Beginner weights help!

[sausageface]

I'm about 4 stone into my weight loss journey and really need to start doing some strength/toning exercises (particularly for my awful wobbly arms!) and I'm using Apple fitness+ for my home workouts. The strength section of this calls for weights but I'm clueless as to how heavy/light to start with. There's so many different sets online with varying different combos of weight (starting as low as 1,1.5, 2 for the set) and go up from there and I'm clueless. What is a good starting set/combination of weights? I don't want to go too light and waste my money on something that will feel like lifting air but also need to be able to lift it in the first place! Any help is greatly appreciated!

Try doing the sets with something you have round the house and can weigh. Bean tins? Full wine bottles?

Then you can get a feel for how hard it is with those and know what to buy.

The Les Mills on demand app is offering 30 day free trials at the moment, and have lots of great strength and toning work outs.

Not sure what the Apple workouts involve - is it weight lifting with fewer reps but heavy weights, or more toning with lots of lighter reps?

For the latter, I’d probably go no lower than 2kg as a start or you really won’t feel it. Your strength will build quickly if you’re consistent so definitely have some heavier ones as well

I am certainly no expert but I've been doing online gym workouts this year. I've got 2x 3kg and 2x 4.5kg dumbbells (from aldi and local Facebook so cheap). And then I've got a 12kg and 16kg kettlebell for deadlifts. These have been a good combination for me. I really need a heavier kettlebell now I'm stronger but my dumbbells are still enough to challenge for overhead type exercises.

At the gym I also use a mini barbell with 1.5, 2.5, 5kg to put on each end in varying amounts depending on the exercise. So you can have from 3kg up to 18kg as needed.

If you get something like this (attached photo from Argos)
It’ll be really versatile. You can use the weight plates (the circles) on their own then when you need it heavier, build up to using the dumbbell with one or 2 on. Looks like these ones are 10kg each. (Made up of smaller plates probably 2.5kg and 1.5kg and 5kg)
Also handy to load up one of the DB with lots of weight and use like a kettle bell for squats.

Use inidividually for Lunges, shoulder press, bicep curls, triceps, deadlifts etc etc. So so many more options than buying a couple of fixed weight dumbbells that you may possibly ‘grow out’ of in a few months.
Good Luck!

Ooh, they look good! If I was starting again I'd get those. It was slim pickings at the start of lockdown so I suppose I've just bought things as and when they were available.

Ah we also couldn’t find anything much at start of first lockdown. Luckily had some odd weights here and there… but that would have been great and really versatile.

Thanks so much for all the guidance! I had tried with tins of beans and it was far too light. The adjustable ones seem like a fantastic idea, I'll look to something like that I think! Just didn't want to waste money unnecessarily on ones that are too light or heavy for my needs then needing to replace.

The adjustable dumbbells are good. I got a set off Amazon that go up to about 12kg each side or up to 19kg if you are just using one and converts to a bar that will take you up to 30kg. The bar is not all that great and I don't use it now as I have a proper one, but it saw me through most of lockdown. It can be surprising how quickly you need to go up in weight for some exercises (e.g. rows) whereas others you need to stay quite light.