Do I have to do weight training?

Ok so for the past 4 months i've been strength training, and about every 2 weeks i've had to increase weights.

Of course i love the results, but i hated every minute of it.

I did it mondays and fridays, both heavy days.

I just dont want to do it anymore. Im satisfied with the amount i have.

Can i get away with maintaining muscle if i only do it once a week?

I really dont want to lose it. But i just cant do this anymore.

Also, i havnt weight trained for like a week. Hope i didnt lose any muscle.

Edit: I have to either walk to ride my bike for 10 minutes each way to get to the gym. Thats also why i dont wanna go. Its -2 degrees celcius here (below 32).

Can i get away with billy blanks and a weekly weight training? If i MAKE myself go once a week?

Don't give up strength training!  Sounds like you need to change it up.   If you haven't been training for a week- it's time to get to it.  Since you don't like the gym, try videos.  www.collagevideo.com has a fantastic selection.  There are plenty of good strength training dvds.  Make sure to get one that will really work you.  Good luck, and don't quit!!!

Original Post by healthisinplease:

Can i get away with maintaining muscle if i only do it once a week?

Try it an see.

Original Post by syron:

Don't give up strength training!  Sounds like you need to change it up.   If you haven't been training for a week- it's time to get to it.  Since you don't like the gym, try videos.  www.collagevideo.com has a fantastic selection.  There are plenty of good strength training dvds.  Make sure to get one that will really work you.  Good luck, and don't quit!!!

How can you change up weight training? You just lift.

Its not that i dont like the gym, i just hate lifting. And i guess the snow weather just pushed me beyond my brink of hauling my ass out there every day.

Well, you change out exercises, set and rep schemes, or change rest periods - depends a whole lot on your goals and whether you're doing strength training as a supplement to a sport, as a sport in itself or for general exercise and fat loss.

 Body weight exercise and improvised weights can take you pretty far; it's not a substitute for everything strength-related but for some purposes calisthenics and resistance-based circuit training are reasonably equivalent. If your main fitness goal relates to anaerobic endurance doing calisthenics with Billy Blanks is as good as any; fat loss mostly comes from counting calories anyway.

 For strength maintenance it's a bit tricky - lifting once a week is generally not enough to maintain, lifting twice a week is a little more than you need to maintain and will let you make some slow progress. Assuming compound exercises anyway; if you're working a bodybuilding split it's a little different. Anyway - lifting once a week and doing calisthenics the rest should drastically slow down any strength loss that would result from cutting it out entirely so you may be satisfied with the level of strength you'll be able to maintain. At that point we're into personal goals and there it's a question of what you want to do, not what's the right goal to have.

Original Post by healthisinplease:

How can you change up weight training? You just lift.

This is probably why you find lifting so painful - you are just doing the same thing all the time - find a program that takes you through stages (eg New Rules of Lifting for Women, but there are others) so that it keeps it interesting and motivating.

I have quick related question:

If, hypothetically, you stopped weight training all together, but were eating maintenance calories, would you still see a gradual decline in strength and/or metabolic rate?

trikki - I'd assume so - muscle maintenance requires using the muscles, not just eating enough calories - if you don't use your muscles you will definitely lose strength, and over time, muscle mass.

Thanks- that's what I figured.

I absolutely, positively abhor weight training.  I'd start and abandon, start and abandon, and ultimately wouldn't do it.  I thought it important to work on my strength, though ... so I take a basic (anusara) yoga class every week.  I think it builds strength and toughens your core as well as any lifting program I've ever tried.  I look forward to it, I don't dread it, so I stick with it.  And I don't feel guilty about not lifting weights any more!

Original Post by 062121:

I absolutely, positively abhor weight training.  I'd start and abandon, start and abandon, and ultimately wouldn't do it.  I thought it important to work on my strength, though ... so I take a basic (anusara) yoga class every week.  I think it builds strength and toughens your core as well as any lifting program I've ever tried.  I look forward to it, I don't dread it, so I stick with it.  And I don't feel guilty about not lifting weights any more!

That would be wrong. Yoga and strength training can complement each other nicely, but neither is a substitute for each other, and you will not achieve strength training results by doing yoga. You won't achieve yoga results by doing strenght training either, but 90%* of people want the strength training results, not the yoga results from their fitness regime.

(*did you know that 87% of all statistics are made up on the spot?)

What if you dont want results? I just want to keep what i have earned. I dont want any more muscle.

Then it's back to the "Lifting once a week isn't enough, lifting twice a week will give you some small progress" - so possibly lifting 1.5 times a week will allow you to maintain at roughly were you are. With lifting once a week until the snow goes away you can probably slow down the loss of strength considerably and then add another day if you find that the strength level you have at that point isn't acceptable to you.

 One week off isn't going to make much of a difference; initially strength loss is more from neural detuning than loss of contractile protein from the muscle. It takes about 10-14 days for the contractile protein loss to start, but from then on out it's a constant process until your body has reduced your muscle down to only what's necessary to meet the demands you're placing on it on a regular basis.

 Once a week strength training will slow down but not completely stop this process as you're not applying a training stimuli sufficiently often enough - protein resynthesis in your muscles returns to baseline 48 hours after a single resistance training session so on a once-a-week schedule your body is spending more time in a state where your muscles aren't being stimulated sufficiently along those parameters.

 Calisthenics and anaerobic endurance training a la Tae Bo and similar bodyweight-based exercise do not present a sufficient stimuli to your muscles to have any impact on the contractile protein itself (at least without adding resistance bands to'em or otherwise increasing the loading of individual muscles), but they do present a different class of stimuli that causes other kind of central and peripheral adaptations in your cardiovascular system - increased capillary density, increased mitochondrial density, up-regulation of various enzymes and so on that are useful in and of themselves for athletic ability even if they aren't more than tangentially related to muscle and the ability to generate force/strength.

Would it work with your schedule to lift every 4th or 5th day?  Alternatively lift one day a week and do a day of body weights at home?

Well i dont have any weights at home, but im gonna try to force myself to keep lifting, though its not making me thinner. lol

How do you change up weight lifting if you lift in one place, and dont have the money to buy equipment. Dont have money to join a different gym with different types of weights, im 18. I juggle weightloss with assignments, tests and being poor.

Should i maybe...do the routine backwards sometimes?

There arent any classes offered either. =/

Change your rep-set scheme (if you've been doing 3 sets of 12, try 5 sets of 5). Take longer or shorter rests. Do variations - if you've been doing lunges, try bulgarian split squats. Instead of bench press, do pushups. Instead of pullups, do lat pullovers. Instead of deadlifts, do one leg Romanian deadlifts.