Most of my friends ask me about coaching the same way they would another friend about their normal job.  "How's coaching going" and the response they expect is "good."  The questions everyone seems to turn to me for is about weight lifting and weight loss.

Rather than recite the same lines different ways to different people I want to get the basics on lifting.  I've read many books and probably over a thousand blog posts on weight lifting and here are the general rules for weight lifting.

Weight	Volume	Results
Medium	High	Hypertrophy (muscle gain)
Medium to High	Medium to High	Speed (also focuses on bar speed)
High	Low	Strength gain (slow bar)

You're goal should match above.  If you want to gain size and are doing 5 sets of 1 rep on squats, don't be surprised you aren't gain any inches on your legs.  Another note with hypertrophy, you need to eat.  Salad eaters don't walk around with massive quads.  Guys with those quads pounded food before cutting their fat percentage down.

Which brings up the next chart

Running	Mass loss (fat and muscle)
Weight Lifting	Muscle Gain
Diet	Fat loss

Everyone turns to running for fat loss but it's not true.  Your body adapts to whatever stimuli you throw at it.  If you have it run 5 miles a day it's going to shed  muscle and fat to make that easier. Not because of the myth that muscle weighs more but because large muscles are hard to lug around, same with heavy amounts of fat.  The other myth is that weight lifting puts weight on you.  Sprinters and jumpers both lift alot and can put up good numbers but neither is good if they look like a shot putter.  If you're only goal is fat loss then all you need to do is change your diet. 


You'll find a million work outs and people's different opinions on what you have to do along with a ton of other information.  I won't claim that all the information ends here but this is the skeleton of just about every good program.  If it goes against this they are guessing, lying or got their results from new lifters.

Conditioning weight lifting