What weight should beginners use for training?

Author: Timko Ilya - master of the whole project and fitness trainer.
2014-04-17

No one can answer this question for you. Only two people in the world can answer it:

1. Your coach, who trains you personally.

2. Yourself.

Clearly, since you are asking this question, you do not have a coach. Therefore, only you can determine the appropriate weight for any exercise through trial and error. No one can answer this question for you from a distance. It's unrealistic. Even if you take beginners of the same sex, weight, and age, their strength performance can differ by 2 to 3 times.

So how can you determine the right weight for yourself?

Now this is a more sensible question.

1. Obviously, the weight should be such that you can perform the required number of repetitions in a given exercise.

2. You should perform that number of repetitions with difficulty, meaning the last few repetitions should be challenging for you.

3. However, you should still have a reserve for another 2 to 4 repetitions. Beginners do not need to perform "to failure" in their early training. It’s unnecessary and even dangerous. This only applies to beginners.

4. You should also be able to achieve the required number of repetitions in all working sets. Obviously, if you manage to do so, you have a reserve and have fulfilled point 3.

By using these four principles, you can fairly quickly determine the right weight for yourself.

But what if I don’t know how many repetitions I need to do?

In general, the number of repetitions is indicated in all programs on this site. However, since you are asking this question, two things are obvious:

1. The program wasn’t taken from this site.
2. The program does not specify the number of repetitions.

In that case, it’s much more complicated. No one can say for certain how many repetitions you should do. I can only say that for a beginner, the number of repetitions should be:

• at least 8;
• no more than 20.

As you can see, the range is quite large. But it’s impossible to be more precise. If this answer does not satisfy you, then look for a program that specifies the number of repetitions.

Conclusion

Asking online what weights you should use in your training is absolutely pointless!