Increasing strength with limited and light equipment?

C

Carmack

0
Hello. I'm new to weight training and I cannot afford a gym membership. I currently have a barbell weighting 35 lbs and dumbells weighting ten pounds each. I'm 5'8"ish and around 120 pounds. I currently have a routine I've been following for two weeks.

How can I max my strength with such light equipment? Should I increase the sets and reps when I'm ready? I'm currently doing 2 sets of 12.

Also, when should I change the rountine? I heard every 6-8 weeks to mix it up a bit.

Thanks.
 
You're not going to get stronger with those weights. Either join a gym, buy an olympic barbell set, power rack and bench, or start strongman type training by lifting rocks, sandbags, moving vehicles and other uneven objects.
 
Yeah. I guess i'm just going to have to bite the bullet and spend some money on weights. Now, what's the average weight set cost? I was thinking about going to a used store shopping for better deals.
 
If you want to max your strength, then take Man Of Steel's advice and get into sandbag lifting.It is cheap (less than 40 or 50 dollars will get you started), versatile and highly effective.Old time strongmen use to lift heavy bags of grain or flour to develop enormous strength, the kind that is readily transferable to things like manual labor and grappling.You can build a decent amount of muscle as well.
 
naked warrior

u can get totally strong with only body weight exercises.

here's what youre gonna do...

find two exercises that are really hard for u to do, like one arm push ups and one legged squats, if those are two hard then do pushups with ur feet elevated and for the one leg squat hold onto the door way, or stand on one leg and sit back into a chair and then stand up with one leg, or push two chairs together and do dips

now, three times a day do these exercises, which ever two u want but make sure to do the same two. u dont want to be able to do more than ten reps, so if u can do twelve elevated push ups increase the elevation so u can only do 8. everytime u do the exercises do about 70% of the maximum reps u can, so u never get tired, concentrate on ur form, and hold urself at the hard parts of the lift. do this everyday and ull never get tired but ull get ridiculously strong. u wont get bigger tho, but ull get strong.

i recommend u purchase The Naked Warrior by Pavel or visit dragondoor.com that book is where i got that work out for u. Its all bodyweight exercises. If u dont have weights then say to hell with them, u can be a little dude and still be able to lift incredible amounts because strenght is a practice, not an hour long period where u jam weights until u cant move.
 
I had a similar dilema when I first wanted to be able to work out from home. So I bought a pull up station where I can do multiple types of pull ups, dips, push ups, leg ups etc. Works for me.
 
Calithenics are excellent, however i'd never suggest any kind of 1-legged or 1-armed moves-very hard on the joints and possibly injurious. Instead do regular pushups, chins, dips and step ups, and add weight or use resistance bands as needed. That and some extra, inexpensive metal plates to use with the dumbbells.
 
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