How To Choose The Right Weights For Your Strength Training Exercises

One of the most important strength training skills, and something I see people get wrong all the time, is knowing how to choose the right weights for each exercise.

It's easy to find programs online which will tell you which exercises and how many sets and reps to do, but most programs don’t teach you some of the essential skills of strength training. Without those skills, you won't get the benefits you’re working so hard for.

Choose The Right Weights To Stimulate Your Muscles To Get Bigger and Stronger

If you want to build muscle and strength, you need to lift weights that are heavy enough to stimulate your muscles to grow. When you lift heavy weights, you force your muscles to contract past a certain threshold. That's what sets off the muscle growth process.

In my experience, most people underestimate how much they should be lifting. They also stop their sets before they really challenge their muscles. If you do that, you’re going to miss out on many of the benefits of strength training.

I’ve trained a lot of people who don’t realize how strong they are and are pleasantly surprised by how much weight they can actually lift. Learning to push yourself and recognize when you've really fatigued your muscles is another strength training skill, and you’ll get better at it with practice.

Before I explain how to choose the right weights for each of your exercises, I want to address a few common misconceptions about heavy weightlifting.

Don’t Believe These Heavy Weightlifting Myths

The term “heavy” makes some people nervous. Rest assured, lifting heavy weights doesn’t mean you have to start throwing around huge dumbbells or load up a barbell with 200 pounds.

Heavy is relative to you; it’s a feeling, not a number. It’s a weight that challenges and fatigues your muscles.

At first, 5 pound dumbbells might be heavy enough for you in certain exercises. As you get stronger, you should increase your weights to match your current strength level. You never need to lift more than you can handle.

Don’t be scared off by talk of muscle growth or size, either. Despite what you may have heard, you can’t build “longer” or “leaner” muscles. Your muscles can only get bigger or smaller.

If you want to look “toned” or “defined”, you have to make your muscles bigger and lose body fat so you can see them. Lifting heavy weights (and practicing healthy eating) can do just that.

Some people avoid heavy lifting because they don’t want to look big and bulky. The truth is that you have to train and eat in a very specific way, for a very long time, to look like a bodybuilder. It’s extremely difficult, and it doesn’t happen by accident.

If you’re concerned about getting too muscular, I suggest you give heavy strength training a try and monitor your progress. If you feel that your muscles are getting too big, you can just back off the weights.

In my years as a personal trainer, though, I have never worked with a client who had to do this. Most are very happy with the changes they see and feel when they start lifting heavy weights.

Finally, some people are concerned about the risk of injury. Strength training is not inherently dangerous, but injuries do happen. You can prevent them by working your way up to heavy weights slowly (using systematic progressions) and focusing on using good form in every exercise.

How To Choose The Right Weights – Step By Step

Choosing the right weights to use for each exercise is a process of trial and error.

You'll need to go through this process for every exercise. You’ll be able to lift different amounts of weight depending on the exercise, the number of reps you're doing, and the muscles you’re using during that exercise.

For example, you should usually use more weight on leg exercises than chest exercises. That's because your leg muscles are bigger and stronger than the muscles in your chest.

Even exercises for the same muscle group need different weights. Most people can lift more weight in a barbell chest press than a dumbbell chest press, because the barbell is more stable than the dumbbells.

Here’s how to figure out the right weight to use for an exercise. I’ll use a barbell squat as an example.

Step 1:

Decide on your rep number. Pick a number between 6 and 12. Let’s say you decide to aim for 8 repetitions.

Step 2:

Take a guess. Everyone’s starting strength is different, so you’ll have to make an educated guess about which weight to start with. It’s a good idea to start lighter than you think you can handle.

Let’s say for your first set of barbell squats, you load up a standard barbell (which weighs about 45 pounds) with another 10 pounds (5 on each side). Note that you are using 55 pounds, because you’re lifting the bar itself plus the weight plates on it.

You get to repetition number 8 and it’s starting to feel a little challenging, but you still feel like you could do one more with good form. In that case, you should do that 9th rep. Then, if you feel that you couldn’t do one more without sacrificing your form, you end the set. You underestimated the amount of weight that you could lift for 8 repetitions.

Step 3:

Adjust. On the next set you add 10 more pounds to the bar so you are now lifting 65 pounds. This time you overestimated, and you can only do 7 with good form.

Step 4:

Adjust again. On your third set, you lift 60 pounds and are able to do 8 good form repetitions but feel that an 9th would not be possible, so you end the set at 8.

Step 5:

Record what you did. Make a note that you were able to squat 55 pounds for 9 reps, 65 pounds for 7 reps, and 60 pounds for 8 reps. In your next workout, you can look at your previous note and know that you should use 60 pounds if you want to perform 8 reps per set. Then you can use the principle of progressive overload and start working your way up in reps or increase the weight slightly.

It’s totally fine that you didn’t do exactly 8 reps on each set. The rep prescription is not some magic number that you have to hit exactly every time.

What’s much more important is that you provided adequate stress on your muscles so they will adapt by getting bigger and stronger, and that you try to do a little more in your next workout.

If You Need Help...

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