With the new remodeling at Blaine High School, many students are interested in weight lifting but have no idea where to start or access the new weight room.

Now you can workout every day while going to school. Take the Strength and Conditioning class. This class improves your whole-body strength and helps with conditioning. The class starts with basic free weight exercises like the Back squat and Bench press and progressively moves into harder lifts like a clean. This class will teach you the fundamentals of lifting, teaching you different lifting movements like an isometric lift and ecocentric lift.

Now while weight lifting is a straightforward concept there are some things to remember. First, is form over weight. While it might be tempting to load up on weight good form is more important. Bad form can lead to injuries, muscle strain, bruises, and these injuries can cause you to be out of the gym and possibly cause permanent damage to your body. Also, another thing to note is to warm up before working. Warming up will help increase blood flow to your muscles and will help decrease the chance of injury and fatigue.

Now that you are starting to workout find what motivates you to workout. A good motivator is why did you want to start working out in the first place, did you want to lose weight, gain muscle, self-improvement? Or just look good. Find what motivates you, and use it as much as possible.

Another thing to think about is equipment and supplements. There are many pieces of equipment you can use during lifting like belts and wrist straps that can help correct form and stabilize the pressure in your body, but they are not required and help in certain lifts but are completely useless in others. Another thing to consider about equipment is that it might make you overthink how much weight you can lift best explained by Blaine high school Strength and conditioning teacher Mr. Prockosch “Wearing a belt can make you overestimate yourself and make you want to lift more than you already can, which is why it’s important to know your limit and not put all of your faith in your equipment.”

And then there are supplements, Supplements aren’t just one thing but many different products that all have one thing in common they all help you gain muscle. Many people use creatine and protein powders which help promote muscle gain in your body and then there is pre-workout which can be many different things like black coffee to C4. Pre-workout is used to boost endurance and help focus which helps boost performance, but they are not required for weight lifting and we don’t recommend pre-workouts and supplements to novice lifters. The reason why is that as long as you eat clean and get enough rest you will be perfectly energized and when you get more experience then slowly ease into supplements.

It’s a good idea to slowly incorporate weight lifting into your life. It’s not healthy for novices to workout every day. lifting is also partly mentally thinking so listen to your body and take a break if need be. For any questions on weight lifting feel free to email Mr. Prokosch at [email protected].