The first time I went to a gym to work out was seventeen years ago. I remember the muscle soreness that kicked in a couple days later, too. My interest in weight training is an adult interest; I was never too interested in performance while I was in school.

A coworker dragged me along, and he pushed me to work as hard as possible. He made fun of the people that lifted low weights, obviously not putting much effort into their workouts. I still see that pattern today in many of the people that I see at the gym. They treat weightlifting like an annoyance; like their goal is to get the exercise over as quickly and easily as possible.

But the point of weight lifting isn’t to move your arms. Why even bother using weights? Why not just flail your arms for a few seconds and call it done? If you aren’t going to try, then why do it? I guess there’s a few people that get pulled to the gym by friends, family, and ill-conceived group training sessions. (It’s tough to get a real personal trainer to let you off easy.)

Muscleheads say “no pain, no gain,” but I don’t think pain itself is the market of correctness. If anything, it’s an incidental marker. And I think that motto encourages weightlifters to push themselves in the wrong way. But I’m a believer in high-intensity training, and HIT means heavy exertion and that usually means pain.

The wrong way to lift weights is to use low weights, lots of reps, quick movements, and to throw your whole body into a movement. The right way is to use high weights (or no weights at all… more on that later), a moderate or small number of reps, slow movements, and … um, better movement.

High weights, low weights, or no weights? “No weights” means doing body-weight exercises. This actually winds up being high weights. Bench-pressing, squatting, clearing, etc your own body weight is fairly high on the performance scale. Low weights don’t stress your musculature enough to cause a response. That’s the whole point to weightlifting: to stress your body enough so that it responds. If you give it a small stress, you’ll get a small response. The major idea behind high-intensity training is that it is the intensity of training that matters, not the duration. Push big weights, and your body will be forced to respond.

My life is fucking sedentary. I sit at a desk for eight hours a day; plus time I spend at home and on the weekends coding, writing, and surfing. Plus couch time, drive time, and reading. If I’m not stressing my muscles hard during a workout, my body quickly realizes that it’s got enough muscle already.

If you don’t want your body to respond — if you’re not going to use your time at the gym to maximize the response you get — then why are you going to the gym? You’re already there; a bit more effort and you’ll get tons more results.

How many reps? This is mostly a measure of how heavy a weight you use. You should be doing reps until your muscles quit; this is a “one set to failure” training protocol (google it!). Lots of reps means you chose a weight that you can push easily. You can train to failure, but now you’ve got a choice: how much time do you want to spend in the gym? Studies have shown that high intensity exercise engages not just anaerobic but also aerobic systems. Use a weight heavy enough that you can only do a few reps, and you’ll get your heartrate up. Plus, the same results for much less time in the gym! (Unless the gym is also your meat market — in which case, I suggest results will get you results.)

How quickly? I feel like laughing whenever I see someone doing reps as quickly as they can. That’s aerobic exercise, not strength training! Plus pushing heavy weights that quickly is risky, and is an invite to a pulled muscle. What matters is how intensely you are stressing the muscle, not how many times it cycles. There’s a number of people that have taken this to the extreme, doing only one rep, but spending 30-90 seconds doing it. VERY intense.

Whole body or isolated movements? This is a bit of a trick question. Isolated movements help you focus on single muscles, but unless you’re training for an aesthetic competition, you want functional strength not just big muscles. What you want to avoid is using momentum, or twisting your whole body to pull in some energy to get the weight moving. This can be risky (especially using free weights). Again, your goal isn’t to do as many reps as possible; it’s to work the muscle. Isolated exercises done right will make sure you’re stressing the muscle as much as you can, while compound movements (freeweights, nautilus-type, or body-weight) will build broad, functional strength. I think both are good; what you want to avoid is cheating and risky movements.

In the paleo community, there’s a definite bias towards body-weight exercises. I agree with it, but I don’t do much of it myself. I think using gym equipment is a fine compromise. I have a feeling it would be easy to integrate more body-weight-type exercises into my routine, but I’m not there yet. I’m still primarily using gym equipment. I think it’s important to not be cowed by the community, though; a half-hour in the gym is better than (another) half-hour on the couch!

Once I move, I won’t have access to a gym. I’ll definitely be adding more body-weight exercises then.