Training
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The training component of this 14-day program is entirely strength-based. I do not recommend cardio if long term fat loss is your goal. I've written extensively on why this is the case, so for a refresher, click here & here.
For at least these two weeks, make strength training your priority. I'm expecting you to enjoy the results so much that you're going to want to stick to most of these habits anyways, and this is no exception. You will be training on three days of the week, amounting to six days total over the next two weeks. Training sessions will begin at the same time on each training day. |
As with macro targets, a lot of consideration has to go into creating an optimal training routine. The majority of it revolves around what's known as your "training status." Since you're all new to the weight room, or returning from a long layoff, we can easily classify you as a "beginner." This means you have quite a bit of distance from where you currently stand & your genetic potential. In comparison to someone who has been routinely training hard, your body is primed to make a ton of new adaptations in response to training. But instead of diving right in to an advanced program, we can customize the parameters to better accommodate your specific status.
The main drivers or progress are training frequency & volume. As beginners, you can afford to maximize progress with a "minimal effective dose" of each.
Training frequency simply relates to the amount of times that you need to train a body part in order to achieve the desired adaptations. As a beginner, that amounts to hitting any given body part 1-2 times per week. Your body responds to training by boosting your ability to create lean tissue. It does this so that you are better able to handle that same stressor (yes, exercise is a "stress" on the body) in the future. The 3000 foot view: more lean mass = more strength = better ability to to do the same workout. Note that over time, we're not simply trying to do the same workout, we're trying to adapt to the point where we can add weight to a given exercise & continually progress. This is known as "progressive overload." I'll explain that later.
This phenomena of increasing your body's ability to create lean mass is called "increasing protein synthesis." You are constantly breaking down (catabolizing) & building up (synthesizing) tissue in your body, and certain things encourage your body to do more of one than the other. Strength training obviously encourages you to build more tissue so you can better handle that stress. When beginners train, their ability to synthesize new protein skyrockets and stays elevated for roughly 72 hours (yes, 3 full days). Training one body part once a week as a beginner gives you 3 full days to encourage the addition of new lean mass. This is why a higher protein intake is vital across all days; you want to give your body the material it needs to complete that process. This window of opportunity, often called the "Anabolic Window," gets much shorter as you approach your genetic potential. But for now, as beginners, we can effectively prescribe a frequency of one day per week for each body part and cover all of our bases.
Your nervous system also adapts to training, just like your muscles do. In fact, in the beginning stages of working out, you gain quite a bit of strength on any given exercise simply from your nervous system adapting and becoming better at the movement itself. I wrote about this extensively in this article if you want to learn more. It's just like riding a bike: in the beginning, you have no frame of reference & look like a baby giraffe on wheels, but after a while, it becomes second nature. The same process happens when learning a new exercise.
Volume should be thought of as the number of sets you do over the course of a week for a given body part. For instance, if you do 4 sets of squats twice a week, the total volume for your quads (the prime mover in the squat) is 8 sets. The amount of weight you use & the amount of reps you do per set also play a role in total volume, but for now, we'll focus on the number of sets.
As beginners, 10-12 sets per body part is likely all you need to encourage the proper adaptations to strength training. Since we're training each body part only once a week, we need to get all of our sets in on that one specific training day. Dividing up your work like this also allows you to train on successive days if necessary. I recommend giving yourself one full day off between workouts, but if your schedule doesn't allow for this, you can easily do any of these workouts back-to-back without reducing your ability to recover, since you will be training entirely different muscles.
Taking these considerations together, I've created a workout regimen that accommodates all of these variables. You will be performing 3 workouts each week, one targeting your "pushing" muscles (chest, triceps, front delts), one targeting your "pulling" muscles (lats, traps, biceps & lateral delts), and one targeting your legs (quads, hamstrings & calves). The number of exercises & number of sets per exercise during each workout will add up to the 10-12 range, which will ensure you are getting enough volume to progress.
Before we get to the specific workouts & instructional videos on how to perform each exercise, I want to explain a few more things:
- Warming Up: Any general warming up you do before the workout shouldn't take more than 5 minutes. The main point is to get your body temperature warm, as your musculature operates better in that state. That's it. So throw on a hoodie and ride a stationary bike for 5 minutes; don't do a 25-minute-dynamic-ultra-foam-rolling-circuit-WOD because someone told you it boosts performance. Lifting is a highly specific task, so warm your body up and focus your energy on the specific Warm Up Sets for a given exercise. Dynamic stretching & foam rolling won't hurt you, so if you LOVE these activities, you can do them quickly. But they also won't help you much (if at all). Cliffs Notes: Your general warmup should last roughly 5 minutes & get you warm. You can do some dynamic stretching & foam rolling if you really love it.
- Warm Up Sets: These sets will be performed before your working sets and offer an opportunity to practice good form with lighter weight while also warming up your body temperature. You should perform 1-2 warm up sets before each exercise. For example, if you find that your working weight for squats is 100 lbs, then you could do a set with 50 lbs & a set with 80 lbs to prepare for the work ahead.
- Rep Range: Remember that article I linked to in the macro guidelines that spoke of gender differences in diet & training? Another big one that people don't consider is how your rep targets per set should change based on your muscle fiber profile, and males differ from females in this regard. Unfortunately, it's not as simple as telling everyone "go squat 4 sets for 12 reps." By now, you should see that very little in your program should be generic, and this is no exception. Males tend to have much more of the "explosive" Type 2 muscle fibers in all muscle groups of their body compared to females. This means that males should lift more explosively (discussed in Rep Tempo below) & with a lower rep target than females. By contrast, females have much more Type 1 muscle fibers in all muscle groups; these muscle fibers respond optimally to a slightly more "endurance type" stimulus. This is not to say women should only stick to endurance training, but it may very well explain why women intuitively gravitate towards cardio in the first place. Instead, this can be accounted for by simply prescribing a higher rep target on each set. In practice, this will likely mean more women will benefit from ~15 reps per set of a given exercise, while most men will benefit from ~8 reps per set. These differences are programmed into your template already. Note that not all men & women follow this rule by default, and there's actually a way to test your unique muscle fiber profile to give more specific prescriptions on any given exercise, which I do with all of my full-time clients. For now, know that these different rep ranges will likely provide you the most benefit based on your gender.
- Rest Periods: Roughly 1.5-2 minutes for females, roughly 2-3 minutes for males. This again relates back to muscle fiber profile. Time this with a stopwatch (use the app on your phone).
- Rep Tempo: Another thing that differs between genders. Relating to the endurance fiber type for females, they may be best served at lifting at a slightly less than explosive speed. This means you're still moving the weight fast, but it will be in a controlled manner in all portions of the rep. There's no reason to time any portion of your rep, as many trainers do. A 10-second rep, for example, is a stupid idea. Whereas males should be lifting as explosively as possible & aim to move the weight as fast as they can under control, females should fall one notch below this (and tend to do this by default).
- Going to Failure: This is an incredibly popular tactic used by gym bros everywhere. "Failure" on a given set is the point where you can not physically perform another rep. This leads to excessive grunting, slamming of weights, and any other overdramatic tendency you can imagine. Failure is not the goal of any exercise. Consistently going to failure on every set not only causes an excessive amount of fatigue that hampers your recovery, but it also prevents you from being able to do quality work on any successive set. Think about it: if you've exerted yourself maximally on your first set, you're not going to have enough in the tank to make the remaining sets worthwhile. We need to flirt with failure, not get into a committed relationship with it. Accordingly, you should select a weight that allows you to achieve your rep target on a given set while still feeling like you have "one or two reps in the tank." This ensures that we're doing enough effortful work to encourage adaptations without overtaxing ourselves. As an added bonus, you'll be able to do more reps on your successive sets as a result of not going to failure, meaning you'll inherently be getting more volume of work done. This leads to faster progress. Knowing your proximity to failure does take some practice, and it's easier to gauge once you've actually been there once or twice, so actually failing on a set once or twice in these two weeks isn't all bad. Just keep in mind that you should be using a weight that allows you to meet/exceed your rep target while keeping a little "gas in the tank," so to speak.
- Selecting Weight, Benchmark Setting & Progressive Overload: This very intuitive process. Lets use squats for an example, and let's imagine you're a female, so your rep target is 15. You do a set of bodyweight squats to continue warming up, and then you get under an unloaded barbell in the squat rack. You perform a set of 15 with no weight on the barbell, which by itself weighs 45 lbs, and you find that that was easy. Count that as a warm up set. Now you add 5 lb plates to the bar (so a total of 10 lbs, never add weight to only one side of the bar unless you want to find yourself on the next YouTube compilation of gym fails), and repeat the process after resting your prescribed length of time. 55 lbs x 15 reps is still pretty easy. Rest another 1.5-2 minutes, add 10 more lbs, and repeat. Do this until you find a weight that makes 15 reps challenging, but stay away from failure as previously noted. Let's say you get all the way up to 75 lbs x 15 reps & feel like this is the point where adding more weight won't allow you to get to 15 reps without failing. This becomes your "Benchmark." 75 lbs x 15 reps in what you'd pencil in as your first working set, and you'd complete the remaining number of working sets with that same weight. You will find that this rep total probably decreases across the rest of your sets, and this is to be expected since you're accumulating fatigue. If you're doing 5 sets, that may look like: 75 lbs x 15, 15, 14, 13, 13, or something similar. If you're able to do 15 reps for every set, you can likely use a little bit more weight to begin with. However, now that we know 75 lbs is your working weight, we can work on progressing this number in each successive session.
The next time you go into the gym to do squats (so for you guys, next week), you'll do a few warm up sets with less than 75 lbs, since we know that's your previous benchmark. But now, since you know you've done 75 lbs x 15 reps already, you are going to want to add the minimal amount of weight possible to the bar & attempt to approach that same rep target. Most (or all) gyms have weight plates that are 2.5 lbs, so you can advance any barbell exercise in 5 lb increments with ease. Dumbbell exercises generally go up by 5 lbs a piece, so that means the smallest jump is 10 lbs total (remember, always use the same weight with each arm). Machines have a wide variety of increments; some increase by 5 lbs at a time, others at 15 lbs. The point is to make the smallest jump up & attempt to reach your rep target once again.
Continuing our example, that means our trainee now has 80 lbs total between the barbell & the weight plates. If she can complete 15 reps, then we know for sure that she has made progress between sessions. This is called "Progressive Overload," the very fundament of training; we always want to be giving our body a tougher stimulus to deal with to continually encourage adaptations. As beginners, it's very reasonable to expect that you can add 5-10 lbs to every exercise every successive time you perform it, since your nervous system & muscular system are both accommodating to the exercise at a rapid pace. This is commonly known as "Newbie Gains," and is actually a great thing that gives you instant returns & helps keep you motivated. Trust me, this doesn't last long, so enjoy it!
But let's back track and imagine she can't get a full 15 reps with 80 lbs; say she can only get 12 reps while staying away from failure. What happens then? This is also perfectly normal, so don't get discouraged. You're still using a heavier weight, so your body interprets this as an increased stimulus all the same. She'd simply complete the remaining sets with 80 lbs & note the reps per set, and the next time she comes into the gym, she'd stay at 80 lbs. This is where the Benchmark comes into play: there's no reason to add more weight until you achieve the given rep target, that would be excessive. The next time she comes into the gym, she will simply try again with 80 lbs. You only increase the weight by the smallest increment once you've met/exceeded your rep target on a given exercise, and it can take anywhere from 1-3 sessions for most beginners to accomplish this.
This is called "Linear Periodization," a fancy way to say "consistently adding the same amount of weight." For more advanced trainees working with much heavier loads, this type of progression doesn't make sense, which is why people who don't know this find themselves stuck at the same weight for months on end. But as beginners, this type of progression fits your needs perfectly. Find your working weight correctly the first time, and use your benchmark as a guide to progression.
- Cardio: Lol. Don't waste your time.
- Session Length: You should have no problems finishing each session in about an hour. Each set will likely take about 30-45 seconds, and your rest periods will be roughly 2 minutes. Even on the high end, and factoring in warm up sets, you're looking at a total time commitment close to 50-60 minutes.
- Soreness: This will be inevitable, since all of the exercises you will be performing are likely new to you. Muscle Damage, also known as Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS), is markedly higher in beginners vs people who routinely lift due to the Repeated Bout Effect. Don't let this discourage you! Take solace in the fact that the more often you do an exercise, the less soreness you will experience as a result, since your will be getting stronger & your nervous system will be catching up to the task. Training in general also offers a form of active recovery, since it dramatically increases your blood flow.
- Training Time: As mentioned before in the diet unit, you're going to want to schedule your training session in the evening. You already learned about the importance of maintaining a proper Circadian Rhythm, and I'll be pounding that point home again in the next unit, but it also applies here. If at all possible, schedule your training session in the evening, between 4 PM - 8 PM. Your nervous system, hormonal profile, body temperature & biorythym are all primed to encourage optimal performance at this time. If you can't train at this time, pick a time & stick to it. Even when training at a non-optimal time, your body adapts and makes up some of the performance decrement. Again, habits are a big part of this program, and I'd consider making your training time a priority an excellent habit. As you get more advanced, you will be shocked at how "strange" (a.k.a. not good) training at a different time feels.
The main drivers or progress are training frequency & volume. As beginners, you can afford to maximize progress with a "minimal effective dose" of each.
Training frequency simply relates to the amount of times that you need to train a body part in order to achieve the desired adaptations. As a beginner, that amounts to hitting any given body part 1-2 times per week. Your body responds to training by boosting your ability to create lean tissue. It does this so that you are better able to handle that same stressor (yes, exercise is a "stress" on the body) in the future. The 3000 foot view: more lean mass = more strength = better ability to to do the same workout. Note that over time, we're not simply trying to do the same workout, we're trying to adapt to the point where we can add weight to a given exercise & continually progress. This is known as "progressive overload." I'll explain that later.
This phenomena of increasing your body's ability to create lean mass is called "increasing protein synthesis." You are constantly breaking down (catabolizing) & building up (synthesizing) tissue in your body, and certain things encourage your body to do more of one than the other. Strength training obviously encourages you to build more tissue so you can better handle that stress. When beginners train, their ability to synthesize new protein skyrockets and stays elevated for roughly 72 hours (yes, 3 full days). Training one body part once a week as a beginner gives you 3 full days to encourage the addition of new lean mass. This is why a higher protein intake is vital across all days; you want to give your body the material it needs to complete that process. This window of opportunity, often called the "Anabolic Window," gets much shorter as you approach your genetic potential. But for now, as beginners, we can effectively prescribe a frequency of one day per week for each body part and cover all of our bases.
Your nervous system also adapts to training, just like your muscles do. In fact, in the beginning stages of working out, you gain quite a bit of strength on any given exercise simply from your nervous system adapting and becoming better at the movement itself. I wrote about this extensively in this article if you want to learn more. It's just like riding a bike: in the beginning, you have no frame of reference & look like a baby giraffe on wheels, but after a while, it becomes second nature. The same process happens when learning a new exercise.
Volume should be thought of as the number of sets you do over the course of a week for a given body part. For instance, if you do 4 sets of squats twice a week, the total volume for your quads (the prime mover in the squat) is 8 sets. The amount of weight you use & the amount of reps you do per set also play a role in total volume, but for now, we'll focus on the number of sets.
As beginners, 10-12 sets per body part is likely all you need to encourage the proper adaptations to strength training. Since we're training each body part only once a week, we need to get all of our sets in on that one specific training day. Dividing up your work like this also allows you to train on successive days if necessary. I recommend giving yourself one full day off between workouts, but if your schedule doesn't allow for this, you can easily do any of these workouts back-to-back without reducing your ability to recover, since you will be training entirely different muscles.
Taking these considerations together, I've created a workout regimen that accommodates all of these variables. You will be performing 3 workouts each week, one targeting your "pushing" muscles (chest, triceps, front delts), one targeting your "pulling" muscles (lats, traps, biceps & lateral delts), and one targeting your legs (quads, hamstrings & calves). The number of exercises & number of sets per exercise during each workout will add up to the 10-12 range, which will ensure you are getting enough volume to progress.
Before we get to the specific workouts & instructional videos on how to perform each exercise, I want to explain a few more things:
- Warming Up: Any general warming up you do before the workout shouldn't take more than 5 minutes. The main point is to get your body temperature warm, as your musculature operates better in that state. That's it. So throw on a hoodie and ride a stationary bike for 5 minutes; don't do a 25-minute-dynamic-ultra-foam-rolling-circuit-WOD because someone told you it boosts performance. Lifting is a highly specific task, so warm your body up and focus your energy on the specific Warm Up Sets for a given exercise. Dynamic stretching & foam rolling won't hurt you, so if you LOVE these activities, you can do them quickly. But they also won't help you much (if at all). Cliffs Notes: Your general warmup should last roughly 5 minutes & get you warm. You can do some dynamic stretching & foam rolling if you really love it.
- Warm Up Sets: These sets will be performed before your working sets and offer an opportunity to practice good form with lighter weight while also warming up your body temperature. You should perform 1-2 warm up sets before each exercise. For example, if you find that your working weight for squats is 100 lbs, then you could do a set with 50 lbs & a set with 80 lbs to prepare for the work ahead.
- Rep Range: Remember that article I linked to in the macro guidelines that spoke of gender differences in diet & training? Another big one that people don't consider is how your rep targets per set should change based on your muscle fiber profile, and males differ from females in this regard. Unfortunately, it's not as simple as telling everyone "go squat 4 sets for 12 reps." By now, you should see that very little in your program should be generic, and this is no exception. Males tend to have much more of the "explosive" Type 2 muscle fibers in all muscle groups of their body compared to females. This means that males should lift more explosively (discussed in Rep Tempo below) & with a lower rep target than females. By contrast, females have much more Type 1 muscle fibers in all muscle groups; these muscle fibers respond optimally to a slightly more "endurance type" stimulus. This is not to say women should only stick to endurance training, but it may very well explain why women intuitively gravitate towards cardio in the first place. Instead, this can be accounted for by simply prescribing a higher rep target on each set. In practice, this will likely mean more women will benefit from ~15 reps per set of a given exercise, while most men will benefit from ~8 reps per set. These differences are programmed into your template already. Note that not all men & women follow this rule by default, and there's actually a way to test your unique muscle fiber profile to give more specific prescriptions on any given exercise, which I do with all of my full-time clients. For now, know that these different rep ranges will likely provide you the most benefit based on your gender.
- Rest Periods: Roughly 1.5-2 minutes for females, roughly 2-3 minutes for males. This again relates back to muscle fiber profile. Time this with a stopwatch (use the app on your phone).
- Rep Tempo: Another thing that differs between genders. Relating to the endurance fiber type for females, they may be best served at lifting at a slightly less than explosive speed. This means you're still moving the weight fast, but it will be in a controlled manner in all portions of the rep. There's no reason to time any portion of your rep, as many trainers do. A 10-second rep, for example, is a stupid idea. Whereas males should be lifting as explosively as possible & aim to move the weight as fast as they can under control, females should fall one notch below this (and tend to do this by default).
- Going to Failure: This is an incredibly popular tactic used by gym bros everywhere. "Failure" on a given set is the point where you can not physically perform another rep. This leads to excessive grunting, slamming of weights, and any other overdramatic tendency you can imagine. Failure is not the goal of any exercise. Consistently going to failure on every set not only causes an excessive amount of fatigue that hampers your recovery, but it also prevents you from being able to do quality work on any successive set. Think about it: if you've exerted yourself maximally on your first set, you're not going to have enough in the tank to make the remaining sets worthwhile. We need to flirt with failure, not get into a committed relationship with it. Accordingly, you should select a weight that allows you to achieve your rep target on a given set while still feeling like you have "one or two reps in the tank." This ensures that we're doing enough effortful work to encourage adaptations without overtaxing ourselves. As an added bonus, you'll be able to do more reps on your successive sets as a result of not going to failure, meaning you'll inherently be getting more volume of work done. This leads to faster progress. Knowing your proximity to failure does take some practice, and it's easier to gauge once you've actually been there once or twice, so actually failing on a set once or twice in these two weeks isn't all bad. Just keep in mind that you should be using a weight that allows you to meet/exceed your rep target while keeping a little "gas in the tank," so to speak.
- Selecting Weight, Benchmark Setting & Progressive Overload: This very intuitive process. Lets use squats for an example, and let's imagine you're a female, so your rep target is 15. You do a set of bodyweight squats to continue warming up, and then you get under an unloaded barbell in the squat rack. You perform a set of 15 with no weight on the barbell, which by itself weighs 45 lbs, and you find that that was easy. Count that as a warm up set. Now you add 5 lb plates to the bar (so a total of 10 lbs, never add weight to only one side of the bar unless you want to find yourself on the next YouTube compilation of gym fails), and repeat the process after resting your prescribed length of time. 55 lbs x 15 reps is still pretty easy. Rest another 1.5-2 minutes, add 10 more lbs, and repeat. Do this until you find a weight that makes 15 reps challenging, but stay away from failure as previously noted. Let's say you get all the way up to 75 lbs x 15 reps & feel like this is the point where adding more weight won't allow you to get to 15 reps without failing. This becomes your "Benchmark." 75 lbs x 15 reps in what you'd pencil in as your first working set, and you'd complete the remaining number of working sets with that same weight. You will find that this rep total probably decreases across the rest of your sets, and this is to be expected since you're accumulating fatigue. If you're doing 5 sets, that may look like: 75 lbs x 15, 15, 14, 13, 13, or something similar. If you're able to do 15 reps for every set, you can likely use a little bit more weight to begin with. However, now that we know 75 lbs is your working weight, we can work on progressing this number in each successive session.
The next time you go into the gym to do squats (so for you guys, next week), you'll do a few warm up sets with less than 75 lbs, since we know that's your previous benchmark. But now, since you know you've done 75 lbs x 15 reps already, you are going to want to add the minimal amount of weight possible to the bar & attempt to approach that same rep target. Most (or all) gyms have weight plates that are 2.5 lbs, so you can advance any barbell exercise in 5 lb increments with ease. Dumbbell exercises generally go up by 5 lbs a piece, so that means the smallest jump is 10 lbs total (remember, always use the same weight with each arm). Machines have a wide variety of increments; some increase by 5 lbs at a time, others at 15 lbs. The point is to make the smallest jump up & attempt to reach your rep target once again.
Continuing our example, that means our trainee now has 80 lbs total between the barbell & the weight plates. If she can complete 15 reps, then we know for sure that she has made progress between sessions. This is called "Progressive Overload," the very fundament of training; we always want to be giving our body a tougher stimulus to deal with to continually encourage adaptations. As beginners, it's very reasonable to expect that you can add 5-10 lbs to every exercise every successive time you perform it, since your nervous system & muscular system are both accommodating to the exercise at a rapid pace. This is commonly known as "Newbie Gains," and is actually a great thing that gives you instant returns & helps keep you motivated. Trust me, this doesn't last long, so enjoy it!
But let's back track and imagine she can't get a full 15 reps with 80 lbs; say she can only get 12 reps while staying away from failure. What happens then? This is also perfectly normal, so don't get discouraged. You're still using a heavier weight, so your body interprets this as an increased stimulus all the same. She'd simply complete the remaining sets with 80 lbs & note the reps per set, and the next time she comes into the gym, she'd stay at 80 lbs. This is where the Benchmark comes into play: there's no reason to add more weight until you achieve the given rep target, that would be excessive. The next time she comes into the gym, she will simply try again with 80 lbs. You only increase the weight by the smallest increment once you've met/exceeded your rep target on a given exercise, and it can take anywhere from 1-3 sessions for most beginners to accomplish this.
This is called "Linear Periodization," a fancy way to say "consistently adding the same amount of weight." For more advanced trainees working with much heavier loads, this type of progression doesn't make sense, which is why people who don't know this find themselves stuck at the same weight for months on end. But as beginners, this type of progression fits your needs perfectly. Find your working weight correctly the first time, and use your benchmark as a guide to progression.
- Cardio: Lol. Don't waste your time.
- Session Length: You should have no problems finishing each session in about an hour. Each set will likely take about 30-45 seconds, and your rest periods will be roughly 2 minutes. Even on the high end, and factoring in warm up sets, you're looking at a total time commitment close to 50-60 minutes.
- Soreness: This will be inevitable, since all of the exercises you will be performing are likely new to you. Muscle Damage, also known as Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS), is markedly higher in beginners vs people who routinely lift due to the Repeated Bout Effect. Don't let this discourage you! Take solace in the fact that the more often you do an exercise, the less soreness you will experience as a result, since your will be getting stronger & your nervous system will be catching up to the task. Training in general also offers a form of active recovery, since it dramatically increases your blood flow.
- Training Time: As mentioned before in the diet unit, you're going to want to schedule your training session in the evening. You already learned about the importance of maintaining a proper Circadian Rhythm, and I'll be pounding that point home again in the next unit, but it also applies here. If at all possible, schedule your training session in the evening, between 4 PM - 8 PM. Your nervous system, hormonal profile, body temperature & biorythym are all primed to encourage optimal performance at this time. If you can't train at this time, pick a time & stick to it. Even when training at a non-optimal time, your body adapts and makes up some of the performance decrement. Again, habits are a big part of this program, and I'd consider making your training time a priority an excellent habit. As you get more advanced, you will be shocked at how "strange" (a.k.a. not good) training at a different time feels.
Workout #1 & 4: Push
Dumbbell Bench PressMachine Fly*Overhead Tricep Extensions |
- DB Bench Press: The more you flare your elbows, the more you emphasize your chest; the more you bring your elbows toward your side, the more you involve your triceps. The choice is yours (I flare my elbows). Maintain contact between your shoulders & hips with the bench at all times. Drive your toes into the floor to help you create force when lifting the weight. Think of "sticking your shoulders in your back pocket" to keep the arch in your spine tight. When lowering the weight, think about pulling it into your body. On the way up, make sure your forearms and wrists stay straight; no bending the wrists or creating some wacky angle with your forearm. This creates a force leak, which reduces the amount of weight you can use.
- Machine Fly: Make sure the arms of the machine are at a height where your own arms are at the mid-chest level throughout the rep. The asterisk is to note that the machine in your gym may look different than the one in the video. The machine will commonly be labeled "Chest Fly," "Machine Fly" or "Pec Deck." Keep your shoulders back & brace your core. Drive your toes into the ground to create more force. - Overhead Tricep Extensions: Don't get too far away from the cable pulley, as this will reduce the tension on your triceps. As with the other exercises, control the weight at all times. Keep your shoulders back & brace your core. |
Workouts #2 & 5: Pull
Wide-Grip PulldownsCable RowsDB Lateral Raises |
- Wide-Grip Pulldowns: Keep a wide grip on the bar on the section that is slightly bent and think of your fingers as hooks; wrap your fingers around the bar first, and then wrap your thumbs. As opposed to what was mentioned in the video, you're going to start the motion positioned directly underneath the bar, so as you bring the weight to your sternum (the boney part of your upper chest), you need to make sure slightly arch your upper back to you get your head out of the way! You're using your lats, the biggest muscle in your back, to pull the bar toward you. You're going to get very "friendly" with the pad on the weight machine. Drive your toes into the ground to create more force.
- Cable Rows: Maintain contact with the seat at all times. Keep your shoulders back & pull the handle towards your belly button. Control the weight & brace your core. - DB Laterals: DB = dumbbells. Don't let all of the tension go when the weight is at your sides; as soon as one rep is done, start the next. Keep your shoulders "in your back pocket." As opposed to what the video says, you're going to want to keep your elbows as straight as possible (very slight bend is okay). At the top of the rep, envision "pouring out a glass." When you keep your pinkies higher than the rest of your handle, you isolate the lateral delt more. Try to use as little momentum from your legs as possible. |
Workout #3 & 6: Legs
SquatsRomanian DeadliftLeg ExtensionsLeg Curls* |
- Squats: Males tend to place the bar high on their traps & take a shoulder-width stance (often called a "high bar squat"), whereas women tend to keep their feet much wider and carry the bar lower on their shoulder blades (often called a "low bar squat"). With squats, hand placement on the bar, bar placement on your back & foot placement are all going to be highly individual, so you're going to want to experiment. When you descend in a squat, brace your core as if someone's about to punch you, and exhale on the way up. Don't simply "sit down," envision splitting the ground apart beneath you while opening up your groin area (excellent visual, right?). This will keep your knees tracking over your ankles, which is ideal. You're always going to keep your feet on the same line, so if there's a line on the floor of your gym, you can ensure your feet aren't staggered by simply setting up on the line. Don't let your knees cave in & don't overly round/arch your back. You want a neutral spine. The easiest way to do this is by keeping the bar tight against your upper back and not letting your head fall forward. Keep everything tight and explode up out of the hole. A very easy way to make sure your hips are square for each rep: squeeze your glutes before descending. (Note: if you train at Planet Fitness, you may not have access to a full squat rack. If this is the case, you have 3 options: 1) use the smaller barbells, just be careful getting them over your head! 2) you can use two dumbbells instead and carry them on your shoulders similar to how you'd use a barbell (recommended) 3) You can use a Smith Machine, which is basically a "barbell machine." I don't like this method, since it unnaturally restricts your movement pattern, but Planet Fitness often has a ton of these & few/no actual squat racks.)
- Romanian Deadlift: RDL = Romanian Deadlift. The goal of this exercise is not to see how flexible you are. Most people only need to lower the bar slightly past their knees. Brace yourself as you would with a squat, and keep your shoulders "in your back pocket" to maintain the arch in your spine. The bar should be as close to your body as possible at all times. Think about sliding your hips back to touch the wall behind you with your butt, and push through your heels to complete the rep. When unracking the bar (from the floor or from the squat rack), get as close to it as possible. The further it is from you, the harder (and more dangerous) the lift becomes. - Leg Extensions: Set the pad so that there's some tension on your quads even before starting a rep; you don't want to pad far away from your legs. Squeeze at the top of each rep. Brace your core & control the weight. - Leg Curls: Another asterisk, since some gyms have a seated variation of this same exercise. That works all the same. Same cues for the other exercises: brace your core, control the weight & squeeze at the top. |
Helpful Visuals
Squat
Left: High Bar, Right: Low Bar
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DB Bench Press
Notice: shoulders/hips in contact with the bench, toes pointed into the floor for extra drive, & vertical forearms/writsts.
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Romanian Deadlift
Get your hips back, keep your spine arched & don't go lower than your body is comfortable with.
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Wide-Grip Pulldowns
Note where she's grabbing the bar (you're going to want to wrap your thumbs around it though) and where she's bringing the bar to her chest.
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