when you first begin a strength training routine it’s always best that you start out with a much lower weight than you think necessary and progress until you reach an appropriate level. most people aim for 8-12 or 12-15 repetitions per set but don’t just stop your set because you reached some arbitrary number. it’s important to keep working your muscles until you reach muscular fatigue. if you find that you are doing an excessive amount of repetitions per set then it may be beneficial to increase the weight further to bring that number down to a more manageable number. if you’re doing too few repetitions consider decreasing the weight to bring the number up a bit since it may be too heavy of a weight for you. remember to always reevaluate what you’re doing while strength training. you want to be continually challenging yourself and progressing. try occasionally increasing the weight by small increments adding more repetitions to your set or adding more sets to your workout. if it might help some people will write down and keep a log of the weight number of sets and number of repetitions for each exercise that they do if you can’t recall off the top of your head. trial and error is the way to determine how much weight to lift. select a weight that looks close to what you think you can lift based on your goals. if general conditioning is your goal then select a weight you think you can lift eight to 12 reps (or 12-15 reps for beginners). if you can lift it 25 times with ease then it's too light and if you can lift it only four times then it's too heavy. there are no formulas to calculate this. simply decide what your goal is so you know how many reps to lift take a guess by looking at the weights and then give it a try. you'll get good at this quickly. find the ones you are most comfotable with the more comfortable you get the better they are
how do i know how much weight to lift?