A beginners guide to strength training.
Strength training is designed to improve your posture, speed up your metabolism, reduce injury’s and build lean muscle around the body.
Posture – Having a better overall posture requires you to activate muscle groups that may have switched off. Which is due to your lack of using them day to day, strength training is perfect for resolving this.
Injuries – Many people get injured from jumping straight into running or sports. Strength training carefully conditions your muscles, joints and tendons for the high impact in your chosen form of cardio exercise. Making you robust against injuries.
Fast metabolism – Building muscle is an investment because your body burns more calories at rest simply for having muscle. Which is why it’s important to strength train as you get older. Because that’s when we tend to lose muscle mass and our metabolisms then slow down.
Figure/physique – We can’t choose where to lose body fat, but we can sculpt a figure that we like by targeting different muscle groups whilst losing body fat. We can change our hip to waist ratio or your shoulders to waist ratio for example.
- What weights to do: Squats/ Bench press/Rows/Hinge move/Core move/Overhead press.
These lifts are the foundations of training and are key to getting stronger and fitter.
How many times per week: 3-5 Days.
How do I separate those days? Do full body workouts only. Aim to have a rest day between workouts but sometimes you might want to do Monday and Tuesday and that works too.
If not that, do strength training on Tuesday and your cardio activity Monday. (Most likely you’ll have some aches and pains the day after your strength workout if you are new to it)
- Aim to get 15+ grams of protein at each meal plus snacks if possible.
Protein is key to recovery from exercise, building muscle and keeping you full whilst exercising more.
Protein snacks – Nuts/Yoghurt/Protein bars/Protein shakes/Hummus and veg.
Bigger protein portions – All meats, all fish, eggs, oats, falafel, beans, chickpeas, soy products, tempeh, cottage cheese etc.
- Aim to get 12 -15 reps on the exercises you do, with 3 sets on each move. Then as that gets easier either up the weights, or up the reps and sometimes both.
Take rests between sets, 30-60 seconds, if you don’t need your rest in between sets you probably need to lift heavier.
You can also start including more advanced exercises in your workouts, doing supersets and circuits with different moves back to back to keep challenging yourself.
- Either get a training partner or coach to give you feedback on technique but also show you how much you are capable of.
If you train with someone at a similar level of fitness to you, that’s ideal as long as they are motivated too.
If they are ahead of you that can work because they can guide you along the way.
If you are the more advanced one and you are helping someone else it will give you more of a reason to push yourself and set a good example with technique, consistency etc.
If you get a coach, they will have awareness of all the factors that contribute to your goals that you may not have considered.
Not just your technique, motivation, tips and tricks and diet but also your…
Energy management, mindset, stress management, sleep, mental health and if you get a good coach, they will help you make training and eating better 10x easier.
Often in ways that you’ve never considered.
If you want my help in getting fitter and stronger and going from beginner to a winner.
Click here to send me a message 😊
