10 Tips for Beginners
1. Set Goals
Set your main goal whatever that may be and a time frame to accomplish the goal. Whether your goal is to lose 50 lbs. or gain 10 lbs. of muscle write it down and put it somewhere you will see it everyday. Now break that goal down into smaller goals. So now you have 5 smaller 10lb goals to lose. I suggest to do this because its easier to achieve the smaller goals chunks at a time and you will feel more motivated and accomplished instead of getting frustrated that you only lost 20lbs not 50 yet.
2. Get into a routine.
Get into a set routine of when you will be able to workout. That way you get it going as part of your daily schedule. Habits take 21 days to form life style changes take a year so if you miss a day every now and then don’t beat yourself up about. Just keep going when you can and it will become a habit then second nature and then when you miss a day you will actually miss it and feel bad about it.
3. Stick to the plan
Find a beginners workout plan and stick to it for 3 months min. To many people make the mistake of changes routines to often. Just find a plan and increase the reps, sets, or weight to keep it challenging.
4. Try to hit Personal Records every time.
This is more in depth about the adding reps, sets, and weight. Every time you train you want to try to PR on a lift. It does not matter if it is doing one more push-up or one more set of squats or adding 5 lbs to your deadlift just try to PR. This is one of the best ways to track the progress of your training sessions.
5. Patience
Fat loss just doesn’t happen over night, it takes time. Using PR’s like I just mentioned is the best way to track progress on a day to day basis. If you are getting stronger you are building muscle and heading in the right direction. At first the scale will be your worst enemy. You will be building lean muscle (which is good) while losing body fat (which is good) but the scale wont reflect that. say you lost 5 lbs. of fat and gained 2lbs of lean muscle the scale will say you only lost 3 lbs which is true but, worry more about losing body fat. Use other things to show you are dropping body fat. Pay attention to how your clothes are fitting. Also I bet people will start to ask if you are losing weight.
6. Full Body training 3 days a week.
Lift weights or do body weight exercises 3 times a week. Your body will need time to heal so don’t weight train on back to back days. Some examples would be train on Mon-Wed-Fri, or Tues-Thurs-Sat, or Sun-Tues-Thurs.
7. Stick to the basics.
All the fancy exercise you see on tv and in magazines is mostly crap. The basic body weight movements and weight training exercises have worked for decades and I doubt they will fail you. If you are a truly new to training I would suggest sticking to body weight exercises such as push-ups, dips, inverted rows, squats, lunges, pull-ups, and planks. I would start out doing 2 sets of 8 to 10 reps each exercise. Once that becomes easier add some reps to each set and when you can do 2×15 go to 3 sets of 10. Once that becomes easy or you want to go straight into lifting weights then I suggest- Bench, Rows, Squats, Shoulder Press, & Deadlifts. Start out doing 3 sets of 6 to 8 reps with weight you can handle for all 3 sets. When this becomes easier add 5lbs to the lift.
At least they are going in.
8. Cardio.
There are 2 main thoughts on cardio which are steady state cardio and High Intensity Cardio. I plan on doing a debate post on which is better at a later time. In my opinion in the beginning as long as your are doing cardio it doesn’t matter which you pick. The no matter which one you pick is to do what you can and build upon it. If you want to do H.I.T then pick a distance to sprint. Warm up by walking then jogging the distance for a few minutes to get everything loose and the blood flowing. Then for the next 20 minutes sprint. Rest when you need to even if you only get 3 or 4 sprints that’s fine build on it. Over time you will rest less and sprint more. For steady state cardio warm up by walking at first then jog for 20 minutes, when you need to slow down to a walk . Over time you will be running more and walking less. Once you can run the full 20 add mire time. I would only sprint one or two times a week at first until you get use to it. You can probably jog 3 to 5 times a week.
9. Nutrion
There are thousands of crap diets out there and there are some good ideas on diets. One diet I really like is the Paleo diet. You basically eat lean meat, fruit, vegetables, and nuts. I like diary myself so I add that in to my diet. This diet follows the idea of just stick to the outside of the grocery store. Now if you want to look at it a different way and just drop the lbs then ok. 1 lb of fat is 3,500 calories, you burn 3,500 calories more than you consume in a week you lose a pound it’s simple math. If you want buy a bodybug or the like and find out how many calories you burn in an average day. Then you know how many calories you can eat a day. That doesn’t mean you have to count every calories just keep a ballpark idea and you should be fine.
10. Listen to your body.
No one can tell you how you and your body are feeling. Not me not your trainer not your doctor nobody. If you feel funny about an exercise that day or you are to sore or to tired just don’t do it. Training while tired, out of it, or to sore can cause injury and set you back. Now don’t use this as an excuse to just not train either.
If you have any question about anything or I didn’t cover something you are curious about go to my contact page and get a hold of me and I will do my best to answer.
-Louis
Mayhem Fitness 