My new weight training regime is starting to bed in now, so this is a good time to tell you about it. The concept is that I do alternating heavy weeks and light weeks.

The heavy weeks are designed to build muscle strength. The focus here is to do primarily compound exercises, which is to say those that engage more than one muscle group. Heavy weights are used with a small number of repetitions, typically in the range 4-6. I tend to do four sets, starting off with a weight a couple of notches back from the maximum that I managed last time. Rest intervals between sets are long enough to allow a full recovery, typically 2-3 minutes. Progression is through increasing the reps up to 6 then increasing the weight.

The light weeks are designed to build muscle bulk, or hypertrophy as it is known. I use 8x8's here, which involves light weights, isolation exercises, eight sets of eight repetitions and short rest times. The weight should be chosen so that it feels easy for the first few sets but really tough by the time you reach the last few. Progression is initially through reducing the rest times, starting at 50 seconds then dropping by 5 or 10 seconds each week. Once you get down to about 20 seconds then it's time to increase the weight.

It's taken a while to get this organised, finding the right exercises and the right weights. However I think it will be a good programme and I intend to stick with it for at least the next three months.