Beginner Weight Training
Beginner weight training needs to be positioned at the right level in order to be sustainable, maximise newbie gains and not overtrain the body. With so much advice readily available online and so many different exercises, splits and training systems out there, it’s hard to see past all the noise — my practical guide to beginner weight training gives you all you need to know to hit the ground running, optimise your training and quickly see the results you desire.
Weight training is no longer seen as the training form of the professional bodybuilder; due to the evolution of the internet and modern research, it’s now widely accepted as the optimal way to transform both your health and your physique and can be easily integrated in anyone and everyone’s daily life. Within this guide, I’ll talk you through the specifics for beginner weightlifting and how diet can support and optimise your training. It’s a pretty big read, but it’s the only article you’ll need to read in order to get going and get results. If you want to know more about what resistance training is and the benefits, then check out my recent article ‘What is Resistance Training?’ but for focused info on beginner training, read on!
Newbie Gains
I can’t talk about weight training for beginners without first filling you in on ‘Newbie gains’, because if this isn’t reason enough to pick up the weights, then I don’t know what is!
Newbie gains is the term used to describe a rapid increase in muscle and strength that often occurs when people are new to weightlifting and train intensively. Usually, these individuals gain very little fat or can even shed fat while gaining a considerable amount of muscle — this happens because the body is hyperresponsive to the stimulus provided by resistance training.
A Review conducted by The Sports Medicine Journal found that the average beginner lifters gain around 4 to 7 pounds of muscle mass in their first three months of lifting. Based on this rate of increase, that works out to 16 to 28 pounds of muscle in their first year of training. It’s impossible to continue on this trajectory, as your muscles become accustomed to the stimuli — so make the most of those newbie gains while you can by training smart and here’s how...
Resistance Training Exercises for Beginners
There are many different variations of exercises, training splits and methods out there. My advice to you, as a beginner, is to keep it simple and focus on getting your form correct, mastering the big basic lifts alongside a good dose of progressive overload. Don’t worry about different training systems and complex variations at this stage, start with the basics and advance with each of your training programmes.
The main thing for me to share here, in terms of the resistance training exercises you should target, is that there are two main groups of exercises:
Compound Exercises
Isolation Exercises
A mixture of compound and isolation exercises should be used in order to exercise all of the 6 main muscle groups of the body. The main muscles groups are:
Legs (quads, calves, hamstrings, glutes)
Let’s look at compound and isolation exercises in detail.
Compound Exercises for Beginners
Compound exercises stimulate multiple muscle groups at the same time. For example, a barbell back squat is a compound exercise that develops the quadriceps, glutes, and hamstrings as well as stimulating a handful of other muscles that help stabilise the movement.
Beyond building bountiful lean muscle mass across multiple muscles, there are many other benefits of using compound exercises, they include:
Time efficiencies: Exercising multiple muscles at once will save you time, either making your workouts shorter in length or allowing you to add in more exercises within the time you have
Maximising calorie burn: Compound exercises burn more calories than isolation exercises as calories are needed to fuel each muscle being worked, as opposed to a single muscle needing fuel
Improved intermuscular coordination: Intermuscular coordination is the function and timing of multiple muscles around a joint or joints, simply put, how well your muscles work as a team to produce a movement and / or force. Compound exercises such as squats, lunges or deadlifts improve how all of the muscles work together and with that improves coordination
Improved strength: As well as that helpful improvement in coordination, with this, also comes increased strength. When you use multiple muscles to lift a weight, it increases the amount of weight each muscle can lift — as each of the muscles is giving the other a helping hand, so to speak, over time this helps to make each muscle more powerful and able to exert more force to lift heavier weight
Improved cardiovascular health: Igniting all those muscles at once absolutely gets your heart rate up. Squats, shoulder presses, deadlifts and lunges are all examples of compound exercises that involve large amounts of muscle tissue, which will challenge the heart to pump blood to keep the muscles fueled and active, thereby improving the hearts capacity to do so. It’s not just cardio that gets the blood pumping and the heart and lungs working!
More efficient movement patterns and balance: That coordination of muscles that we spoke of earlier, comes into play again to give yet more benefits. With improved coordination, comes better movement patterns and balance. This will aid you in many areas of life, such as postural and skeletal improvements — if your moving patterns are efficient and symmetrical this will put less pressure on your bones and joints which will reduce your risk of injury, particularly in later life
For these reasons, compound exercise should feature heavily in any weight training plan, and that is no different for beginners. You should absolutely be including these, ideally at the beginning of each session in order to maximise the energy reserves that you have. This will allow you to really get the most out of those lifts and wring every last drop out of those newbie gains. As focusing on the big, heavy compound lifts at the end of your session, when fatigued, would be like riding a pushbike up a hill with flat tyres — hard work with very little progress.
Isolation Exercises for Beginners
As much as compound exercises are very beneficial and should be the star of your weight training sessions, isolation exercises also have their place and working on perfecting your isolation exercises will assist in your ability to pull off and progress with the big, heavy, compound lifts.
Isolation exercises are, quite simply, exercises that isolate and exercise a single muscle. Good examples are a bicep curl, or a seated leg curl, where just a single muscle is being engaged in order to produce the force required to lift a weight.
Apart from being pretty damn satisfying (who doesn’t love a bicep curl, right?) there are many other benefits, including:
The ability to target muscle growth in a single area of the body: So, body composition, or the aesthetic side of muscle building, is all about symmetry, right? Producing an enviable physique will require focus in one particular area above and beyond the full-body workout. For example, for a male looking to get that infamous V-shaped torso, but without a whole lot of body fat to lose on the mid-section, the right approach here would be to build the shoulders, lats and chest. This can be achieved via targeted isolation exercises, for example — a lateral raise would be a great isolation exercise in this scenario to really target the shoulders for growth
Targeted strength improvement: You may have a particular muscle that is weaker than other areas, which could be limiting the amount of weight you can manage in your compound lifts. Let’s say you have issues activating your quads on a squat and you feel your hamstrings and even your lower back are taking the brunt of the weight. You could implement some quad isolation exercises, like a seated leg extension, to really focus on and challenge those quads — this will ultimately lead to an improvement in your squat performance too
Assists in the rehabilitation/imbalance of a muscle: You may have an injury or an imbalance that impacts a particular muscle or muscle group. Using isolation exercises will allow you to still train whilst recovering, by avoiding a muscle altogether or using a lower weight to slowly build back the lost strength and size, or rectify the imbalance. One thing to be mindful of is creating an imbalance through isolation exercises — this is possible if you focus on building one muscle with no regard to its opposing muscle, have you ever seen anyone with massive biceps but no triceps? Or a giant upper body sitting above chicken legs? It’s not a good look
Calorie burn and cardiovascular improvements: It’s fair to say that isolation exercises do also burn calories and help with heart health, but it’s to a lesser degree than compound exercises, because they require less effort, in general
Now you know what compound and isolation exercises are and when to use them in your session, we’ll move onto how many reps and sets you should be performing. You might also want to swing by to my homepage, scroll to the bottom of the page and hover over ‘exercise database’. Here you’ll find pretty much every compound and isolation exercise under the sun, complete with coaching points and a demo video so you can easily incorporate these into your resistance plans...thank me later ;)
Beginners Reps and Sets
Trying to figure out how many reps and sets you should perform is literally a minefield of bad advice, anecdotal opinion, old school lifting mentality (think Bro split and you won’t be too far off the mark), and completely made up numbers. I, however, have the lowdown on the most recent and robust research and this is very easily tailored to optimise the training of a newbie lifter.
I’m not going to go into huge amounts of detail reps and sets, if you do what to learn all there is to know about training volume, then check out this in-depth, research-based article.
How Many Sets Should a Beginner Perform Per Session?
The number of sets I plan for clients is derived from the science — randomised control trial by The University of Sydney who compared 10 sets per muscle group versus 5 sets per muscle group in a single session. They found that 10 sets are no more effective than 5. In other words, doing twice the work in a session doesn’t necessarily translate to twice the gains. They suggest that 4-6 sets per muscle group is the optimal level.
For beginners, I, therefore, recommend that you start at the lower end of the scale. 4 sets per muscle group, per session, would absolutely be sufficient to elicit muscle building and yield those newbie gains. Here is a very simple example of what that might translate to as a full-body session, remember, we are keeping things simple so this is just the beginning of your training education:
4 sets of Leg press
4 sets of Bent over row
4 sets of Leg curl
4 sets of Bench press
4 sets of Skull crushers
4 sets of Barbell curls
4 sets of V-sits
How Many Reps Should a Beginner Perform Per Set?
In terms of the number of reps, well, this is dictated by your goal, regardless of your training age. As a general rule, the following gives a good indication of the number of reps aligned to your goal:
Strength: 1-6 reps
Hypertrophy: 6-15 reps
Endurance: 15-20 reps
Going back to our very simple example session, for a beginner lifter wanting to elicit a hypertrophic response ie GET MASSIVE, it might look something like this:
Leg press: 4 sets of 12 reps
Bent over row: 4 sets of 12 reps
Leg curl: 4 sets of 12 reps
Bench press: 4 sets of 12 reps
Skull crushers: 4 sets of 12 reps
Barbell curls: 4 sets of 12 reps
V-sits: 4 sets of 12 reps
Now, as I have said several times, this is a very simple illustration. This isn’t taking into account any imbalances, a desire to elicit both hypertrophy and build strength, available equipment, injury etc — all factors that feed into the tailored plans I offer within my Online Personal Training service. But, it does give you a quick reference guide as to the right path to choose.
Weight Training Tips for Beginners
I could talk at length about many other factors you’d want to consider when starting out as a lifter, but as I have already given you the vital information that you need, I don’t want to overload you — that’s something you want to avoid as a new lifter. But, do I have some other hints, tips and helpful nuggets of information? Yes, I do.
How much weight should I lift?
You should aim to use a weight that challenges you at the point you are 2-3 reps away from your target rep range. So, if your target is 10 reps, 7 should be a struggle. If your form deteriorates then stop, rest and move to the next set
How often should I train as a new lifter?
As a brand new lifter, I recommend 1 day rest in between training days, start at 3-4 sessions per week and build from there.
What if I don’t want to go to a gym?
Training from home has never been easier; resistance bands and dumbbells are readily and quickly available from retailers like Amazon
Progressive overload is key
Gradually increase the weight, reps or frequency of your sessions to incrementally challenge your muscles. Unless you push yourself and your muscles to do more, they won't grow in strength or size.
What about Nutrition?
Calories, protein, calories, protein, calories, protein. Need I say more? Calculating the appropriate calories for your goal, age, height and weight and consuming sufficient protein is vital, regardless of your goal. You cannot out-train a bad diet but you can definitely optimise your training by eating the right foods in the right quantities. Ensure you are consuming sufficient nutrients by following a flexible, non-restrictive, sustainable eating plan.
Enjoy the ride…
Exercise shouldn’t be a punishment for the foods we eat, or due to hatred of our bodies. It should be an enjoyable, rewarding experience where we pay homage to the vessel that carries us through life. If you aren’t feeling the love, then try switching things up, find the activity you do love, or maybe take a little break.
Summary
If you’ve got to the end of this article, well done, it’s comprehensive and I’m chuffed that you’ve taken the time out of your busy day to read it. Believe it or not, you now have all the knowledge you need to start resistance training and train effectively.
If you want unrivalled help and support to get resistance training fully integrated into your life, or if you are looking to take your training to the next level, drop me a message and we can talk about your needs. We are all different, so we all need a little or a lot of tailored training. Looking forward to hearing from you.