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Old Sat, Oct-30-04, 07:56
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diemde diemde is offline
Posts: 7,547
 
Plan: lower carb
Stats: 333/199.8/172 Female 5'8"
BF:??/39.0/25
Progress: 83%
Location: Central Ohio
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I agree. Definitely move the cardio to after the lifting. When you do cardio first you wear your muscles out and they can't lift as strong. If you need to do a bit of warm up before lifting, then keep it to 3-4 minutes. Really!

Your exercise sessions shouldn't be more than an hour.

Rather than just keeping to 1 set and upping the weight, you are better off going to 3 sets. Your first set damages a group of muscle fibers. Then when you wait 30-60 seconds or so and do another set of the same exercise, it damages different fibers. You can think of it as reaching deeper into the muscle. So you are working more sets of fibers doing 3 sets rather than just continually stressing the 1 set of fibers. Also the time you wait in between sets can make a difference, too. If you wait a long time, then you are still just damaging that first group of fibers. If you wait a short time, then you are damaging the 2nd set of fibers.

There are different theories about how many reps to do. If you are going for true strength, then you want to keep your reps down to 6-8, not 12. Work up to 3 sets of 8, then increase the weight and do 3 sets of 6. Then work your way back up to 3 sets of 8 at that new weight.

Keep up the great work! I have been a bit negligent on my workouts lately because of my work schedule, but I'm getting back into them this week.
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