Want to Start Working Out? Here’s How. A Beginner’s Guide to Getting Fit.

By Sahil Handa. Sahil is a student at Harvard University as well as a health and fitness aficionado.

If you are reading this article, the chances are that you are thinking about beginning a fitness routine and you have come across too much information to know where to start. That’s completely common – the fitness industry is a world plagued full of misinformation – so I’m writing this article to simplify all of that and tell you what you need to know.

Establishing Your Goals

I’m amazed by the number of people who tell me that they want to begin working out and haven’t yet thought about why. There a whole host of reasons that taking your fitness seriously is a great decision, but it’s important to have an idea of what’s most important to you. Those reasons can range from the common (weight loss, muscle gain, or wanting to improve general health/longevity,) to the rare (running a marathon, joining the military, climbing a mountain.) The important thing to realize is that one goal isn’t necessarily superior to any other; it’s entirely dependent on your own lifestyle, situation, and individual ambitions. Furthermore, it’s worth noting that choosing to focus on open goal does not mean you can’t accomplish a different one. All of these goals overlap, but it’s important to have an idea of why you’re beginning to work out so that you can tailor your program and measure your progress.

Determining Your Schedule

Once you have a goal in mind, the next step is to set up a realistic schedule. Fitness programs can involve training anywhere from two to six times per week, with extremely variable results. It’s important to be realistic when you assign yourself a number of workouts a week, because consistency over a long period of time will produce far better outcomes than flipping and flopping on a high frequency routine. Ask yourself how many days you are willing to dedicate to your physical fitness and how long you are willing to spend each day. Once you have that information, you’re ready to move on to creating your workout split.

Creating the Perfect Split

A “workout split” is a fancy term for the manner in which you separate your exercises into different workouts. This can mean delineating between cardio and weights, or, most frequently, is used to describe how you tactically work different body parts on different days in order to best facilitate your goals. Coming up with the right split for you is a balancing act between enjoyment and effectiveness. In order to simplify the process, I’ve noted below the most effective splits for different training frequencies below[1]:

2 days per week: Two Full-Body Workouts or Two Upper Body/Lower Body Workouts

3 days per week: Three Full-Body Workouts

4 days per week: Upper/Lower/Rest/Upper/Lower/Rest

5 days per week: Push/Pull/Legs/Rest

Push refers to any movements that involve pushing a weight away from your body
Pull refers to any movements that involve that involving pulling a weight towards your body
Legs refers to any movements that target the lower body (including glutes and calves)

Bear in mind that you can take any of these splits and customize it towards what works for you. Personalization is everything, because the most important thing about a training split is that you make it something you can stick to.[2] If you do choose to adjust things for yourself, just know that it’s not advisable to work the same body part within a 48-hour time period.[3] Muscles grow stronger and larger (and performance improves) during rest and recovery, not training. Working a muscle every day might seem like the best way to achieve quick results, but scientists have proved time and time again that this is not the case.

Exercise Selection

Once you have decided on a workout split, it’s time to begin picking your exercises. This is one area of fitness for which there is some good and bad advice irrespective of your goals. Namely, it is advisable to stick to compound movements as much as possible.[4] What does that mean? It means basing the bulk of your workout around exercises that tax more than one part of your body; exercises that involve the movement of your body through space. Some examples of compound bodyweight exercises include pushups, pullups, dips, sprints, and lunges. Some examples of compound lifts include the bench press, free weight rows, overhead presses, and weighted squats. Those two lists beg the question: should I stick to bodyweight exercises or start using weights in the gym? The answer, surprise surprise, depends on your goals. A general principle to follow in most circumstances is that the best training principle is to mimic the activity that you would like to get good at. In other words, if you want to run a marathon, your workouts should be based around running; if you want to climb a mountain, your workouts should be based around lunges and cardio. That may all seem self-explanatory, but things begin to get more complex when your goals are related to health and body composition. The proven best way to improve general health is to improve your muscle to body fat ratio.[5] And if your primary goal is to build muscle and/or lose fat, you’re best off combining weight training with calisthenics (a fancy word for bodyweight exercises.[6]) The reason for this is that the key to making progress in these respects is progressive overload (a fancy word for increasing reps, weight, or intensity over time.[7]) If you are running or climbing, you can create progressive overload by increasing your distance or time. If you are working your muscles, however, doing more pushups/pullups will not necessarily equal more or less fat/muscle lost and gained.[8] Eventually, you’re going to arrive at a point in time where you can’t make bodyweight exercises more difficult – that’s where weights come in[9].

Rep and Set Ranges

The reason that weights are important for improving body compositions is that the optimal rep range for building muscle is anywhere between 6 and 14 reps – this is known as the “hypertrophy” rep range.[10] You can definitely gain muscle working in different ranges, but if your primary goal is improving your body composition, you are better of sticking somewhere in this ballpark. And the same goes for fat loss. People are often under the misconception that losing fat simply means doing less cardio and eating less. That will certainly make you lose weight, but to specifically lose fat (and improve your body’s health and appearance,) it’s important to apply the same principles as you do for building muscle. That means making incremental improvements in the 6-14 rep range over time. This is particularly important for your compound lifts, but you should also aim to make small progress on your isolation movements (any exercise that targets one muscle e.g. bicep curls, tricep extensions, chest flys.) In terms of total sets/reps per workout, the optimal amount of volume appears to be roughly 6-12 sets per bodypart per week (with splitting these sets up into two workouts more effective than packing them all into one day.[11]) Once again, it is possible to make great progress without following this protocol; it is simply a recommendation for maximizing your results. If you find yourself staying in the gym for longer than an hour and fifteen moments (not including warmup/cardio,) in all likelihood you are going overboard.[12] A good rule of thumb: do the minimum amount of total volume with which you can make consistent progress.[13] If your weights/reps begin to plateau and you are struggling to progressively overload, you can always adjust.

If your main goal is not related to body composition, your optimal rep ranges begin to change. If you want to run a marathon, you should be focusing on cardiovascular ability and muscular endurance. The former can be achieved by going on more and more difficult runs; the latter can be achieved by improving your amount of weight/number of reps in the 14+ rep range. If, in contrast, your primary ambition is to build strength, you should focus mostly on the 1-6 rep range.[14] That’s why you might see a lot of powerlifters or Olympic weightlifters testing their 1-rep maxes in the gym. This isn’t most effective for health or body composition, because there’s a heightened injury risk and less of a focus on the eccentric part of an exercise (the contraction of a muscle group during a movement is the part during which the muscle tissue is broken down.) However, it is the most effective way to increase the amount of weight you can lift.[15] And with regards to set ranges, overall volume becomes less important when training primarily for strength.

Focus on Improvement, Not Variety

Before we finish, let’s clear up a misconception that you often hear about beginner’s workout routines. The first one is that you need to “shock your muscles” every time you go in the gym in order to keep them breaking down in order to allow them to rebuild. The premise behind this statement is completely right; your body needs to have a reason to repair itself. The recommendation, however is completely wrong. If you change your entire workout every time you train, it becomes impossible to track whether or not you are making progress. The best way to force your muscle to repair itself is by slowly improving your total capacity. How do you make sure that you’re doing that? Track your progress. Track your rest times (anywhere between 1.5-4 minutes for hypertrophy and 3-5 minutes for strength,) track your weights, and track your reps.[16] If you’re making progress, being consistent, and using good form, you’re guaranteed to see great results. (If tracking seems like too much work, simply track your weights and reps on your compound lifts in your head. That’s definitely better than what most people are doing, and you can still make great results doing it. And finally on this point; if your weights completely stall, your diet is in check (see my other posts for more info on nutrition,) and you’ve been using proper form, then you can always switch up your exercises and start from ground zero again. Then, after a few months, you can return to the exercises you were doing before; chances are that you’ll find progressing a lot easier.[17]

Form

I want to end this article with a reminder about lifting and exercise technique. This section can be summarized in a few simple words: form is extremely important. It’s important because exercising with proper form will enable you to make incremental improvements in the fastest time possible. It’s important because exercising with proper form will help you to feel the muscles that you are working, which has been proven to have a positive influence on your results. It’s important because exercising with proper form will help you avoid injury, and being injured is the number one thing that will prevent you from making progress in the gym. In short, it’s important. Your body responds to improvement, not total capacity. Lifting more or working at a higher intensity than is doable with proper technique will do you no benefit; it will only hurt you. A good warmup involves dynamic stretching and 5-10 minutes of cardio,[18] and it’s great practice do some yoga/static stretching at the end of a workout session. Follow all these rules, and your training routine will benefit your health in more ways you can imagine

Go Out and Start

This industry is full of people making things seem more complicated than they truly are. If you warm up properly, train with a purpose, and stick to a realistic plan, you will achieve results. Every time you exert yourself doing exercise, you will go to bed a stronger, more capable person than you were when you woke up. That’s guaranteed self-improvement, and, if you make yourself a program you want to follow, a whole lot of fun along the way.

Works Cited

https://www.strongerbyscience.com/mass/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3867583/

https://www.strengthandconditioningresearch.com/hypertrophy/#5

https://journals.lww.com/nsca-jscr/abstract/1995/11000/effects_of_variations_of_the_bench_press_exercise.3.aspx

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1961103

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24998610

https://bretcontreras.com/progressive-overload/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26500462

https://leehayward.com/blog/whats-the-best-workout/

https://www.strongerbyscience.com/hypertrophy-range-fact-fiction/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27433992

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3435910/

https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4663/6/1/7

https://www.strongerbyscience.com/complete-strength-training-guide/

https://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/strength-training-101-where-do-i-start/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22592167

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230756715_Periodization_Paradigms_in_the_21st_Century_Evidence-Led_or_Tradition-Driven

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22692116

[1] https://www.strongerbyscience.com/mass/

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3867583/

[3] https://www.strengthandconditioningresearch.com/hypertrophy/#5

[4] https://journals.lww.com/nsca-jscr/abstract/1995/11000/effects_of_variations_of_the_bench_press_exercise.3.aspx

[5] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1961103

[6] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24998610

[7] https://bretcontreras.com/progressive-overload/

[8] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26500462

[9] https://leehayward.com/blog/whats-the-best-workout/

[10] https://www.strongerbyscience.com/hypertrophy-range-fact-fiction/

[11] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27433992

[12] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3435910/

[13] https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4663/6/1/7

[14] https://www.strongerbyscience.com/complete-strength-training-guide/

[15] https://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/strength-training-101-where-do-i-start/

[16] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22592167

[17] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230756715_Periodization_Paradigms_in_the_21st_Century_Evidence-Led_or_Tradition-Driven

[18] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22692116