Workout Tips for Beginners

“You don’t get big and strong from lifting weights - you get big and strong from recovering from lifting weights.” -Mark Rippetoe

Just like anything in life, the beginning is the hardest part. It’s easy to become a victim of paralysis by analysis, especially when it comes to things that feel like there are a lot of variables.

When it comes to exercising this is quite the paradox because it’s both true and false. In all my years of training for both competitive sports and the pursuit of personal goals, I’ve come to this conclusion.

Keep things as basic as possible.

Even when you add years to your training age you will always return to the fundamentals of exercise and physiology. That’s not to say that training doesn’t get more intricate or that it doesn’t take planning to continue progressing.

It does mean that no matter how experienced you are there are fundamental concepts that always need to be adhered to. The most experienced lifters with the most success are the best at progressing their training while never straying away from the basics.

As time goes on you will naturally learn more the longer you’re in it and the most valuable lessons you’ll learn come from the experience of doing it for yourself. Everyone is unique and will respond to different forms of training, but what’s most important is to find out what works best for you.

With that said, here are a few tips to give you the best place to start so you can begin figuring it out for yourself.

Less is more in the beginning

Looking back on my journey I’ve made a lot of mistakes when it comes to the way I set up my workouts. I didn’t know much at all back then and even now I know there’s still so much to learn and improve upon.

The way I compensated for a lack of knowledge was to work really hard, never allowing myself to leave the gym feeling like I could have done more.

Now I live by one critical point that is the foundation for how I approach the gym. Always consider this, It’s not about how much you can do, it’s about what you can recover from.

So while training hard and pushing yourself is absolutely necessary it doesn’t mean you have to kill yourself to look or feel the way you want to feel. I remember listening to one of the best bodybuilders in history give a talk about training and nutrition.

He asked the crowd how many people think the gym is where they build muscle. After everyone answered he corrected them all by saying it in fact was not where you build muscle, you do that when you go home, eat, rest, and sleep.

The gym is where you break muscle down by causing micro-tears within muscle fibers, is casues systemic inflammation, and creates short bouts of increased stress hormones.

Keep this idea in mind as you start putting a routine together for yourself. You don’t need to know everything right now just like you don’t have to put the same amount of work in as the person who’s been doing it for a year.

Don’t try to get fit in a month, it won’t work and you’re just going to beat yourself up in the process. Progress is slow and there’s no way you can speed it up, but what you can do is make sure you’re staying as consistent as possible.

When you do that it’s only a matter of time before you get the results you want. Doing too much early on increases the chances of an injury or burnout. Once you’ve accomplished all the necessary tasks to elicit gains in strength and muscle doing more is not always better, it may actually slow you down.

If working out 3 days a week is enough to stimulate your muscles to grow bigger and stronger then a fourth day is not necessary.

As you gain experience there is always going to be a need to do more than what you’ve adapted to, however, if you’re just starting out then one set of every exercise is enough.

After 6 months of training, the frequency of workouts per week will naturally have to increase to four or five days. The main point here is that by the time it becomes necessary to increase the total amount of work you’re performing your body is ready for it.

Plan for the long term and stay in the game as long as you can. The goal should be to still be lifting weights when you’re 80.

Focus on efficiency

While keeping the less is more approach, construct your workouts so that you can get the most out of your time in the gym. Have the first goal around 2-3 workouts in a week, if you’re just starting out this is enough to see progress.

The more advanced you become the frequency of workouts will naturally increase as you get stronger and more resilient.

Until that happens don’t feel like you need to do what all the fit people are doing you see on social media. It took them a long time to get where they are and they did it with intention and a solid mindset.

Think of your workouts as a trade-off between a proper stimulus and a build-up of fatigue. We need to do enough work to stimulate our muscles to grow but without doing so much our body has a hard time recovering.

Going back to the point made previously, it’s not about how much you can do in the gym, it’s about how much you can recover from.

Building muscle is not all about heavy weights and lots of reps, this is necessary of course, but it’s more about proper nutrition, and deep sleep.

So to maximize both it would be wise to hit all your major muscle groups in a single workout and repeat that two to three times a week. Most of the people who go to the gym will pair up specific muscle groups and only train those.

For example, they will do back biceps on a Monday, chest triceps on Tuesday, legs on Wednesday, or some variation of something similar.

This is not a bad approach if you’re working out five to six days a week but if you have a two or three day a week schedule then it’s important to hit as many muscles as possible.

The benefit to this approach is that you are stimulating everything in a single session, which is very important when your frequency is low. This way you have given your body a reason to adapt and get stronger but you also have a day of rest in between sessions.

Even better still, if you work out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday you have two days on the weekend to rest even more before starting the week over.

Full body workouts three times a week will maximize the stimulus-to-fatigue relationship while still ensuring you’re progressing as quickly as possible.

You can do this for the first two to three months before needing to add a fourth workout.

Use higher rep sets

When I first started going to the gym when I was a teenager the original goals were to get bigger and stronger and become more athletic. Sports like football and basketball favored athletes who were quick and powerful.

Aside from my desire to lift heavier weights to improve my performance, there was also a part of me that did not want to be seen lifting little weights.

I wanted to get to the impressive 45s so that I would feel like I fit in and belonged there. Back then I was young and resilient so I never ran into any problems with injuries in the gym but by lifting that way I increased my risk.

As I learned more about training for performance and strength I also found out that starting with lighter weights is the most practical approach. Over time the weights will naturally increase and the amount of reps you are doing will decrease.

I’ve stated before anything you do in the gym at first will lead to gains in strength and muscle mass. Using higher rep sets will begin to build a solid foundation of strength and stability that will be necessary in the later stages of your development.

They will also allow you to control the weight more easily so that you can learn the movements without compensating for the sake of an extra ten pounds.

Getting the fundamentals down early is going to save you time and energy in the long run.

Learning to perform the movements correctly the first time will keep you from having to start over later.

I see patients complaining of shoulder pain while they exercise and even though they look like they’re strong and fit when I test their stability it’s always very poor. Often times it’s the primary cause of the discomfort they feel when they work their arms and upper body.

Training with light weights and controlling them completely throughout the entire range of motion will provide a greater benefit to the smaller but most important deep muscles around the joint.

Plan for the long term by putting the greatest emphasis on doing the exercises correctly and engaging the muscles that each exercise is targeting.

You are not supposed to be strong when you first start, embrace the inexperience and be patient.

Use this time to set yourself up for success later on, because most injuries in the gym are from overuse and repetitive stress. If pain hits then something has been wrong for a long time and it’s finally caught up.

Do yourself a favor and minimize your chances of that happening by training light and slowly progressing with time.

Listen to your body

Often people will get so excited to start working out or to get back into a routine that they go from zero to one hundred percent in week one.

I hear so many people say “no pain no gain right?” Yes and no. We are led to believe that we have to physically punish ourselves in order to achieve the results we desire.

While I will admit exercising is not always a pleasant experience; the feeling of breathlessness, that deep burn in the muscle from the accumulation of lactic acid, and a racing heart can be uncomfortable at times.

However, these sensations should be temporary and the intensity of exercise that causes them should be gradually increased per your tolerance over time.

It’s not necessary to push yourself to the point of total exhaustion every time you step into the gym, especially within the first 3 months of exercising.

You don’t always know what is too much while other times it can be very obvious. Use these moments as lessons to gauge your fitness level and asses your tolerance at this given time in your training.

If you did too much one day or over one week, that’s okay, if you feel like you need to reduce the intensity or workload the next workout or over the next week then do it.

The biggest challenge you will face in the beginning is knowing when it is time to back off and when you need to push through. It’s important to have phases in your training where you are working really hard, some that are hard, and others that are moderate to easy.

With this idea in mind, you can make your daily or weekly training sessions more fluid based on how your body is responding to the current stress.

There may be periods where you are training hard for weeks and you never feel like you’re being beaten up, in this case ride the wave and keep up the great work. Other times you may need to pull back earlier than you think you should because you haven’t strung together a long enough streak of workouts.

Keep in mind that well-designed training programs have ups and downs that are planned and purposeful. Sometimes you need to coast for a little bit to let yourself recover and regain your motivation.

You can never fail if you continue to show up, it’s all about the long game so do what you need to today to take care of yourself so you’ll make it to the finish. It’s up to you to realize when these changes are necessary or just desired.

This is not an easy process so don’t expect it to be, you will be tired and there will be days that you don’t want to workout and a rest day feels like the best thing for you.

Those days are not as necessary as we would like to think because life stresses just make the couch much more desirable than the gym. We will lie to ourselves without knowing it by saying our body needs a rest day when in reality we are just feeling tired and lazy today.

Know the difference between the two and don’t give yourself a hard time when you honestly tell yourself it’s time to pull back. You’re doing it so that you can stay in the game and the longer you’re in it the better you will look, think, and feel.

• Summary of main points

  1. Don’t think you have to know everything from the start, let yourself learn as you go slowly.
  2. Do what is necessary to stimulate your body to grow and get stronger. Adding excessive work may get in the way rather than speed up your progress.
  3. Optimize your time in the gym so that you can do as little as possible while still seeing progress.
  4. Training with light weights as a beginner will not only decrease your risk of injury but will set you up to be even stronger later.
  5. Be honest with yourself about whether or not you can push through or if it’s time to pull back, sometimes it may be hard to tell the difference. If you’re being truly honest with yourself then take time off so that you can come back stronger and more motivated.

• Call to action

If you have a gym membership and have been going without any real plan, think of a schedule that will be easy for you to follow and has all the elements I have written about.

Schedule a time when you can make the gym two or three days out of the week, weekday or weekend doesn’t matter but give yourself a day in between.

Think of five exercises you can do that will hit every major muscle group and don’t do anything less than twelve reps per set.

You can stick to this same plan for three to four weeks, after that change the exercises and rep range.

For example, if you start with fifteen then move down to twelve and stay consistent for another three to four weeks before changing it up again.