Strength training guide for beginners

Doing cardio a few times a week and watching your diet a bit is fine, but if you really want to look good, there's no getting around strength training. "Looking good" is subjective, of course.

However, most people think that a defined and muscular body looks good - regardless of your gender.

Presumably, this is evolutionary. People of the opposite sex (or your preferred gender(s)) who have good chances of survival are attractive. In the past, these were the people who could defend themselves well against enemies or run away quickly - in other words, people with a defined and muscular body.

To look like this, you need to do strength training regularly. You can do it with your own body weight at home or with additional weight in the gym. The more effective option is, for many reasons, going to the gym. But of course you first have to find the right way to start.

You have to work up the nerve to go to the gym, you have to keep at it and, above all, you have to know how to train properly so that you don't waste time or hurt yourself. This last point is exactly what this article is about: How do you train correctly as a beginner? - It's more or less a starter guide for beginners.

Working up the nerve

Before we get into the more technical stuff, one important thing first: don't be afraid to embarrass yourself at the gym.

In the beginning, your lifting technique will not be perfect. Of course, your body will not yet look the way you would like it to. Most people in the gym who have been training for a while will have better technique and will also be more muscular or have less body fat than you. This is quite normal.

But no one will look at you disparagingly or make stupid remarks about it - on the contrary, most people think it's really good if you, as an overweight or completely non-muscular person, have made the decision to do something for your personal fitness and go to the gym regularly.

It may be that you are sometimes approached about your technique, especially when it isn't quite where it needs to be. However, this is then almost always accompanied by a constructive tip.

And to all women: I dare you to go to the free weight area. Men usually won't look at you funny when you train there as a woman. Women are still outnumbered in the free weight area, but in most cases you won't be the only woman there.

Even if you are, then you are the only woman who trains effectively in your studio and doesn't waste any time. That's also a good feeling. But if that doesn't feel quite right to you, then it's best to look for a gym with a separate women's area. Many gyms now have a space like that. If that isn't the case, some gyms also have women-only hours for lifting on certain weeknights.

Maybe you'll find a good start in this area and then, after a few weeks, feel comfortable moving into the co-ed free weight area. This is often much better equipped and offers you more opportunities to train effectively.

Training

Multi-joint exercises

Now, let's talk about the training. If you have never done strength training before, then it is perfectly sufficient if you start with 3 training sessions per week. You will achieve very good results with this level of frequency.

Train 3 times a week and do 5 exercises per training session. What kind of exercises? Mainly exercises that work multiple muscle groups at the same time. These are multi-joint exercises such as the bench press or the barbell squat.

As a beginner, you have a huge advantage over more advanced athletes: Your muscles are super sensitive and thus respond very strongly to minimal stimuli.

You can think of it like this: You need to give your muscles an impetus to grow. You give them this impetus by working them more and more intensely than they are used to being worked.

If you've been training for a while and your pecs, for example, are used to doing about 15 sets a week with an average of 10 reps and let's say 160 lbs, then you'll need to do more in the coming weeks and months to keep them growing.

So you have to do more sets, more reps, more weight, or a combination of all of these. Otherwise, your muscles will not grow. Why would they? They would not feel the need to do so. But if you have never worked out before, how much do you need to do to make your muscles grow?

Let's look at the pec muscle example again. How often and intensively do you use your pecs in everyday life when you are not exercising?

Not very often and not very intensely - probably just every once in a while when you open doors and extend your arm forward. In total, this corresponds to maybe one rep of a 10 lb bench press once a week - in other words, practically nothing.

So this could be your baseline: Your body is used to doing one rep of 10 lbs on the bench press once a week. Your pecs are used to that. That's great. You don't need to make a big effort at all to challenge your muscles more than they are used to in the first few weeks and even months.

In fact, you have to be careful not to do too much. If you do too much and your muscles get too sore, then your body will only be focused on repairing your muscles. Then comes the next training stimulus and it doesn't even manage to strengthen and grow your muscles beyond the repair process.

What exercises are these exactly? Just remember that you want to do about as many pushing exercises as you do pulling exercises within a week. That way you will train your muscles in a relatively balanced way.

For the upper body, for instance, you do a horizontal press exercise - namely the bench press. You press the barbell forward (horizontally). To compensate for this, you do a horizontal pulling exercise - namely the bent-over row. You pull the barbell backwards (horizontally).

Then add a vertical press to your training program - e.g. the barbell shoulder press - and also a vertical pull exercise - e.g. the lat pulldown on the cable machine.

For the lower body you can choose the barbell squat as a push exercise and the barbell deadlift as a pull exercise. That's a total of 6 different exercises. If you perform these exercises two times per week - divided over 3 days - then you will have a total of 12 large multi-joint exercises per week.

Then you can add 3 additional exercises for smaller muscle groups and that will be enough. For example, you could add 2 exercises for the arms and 1 exercise for the lateral deltoids. If you want to see how you can split up these exercises across your training days, you can check out our example training plan for untrained people in our Facebook group.

Why should you do the big exercises twice per week? Why not do them once per week and include more different movements in your training program? The answer is: So that you can learn proper form for these exercises as quickly as possible and increase your weight quickly and safely.

After all, if your body is only concerned with keeping you from falling over and making sure the barbell doesn't wobble too much when you squat, you won't be able to move much weight safely.

If you perform a challenging exercise only once per week, you will probably have forgotten quite a bit by the next time you do the exercise. With two times per week you learn the proper form much faster.

Good technique

Nevertheless, in the beginning you need to know what good technique for the exercises looks like. Some people are good at teaching themselves the proper form and some are not.

If you are more of an autodidact, then watch good YouTube videos on the exercises, do them, film yourself doing them, and compare the videos with each other. Then do the exercise again with fewer mistakes, compare again, do it again with even fewer mistakes, compare again, etc... - until you get the technique right.

You can find short explanatory videos for the exercises in our sample training plan if you click on the exercise name, or you can check out the videos on the Alpha Progression App. If you are not good at teaching yourself, find a good trainer at your gym who will explain all the exercises in detail.

If you have to pay for a trainer, do so in good conscience, because it's definitely a good investment to get as much right as possible from the start and not waste any time.

A few notes that apply to almost all exercises: If an exercise hurts you (e.g. your knee hurts), then you are most likely using improper form, or the exercise is simply not for you.

So work on your form or replace the exercise with a similar one that works better for you. Go all the way down and all the way up in a controlled manner for each exercise. The emphasis here is on "controlled". Then you can safely reach the final position of the exercise without damaging your joints.

Perform the movement explosively during the phase in which the muscles contract (the concentric phase) but use a slower pace when the muscles lengthen (the eccentric phase). For instance, when doing the lat pulldown, pull the attachment down explosively and let it back up a little more slowly - all in a controlled manner, of course.

Reps, sets, and warm-up sets

How many reps should you do? It's best to do 8-10 reps for most exercises. That's not too many reps, so you can keep your focus, and it's also not too few reps, so you should have plenty of time to internalize the correct technique.

Use a weight that is challenging to move, but not so challenging that your form gets worse on the last few reps. Your form should be virtually unchanging. On the last rep, the technique should look about the same as it did on the first rep. The more training experience you have, the easier this will be.

How many sets should you do? Before each big exercise, do 1-2 warm-up sets with less weight and fewer reps, just to "warm up" and get your body used to the proper technique before going into the so-called "working sets". These are the strenuous sets that force your body to adapt - building muscle and strength.

You should do 2-3 of these working sets per exercise. Between the working sets, rest until you have the focus for the next set and your breathing has returned to normal. You aren't lifting to strengthen your cardiovascular system, but rather to strengthen your muscles.

This boils down to about 2-3 minutes for the big compound exercises like squats and 1-2 minutes for the small isolation exercises like lateral raises.

Progression

What about increasing the weight over time? If after 3 months you still use the same weight and do not do more reps with this weight, then you will not have built up any muscles.

Okay, maybe you will have built up a bit of muscle if you've improved your technique during this time and built a better mind-muscle connection, but it won't be much.

You have to increase your training intensity over time. What is the best way to do that? The easiest method to progress as a beginner is called double progression.

You set yourself a rep range of, say, 8-10 reps for a given exercise, you increase the reps from week to week (with the same weight), and when you have reached the highest number of reps for this range, you increase the weight the next week by the smallest possible unit and start again with the lowest number of reps in this range.

If, despite this increase, you still find the exercise easier rather than harder each week, then increase the reps by 2 each week instead of just increasing by 1 rep.

If the exercise is still easier for you from week to week, then do not increase the number of reps at all, but instead directly increase the weight from week to week by the smallest possible unit per week (e.g. 5 lbs) - of course always with proper, controlled form.

If at some point in the process of progression you realize that you have started using imperfect form, then reduce the weight and increase again from there - now with better technique. This will happen again and again and is quite normal, even if you have been training for a long time.

Don't get mad if you can't improve in a given week. Everyone has bad days. Maybe you slept badly, ate badly, or had something else happening that stressed you out and left you with less energy for training.

In this case, don't force yourself to do more than last week, but simply do as much as you did last week, or even less if you can't do that either. However, this should not happen regularly when you are still a beginner.

Since you always carry a bit of fatigue with you from training session to training session (which is not completely dissipated), as a beginner you should take a one-week deload after about 6 weeks, during which you will do fewer sets and reps and also lift a little less weight.

So instead of 2-3 sets, do only 1-2 sets, reduce the weight per exercise by about 10%, and do 2 fewer reps per set. After this deload week you should be ready to train at full capacity again and can increase again for 6 weeks before you do the next deload.

By the way, double progression is not the only way you can progress. You can also use a weight progression or a set progression. However, double progression is definitely the simplest way to progress, and it makes training less complicated. This is especially important for beginners.

By the way, while we're on the subject of improvement, never compare yourself with other people in the gym. This is a very typical problem for young men especially.

If you move 100 lbs less on the bar than your bench press neighbor, then that's just the way it is. Maybe he's been training longer than you or just has better genetics.

Just compare yourself with your past training performances and try to top them. Then you will achieve the best results possible for you and can be proud of yourself - no matter if it's 95 lbs or 225 lbs on the bench press after a few years.

These are the most important pieces of information you need at the beginning of your training career to achieve really good results in the long run.