than 20 years and has competed in the Firefighter Combat Challenge nearly 50 times, with a best finish of seventh at the 2001 World Championships in the over-40 division. He has also created a set of Strength and Stamina videos produced by Fire Engineering.