A Beginner Guide to Strength Training

So you want to unleash your inner Hulk (rage optional) and get big and strong?

Does the thought of stepping into a gym and hitting the weights intimidate you? Do you wish you could pack muscle onto your skinny frame but don’t know where to start? Are you a bigger guy who’d rather have your chest and shoulders be broader than your waist? Are you a woman who’s tired of being “skinny fat” and wants to get that “toned” look? Maybe you just want to be stronger and faster?

No matter where you are starting from, I’m here to help with this beginner strength training guide!

The Basics

Strength training can be a vast, and scary, topic to try to come to grips with; so I want you to take a deep breath and let this guide take you through the process step-by-step.

“DON’T PANIC.” – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

If you’re looking to start building muscle and becoming stronger, it takes three distinct things:

• Lift heavy things
• Eat a calorie rich, clean diet
  
• Rest

At the most basic level, that’s really all you need.

Of course, readers of The Jerd know we are all about training smarter, not harder (law #6 of the Jerd Herd!) so I’ve tried to assemble a simple, yet well thought out, guide to beginner’s strength training for you. Inside you will find our Total Body 3×5 Workout Plan, how to deal with plateaus, and the major keys to success!

This is strength training boiled down to the absolute basics.

It should go without saying that you should clear any sort of weight-training program with your physician, and hopefully you have been able to work your way through the 101 and 102 levels of the Nerd-Core Fitness program already.

All of those body weight exercises are fantastic for weight loss, and keeping the muscle you already have, but if you want to really get strong you’ll need a gym with an assortment of free weights and equipment to be most efficient. Luckily most no-frills gym memberships aren’t too hard on the wallet these days.

Now let’s get started building those muscles and transforming yourself into a real-life superhero!

Total Body 3×5 Workout Plan

This beginner strength training guide is based on the Total Body 3 x 5 Workout Plan. This routine is all about creating functional strength and size, and it involves a lot of full-body routines with compound exercises that work multiple muscle groups at once.

Compound exercises are super efficient, they create solid growth and stimulation, and they will make you bulletproof keep you safe. When you do a lot of compound exercises like barbell squats or deadlifts, you are working pretty much every muscle in your body.

This lays the foundation for not only being strong, but injury free (assuming your form is good). This is why we aren’t going to waste our time with weight machines or vanity exercises on weight machines; they only work those specific muscles and ignore your stabilizer muscles. So put down the Men’s Health magazine, and forget about iso-chest flys, preacher curls, lat pulldowns or seated rows.

Instead, just embrace these few basic exercises and get really, really comfortable with them.

Your entire body will thank you as it gets bigger and stronger!

This basic strength program follows a three-day/week schedule.

I think a Monday-Wednesday-Friday or Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday split works best, that way you have two full rest days in-between each cycle. Simply alternate the two workouts below each week; the first week progressing 1  – 2  – 1 and then week two following 2 -1 – 2 and so on…

You are going to perform each exercise using the same weight, with 2-3 warm-up sets prior to what’s listed below. In addition to a basic overall warm-up these warm-up sets are required, as in not optional! Are we clear?

For each warm-up set use a relatively light weight (to avoid muscle fatigue setting in before you get down to business) and do the same amount of repetitions as you do during the real sets of that particular exercise (unless otherwise noted).

Before you begin, I highly recommend that you take some time to educate yourself on the proper way to perform these lifts by:

• Booking a session w/ a personal trainer and asking for instruction
• Spending an afternoon on Google and YouTube (I’ve included an example video on proper deadlift form below.)
• Reading Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe.

Proper technique should be your main concern as a beginner as it will maximize gains and prevent injury.

Workout #1

Workout #2

“How Much Weight Do I Lift?”

Batman didn’t start his crime-fighting career by taking on the Joker; he started easy, with low-level, light weight street crime. He needed to prepare himself for the real challenges ahead! And just like Batman, you are going to spend some time training with light weights as well!

Take the first 2-3 weeks you participate in this program and spend the time necessary to master the proper form of each movement (especially barbell squats and deadlifts!) and develop a strong foundation you can build on. So start with a weight that allows you to easily perform the given number of sets and reps in each workout.

In fact start with a weight that allows you to complete an additional 3-5 reps on top of what’s noted in the program. So if during your training phase you note you can bench press 100 lbs 13 times but can only do 8 reps at 125lbs. Start out with 100.

The goal is to have barely enough strength left to finish at the end of the last repetition of the last set for any given exercise.

“But What About My Sweet Abs?”

Six-pack abs.

The seemingly unattainable Holy Grail of fitness; a chimera if you will.

The reality is that abs are made in the kitchen, but even if you are eating clean and exercising attaining chiseled abs can feel like a Sisyphean task.

Luckily the compound exercises contained in this program (e.g. squats, deadlifts, and barbell rows) engage your abdominals, but if you want to really see some change in the midsection you are going to need some additional training.

Our Nerd-Core Fitness Beginner Ab Workout is a great place to start; hit that three times a week as well. You can either do them after you’ve completed the exercises in the above workouts (not before though, don’t want to fatigue your core before lifting heavy weight) or bang them out on your days off.

Your choice.

Making Progress!

Once you’ve figured out your starting weight, you need to understand how and when to increase the weight!

Getting strong only happens if you are constantly overloading your muscles with more and more weight. So you are going to have to keep track week to week of what you are lifting. If you’re always guessing how much you lifted during your last workout then you’re never going to efficiently optimize your progress.

You must keep a workout log!

Once you are keeping track of things, the progression itself very simple.

At the beginning of every other week you will adding a little weight. Here’s how:

• For bench press, squat, deadlift and barbell curls you will add 5 lbs to the bar (2.5 lbs per side)
• For bent-over dumbbell rows, dumbbell tricep extensions, and overhead dumbbell press you will use dumbbells weighing 2.5 lbs more.
• For dips add 2 reps.
• For pullups add 1 rep.

“What happens when my progress stalls?“

At some point your progress will slow down and you won’t be be able to complete your workout as planned.

This is a plateau. And it sucks.

Struggling with one workout might just be a fluke, but if two workouts in a row defeat you then you have a plateau to address. Don’t stress out though, the solution is simple… drop the weight by ~10% for the exercises you weren’t able to complete and get right back to it.

Don’t beat yourself up over it. Hitting the wall at some point and failing to achieve the desired reps completely normal!

Sometimes you just need to take a step or two back in order to start moving forward again.

“But What If I’m Trying to Lose Weight… what’s different?”

That depends.

What do you want to do first, build muscle or lose weight?

If your primary goal is getting bigger and stronger, you have to eat a calorie surplus. If you’re overweight and just starting out I’d be willing to bet you already operate with daily calorie surplus; so just start lifting and make a few smarter decisions when it comes to your diet! Once you’ve packed on the strength and size you want, adjust your diet; shift from a surplus to a calorie deficit by eating less, and then swim some laps or run sprints at the end of your workout or incorporate some HIIT into your program. That way you’ll start slimming down while maintaining your muscle mass.

If you just want to lose weight and don’t want bigger muscles, you’re still going to follow this program, you will just do it while running a slight daily caloric deficit. You won’t be building much muscle, but you’ll be burning off fat while maintaining the muscle you have. You are still going to get stronger, and soon the body you want will stop hiding under all of that fat!

Either way, this basic strength training guide will get you where you want to go.

One last thing, don’t focus on the numbers on the scale.

If you are lifting weights to lose weight you are going to be trading a lot of fat for muscle, so what you weigh might be a little deceiving. Just keep an eye on how your clothes fit, and how you look in the mirror, and adjust your daily calories until you find a good balance. If you feel like you have to measure something , then focus on measuring your body fat instead of your weight.

How to Not Suck at Strength Training

Compound Exercises FTW!

If you’re looking to level up your muscles, compound exercises are the way to go! These big movements engage multiple muscle groups simultaneously and most trainers will tell you that they are the key to accelerated results.

On the other side of the coin we have what are known as isolation exercises (aka “vanity exercises”) These types of exercises pinpoint specific muscles very well, but nothing else. So while preacher curls might pump your biceps up, that’s all it does; they don’t work anything else, and they don’t burn a lot of calories either.

This doesn’t mean never add isolation exercises into your routine to accentuate minor details, but compound movements should be the center of your strength training regimen and completed first on any given day’s workout.

Be Consistent

You can’t expect to get big and strong if you only workout “when you can”.

Any effective beginner strength training program MUST contain A) compound exercises and B) regular and frequent workouts!

If you want to reap all the benefits from your hard work you want to perform each exercise 2-3x per week. This is due to something called protein synthesis. Without drilling too deep, let me drop a little science on you – Muscles are built from protein, and your body (which is really efficient at allocating its resources) will maximize the creation of new protein when those muscles are trained frequently. This increased protein synthesis usually lasts around 36 hours after a taxing workout before it returns to its normal levels.

If you’re consistently performing full-body workouts several times per week, you will keep your body in a state of sustained muscle protein synthesis which will maximize your strength gains. SCIENCE!

“What If I Have Limited Time?”

Obviously I want you to follow this program exactly as outlined, but sometimes life just gets in the way.

I get it.

Work, kids, responsibilities, etc… they all can torpedo your best intentions; there will be times where you need to squeeze a shorter workout into your busy day. When this dark day comes, just modify the workout and only do the first three lifts.

Remember, consistency is key to a successful basic strength training programs so try as hard as possible to avoid skipping workouts. Finding the time to exercise can be a struggle at first (here are some tips for scheduling your workouts,) but once you get into a routine you it will get a lot easier.

Keep Challenging Yourself!

Trainers and kinesthesiologists love coining fancy words for basic concepts.

Pyramiding. Muscle confusion. Periodization. Fancy!

Another one you hear pretty commonly is progressive overload, and whether you’re a Level 1 N00b or a maxed out Level 80 Bodymancer it is a concept you need to understand.

Luckily, despite the pretentious name, it’s a very basic concept. Progressive overload is the concept that to build muscle you have to constantly challenge them with increasing weight. Your body is an amazing machine, and over time it will adapt to your workouts. It will come to expect the exercises, the weight, and even the number of repetitions you are performing!

So if you want to keep building muscle mass and increasing your strength you are going to have to put more and more stress on your muscles! Depending on your goals, this can be done a few different ways – Adding more reps, increasing the weight, performing explosive movements or doing negative lifts (another fancy term!)

However you do it, be sure that you don’t rest on your weight-lifting laurels too long. If you’re putting in the work, you should be seeing the results!

Check Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself

After a month or two you might feel like you’re capable of anything, a veritable king of the gym, or you might find yourself looking at some of the more experienced weight-lifters putting up serious weight and think to yourself “I can do that!”

When those thoughts invade your mind, and they will, I want you to take a deep breath and do a little soul-searching.

Getting fit, improving your physique and leveling up your health is a personal journey of self-improvement. You aren’t in this to impress, or compare yourself to, anyone else! You need to know your limits. If you let your ego get the better of you, and you use a weight that’s too heavy, you’ll end up, at a minimum, wasting that workout due to poor form or even worse you run a high risk of injury!

If you’re heading to the gym, whether it’s to follow the tips in this beginner strength training guide or to meet with a personal trainer, remember to leave your ego at home.

Go Forth And Lift Heavy Things!

This might not be the sexiest strength training program out there, but it is one of the simplest and most effective!

If you can combine this with the proper caloric intake and a clean, and healthy, diet you will see results… I promise!

Just remember, like any change you want to make in your life, this is going to take time. Just remember:

• Stay motivated
• Keep to the schedule
• Eat right
• Rest
• Challenge yourself
• Check your ego

If you follow these rules, be patient, and attack those weights with the fury of an angry Hulk the rest will follow.

Thoughts? Comments? Questions? Favorite compound exercise? Let’s chat about it in the comments below!

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(Photo #1 credit, Photo #5 credit)

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