Some of you want to start going to the gym or have started going to the gym but don't know what to do. Im writing this guide to help you out.
Firstly, whats your goal? If your goal is strength, then you should be doing between 1-5 reps per any given exercise. If its hypertrophy (building big muscle), it should be between 6 and 30 reps. Research has showed it doesn't matter if you're doing 6 or 30 reps as long as it's to failure (more than 30 reps isnt adviced). Every set you do should be hard. A hard set is defined as a set that was done to failure or close to failure (you weren't more than 4 reps away from failure). As a general guideline, you should be doing at least 10 sets per muscle group per week to achieve optimal hypertrophy, but you shouldn't be doing more than 10 sets in a single workout unless you're advanced or on steroids. Doing more than 10 sets in a single workout for a specific muscle has been proven to not add additional gains and just make recovery time longer. Research also shows that you shouldn't do more than 25 sets overall in a single workout. The only muscle groups that you can do more than 10 sets on a single workout, are the lats and quads (12 sets max). Its important to progressively overload (increase weight) while training for hypertrophy or strength.
Let's start with the muscle groups.
The chest is made up of the upper pec, middle pec and lower pecks. You should have 3 types of exercises in your training regime for your chest. Horizontal press, incline press and an isolation exercise that doesn't involve the triceps. Horizontal press includes exercises like the barbell bench press, dumbbell bench press, machine press etc. Horizontal press exercises hit the whole chest. Incline press movements include the incline dumbbell bench press, barbell bench press, incline machine chest press etc. Incline chest exercises focus mostly on the upper portion of the chest. Isolation exercises for the chest include the machine chest fly, dumbbell machine fly, cable crossover etc. Chest isolation exercises help hit the inner muscles of the chest. You can also add decline chest exercises if you want to, which hit the lower pecs. Decline chest exercises are dips, push ups, cable fly from high to low etc.
The triceps are made up of the long head, medial head and the lateral head. For optimal triceps development, you should include isolation exercises and compound exercises. From isolation exercises, you need to include tricep extension from horizontal or standing category and overhead extension exercises. Compound exercises include dips, close grip bench press, overhead press etc. These exercises primarily hit the long and lateral head of the triceps. Overhead extension exercises are exercises where you extend your arm overhead while holding a weight/cable. Overhead extension exercises include cable overhead tricep extensions, dumbbell overhead triceps extensions, barbell overhead extensions etc. Overhead extensions hit all heads of the triceps with a focus on the long head. They're good for growing the distal part of the long head. Horizontal or standing extension exercises include tricep pushdowns, skull crushers, JM press etc. Skull crushers and pushdowns both work all heads of the triceps but skull crushers have an emphasis on the long head while pushdowns have an emphasis on the lateral head. Since overhead extensions work the long head of the triceps, I would suggest for pushdowns over skull crushers.
the shoulders are made up of the front delts, lateral delts and rear delts. The front and rear delts don't need more than 4 sets of direct isolation work to grow optimally since they're worked during chest and back movements. Exercises for the front delts are overhead press, shoulder press, front raise etc. Exercises for the rear delt reverse dumbbell fly, reverse machine fly, face pulls etc. Because the side delts are not worked during other exercises, you need more sets to grow them optimally. I would recommend 3/4 sets of two exercises. Lateral delts exercises are lateral raises, barbell upright row, thumbs down lateral raise etc.
the back is made up of multiple muscles but we're gonna focus on the lats, traps and back extensors. To optimally train the lats you need to include 2 types of exercises. Horizontal and vertical exercises. Horizontal exercises consist of cable rows, t bar rows, dumbbell rows etc. Vertical exercises consist of pull ups and lat pull downs. You should somewhat spread the vertical and horizontal exercises evenly.
The traps consist of the lower traps, mid traps and upper traps. The mid and lower traps don't need any direct exercises, they're worked during horizontal and vertical exercises. The upper traps aren't worked tho. Exercises for the upper traps are barbell shrug, dumbbell shrug, cable shrug, etc basically any kid of shrug. You don't need more than 4 sets to optimally train the upper traps.
The back extensors are the muscles that extend the spine or keep it extended under loads. The primary muscles for this are the erector spinae and multifidus. Exercises for the back extensors are deadlifts, back extensions, rack pull etc. You don't need more than 4 sets to optimally train the back extensors.
The abs are made up of the six pack and the obliques. To workout the 6 pack you do frontal flexion movements and to workout the obliques you do side flexion movements. Good exercises for the 6 pack are ab wheel, leg raises, machine crunch etc. Good exercises for the obliques are high to low woodchop, woodchop, oblique crunches etc.
Biceps are made up of the short and the long head. All bicep isolation exercises work both heads so pick whichever you like (of course exercises have emphasis on different heads but every exercise works both heads sufficient). There's also the brachialis, which isn't part of the bicep but it pushes the bicep to make it look bigger. There's exercises that emphasize the brachialis like hammer curls but you can just do 10 sets of dumbbell curls which don't emphasize it and your brachialis will still grow. Good bicep exercises are the dumbbell curl, hammer curl, preacher curl etc.
the quads are formed by the vastus lateralis, vastus intermedius, vastus medialis and rectus femoris. You need to incorporate 3 types of exercises. Squats, leg extensions and one legged exercises. Any forms of squats work. Barbell squat, hack squat, leg press etc. Squats work the vastus muscles well but not the rectus. This is where leg extension comes in. Leg extensions work the rectus muscles very well. One legged exercises are lunges, Bulgarian split squat etc. The purpose of one legged exercises are to work your stabilizer muscles, basically they will improve your balance.
The calves consist of the soleus and the gastrocnemius. When you're raising your calf, both are worked but when you're doing a sitting exercise only the soleus is worked. For that reason I would only recommend variation of calf raises. Some variations are the barbell calf raise, calf raise machine if your gym has one, leg press calf raises etc.
the hamstrings are made up of the semitendinosus, semimembranosus, and biceps femoris. The bicep femoris is made up of the short head and the long head. The hamstrings have 2 functions: Hip extension and knee flexion. For that reason, you need to include two types of exercises for optimal hamstring development, one that that flexes your knee and one that extends your hips. Hip extension exercises are the Romanian deadlift, good mornings etc. Knee flexing exercises are the leg curl and the lying leg curl. Ideally it's better if you do both lying leg curls and leg curls since they work the hamstring at different muscle lengths.
The glutes are made up of the gluteus maximus, gluteus medius and the gluteus minimus. The main function of your gluteus maximus is to extend your hip. Your gluteus medius aids in hip extension but also rotates and abducts your hip, as well as helps keep you stable when you are standing on one leg. Your gluteus minimus is also a hip stabilizer when standing on one leg, but it can also abduct and internally rotate your hip.
For optimal glute development you need to do hip extension and hip abductor exercises. Hip extension exercises are covered by the squat, Romanian deadlift, lunges etc. Hip abductor exercises are the hip abductor machine, banded side kick etc.
Before you start doing an exercise, stretch and do a light jog for 5 minutes. The purpose is to increase your heartbeat and increase blood circulation, if you start doing an exercise without any preparation then your body won't be prepared for it and you won't perform your best.
Here's a training split for beginners:
Chest day:
3 sets of dumbbell/bench bench press
3 sets of incline dumbbell/bench press
3 sets of chest flys (machine or dumbbells)
back day:
3 sets of dumbbell/barbell rows
3 sets of seated cable rows
4 sets of lat pulldowns
4 sets of back extensions
shoulder and traps day:
4 sets of seated dumbbell shoulder press
4 sets of lateral raises
4 sets of reverse Flys (machine or dumbbell)
4 sets of upright rows (barbell or dumbbell)
4 sets of dumbbell/barbell shrugs
arm day:
3 sets of tricep pushdowns
3 sets of dips
3 sets of overhead tricep extension (dumbbell or cable)
3 sets of dumbbell/barbell curls
3 sets of hammer curls
3 sets of incline dumbbell curls
leg day:
4 sets of barbell squats
3 sets of dumbbell/barbell lunges
3 sets of leg extensions
3 sets of Romanian deadlifts
1 set of leg curls
2 sets of of lying leg curls
4 sets of barbell calf raises
4 sets of calf machine raises (your gym might not have this machine and have the rotary calf one instead)
3-4 sets of hip abductors if you want to workout your glutes
abs day:
4 sets of machine crunch
4 sets of knee/leg raises
4 sets of high to low woodchop
As a beginner, youre gonna have muscle imbalances so use dumbbells as much as you can. Dumbbells also improve the stabilizer muscles.
Make sure to get enough rest, don't go working out if you're still sore, and make sure you get 8 hours of sleep.
Nutrition:
Nutrition is as important as rest, if you have shit nutrition you will end up losing muscle mass. To maintain your weight, you need 2200 calories a day. To increase your weight (bulk), you would need 2500 calories a day. Consuming 2500 calories a day will increase your weight by a little amount, you should aim for 3000 ideally. When you work out, you create small tears in your muscles, which then the body repairs and the muscle grows bigger. Protein is used by the body to repair muscle, if you don't consume enough protein then you will take a long time to recover and will lose muscle mass since the body doesn't have enough protein to repair the tears in your muscle. You should consume at LEAST 1.2 grams of protein per how many kg you're. If you're 70 kg for example, then you need to consume at least 84 grams of protein daily. Ideally you should aim for 1.6 grams of protein per kg. Animal products are the best for protein since you digest all of it. Milk, eggs, beef, chicken etc. If there's 6g of protein in a egg, then you will digest all 6g of it. Beans and other foods are a different case tho. Beans and other foods lack some acids so you won't digest all of the protein. For example, lentils have a protein digestibility of 0.57, which means your body will digest 57% of the protein in lentils. If a bowl of lentils has 20g of protein, your body will digest 11g of it. If you struggle to hit your protein goals, you could buy whey protein. Whey protein is high quality protein and in 1 scoop there's like 24g of protein (depends on brand). You can use an app like myfitnesspal to track your calories and protein. Another supplement you can take is creatine. Creatine boosts athletic performance, strength and speeds up muscle recovery.
Its also advisable that you run 3 times a week for at least 15 minutes. Running makes your heart stronger and its something necessary if you want to live a healthy life. After all, our bodies were build for running, not muscle. It also reduces body fat, which is something you want if you want a lean look. Don't do cardio before your workout, do it after you finish. If you do it before then you will be exhausted and won't perform your best.
Tip: bring a bag so you can put your clothes, water, phone, towel etc inside. It's considered gym etiquette to bring a towel with you. I personally don't do it because I don't give af but if you're self conscious about what other people think of you bring a towel.
Firstly, whats your goal? If your goal is strength, then you should be doing between 1-5 reps per any given exercise. If its hypertrophy (building big muscle), it should be between 6 and 30 reps. Research has showed it doesn't matter if you're doing 6 or 30 reps as long as it's to failure (more than 30 reps isnt adviced). Every set you do should be hard. A hard set is defined as a set that was done to failure or close to failure (you weren't more than 4 reps away from failure). As a general guideline, you should be doing at least 10 sets per muscle group per week to achieve optimal hypertrophy, but you shouldn't be doing more than 10 sets in a single workout unless you're advanced or on steroids. Doing more than 10 sets in a single workout for a specific muscle has been proven to not add additional gains and just make recovery time longer. Research also shows that you shouldn't do more than 25 sets overall in a single workout. The only muscle groups that you can do more than 10 sets on a single workout, are the lats and quads (12 sets max). Its important to progressively overload (increase weight) while training for hypertrophy or strength.
Let's start with the muscle groups.
The chest is made up of the upper pec, middle pec and lower pecks. You should have 3 types of exercises in your training regime for your chest. Horizontal press, incline press and an isolation exercise that doesn't involve the triceps. Horizontal press includes exercises like the barbell bench press, dumbbell bench press, machine press etc. Horizontal press exercises hit the whole chest. Incline press movements include the incline dumbbell bench press, barbell bench press, incline machine chest press etc. Incline chest exercises focus mostly on the upper portion of the chest. Isolation exercises for the chest include the machine chest fly, dumbbell machine fly, cable crossover etc. Chest isolation exercises help hit the inner muscles of the chest. You can also add decline chest exercises if you want to, which hit the lower pecs. Decline chest exercises are dips, push ups, cable fly from high to low etc.
The triceps are made up of the long head, medial head and the lateral head. For optimal triceps development, you should include isolation exercises and compound exercises. From isolation exercises, you need to include tricep extension from horizontal or standing category and overhead extension exercises. Compound exercises include dips, close grip bench press, overhead press etc. These exercises primarily hit the long and lateral head of the triceps. Overhead extension exercises are exercises where you extend your arm overhead while holding a weight/cable. Overhead extension exercises include cable overhead tricep extensions, dumbbell overhead triceps extensions, barbell overhead extensions etc. Overhead extensions hit all heads of the triceps with a focus on the long head. They're good for growing the distal part of the long head. Horizontal or standing extension exercises include tricep pushdowns, skull crushers, JM press etc. Skull crushers and pushdowns both work all heads of the triceps but skull crushers have an emphasis on the long head while pushdowns have an emphasis on the lateral head. Since overhead extensions work the long head of the triceps, I would suggest for pushdowns over skull crushers.
the shoulders are made up of the front delts, lateral delts and rear delts. The front and rear delts don't need more than 4 sets of direct isolation work to grow optimally since they're worked during chest and back movements. Exercises for the front delts are overhead press, shoulder press, front raise etc. Exercises for the rear delt reverse dumbbell fly, reverse machine fly, face pulls etc. Because the side delts are not worked during other exercises, you need more sets to grow them optimally. I would recommend 3/4 sets of two exercises. Lateral delts exercises are lateral raises, barbell upright row, thumbs down lateral raise etc.
the back is made up of multiple muscles but we're gonna focus on the lats, traps and back extensors. To optimally train the lats you need to include 2 types of exercises. Horizontal and vertical exercises. Horizontal exercises consist of cable rows, t bar rows, dumbbell rows etc. Vertical exercises consist of pull ups and lat pull downs. You should somewhat spread the vertical and horizontal exercises evenly.
The traps consist of the lower traps, mid traps and upper traps. The mid and lower traps don't need any direct exercises, they're worked during horizontal and vertical exercises. The upper traps aren't worked tho. Exercises for the upper traps are barbell shrug, dumbbell shrug, cable shrug, etc basically any kid of shrug. You don't need more than 4 sets to optimally train the upper traps.
The back extensors are the muscles that extend the spine or keep it extended under loads. The primary muscles for this are the erector spinae and multifidus. Exercises for the back extensors are deadlifts, back extensions, rack pull etc. You don't need more than 4 sets to optimally train the back extensors.
The abs are made up of the six pack and the obliques. To workout the 6 pack you do frontal flexion movements and to workout the obliques you do side flexion movements. Good exercises for the 6 pack are ab wheel, leg raises, machine crunch etc. Good exercises for the obliques are high to low woodchop, woodchop, oblique crunches etc.
Biceps are made up of the short and the long head. All bicep isolation exercises work both heads so pick whichever you like (of course exercises have emphasis on different heads but every exercise works both heads sufficient). There's also the brachialis, which isn't part of the bicep but it pushes the bicep to make it look bigger. There's exercises that emphasize the brachialis like hammer curls but you can just do 10 sets of dumbbell curls which don't emphasize it and your brachialis will still grow. Good bicep exercises are the dumbbell curl, hammer curl, preacher curl etc.
the quads are formed by the vastus lateralis, vastus intermedius, vastus medialis and rectus femoris. You need to incorporate 3 types of exercises. Squats, leg extensions and one legged exercises. Any forms of squats work. Barbell squat, hack squat, leg press etc. Squats work the vastus muscles well but not the rectus. This is where leg extension comes in. Leg extensions work the rectus muscles very well. One legged exercises are lunges, Bulgarian split squat etc. The purpose of one legged exercises are to work your stabilizer muscles, basically they will improve your balance.
The calves consist of the soleus and the gastrocnemius. When you're raising your calf, both are worked but when you're doing a sitting exercise only the soleus is worked. For that reason I would only recommend variation of calf raises. Some variations are the barbell calf raise, calf raise machine if your gym has one, leg press calf raises etc.
the hamstrings are made up of the semitendinosus, semimembranosus, and biceps femoris. The bicep femoris is made up of the short head and the long head. The hamstrings have 2 functions: Hip extension and knee flexion. For that reason, you need to include two types of exercises for optimal hamstring development, one that that flexes your knee and one that extends your hips. Hip extension exercises are the Romanian deadlift, good mornings etc. Knee flexing exercises are the leg curl and the lying leg curl. Ideally it's better if you do both lying leg curls and leg curls since they work the hamstring at different muscle lengths.
The glutes are made up of the gluteus maximus, gluteus medius and the gluteus minimus. The main function of your gluteus maximus is to extend your hip. Your gluteus medius aids in hip extension but also rotates and abducts your hip, as well as helps keep you stable when you are standing on one leg. Your gluteus minimus is also a hip stabilizer when standing on one leg, but it can also abduct and internally rotate your hip.
For optimal glute development you need to do hip extension and hip abductor exercises. Hip extension exercises are covered by the squat, Romanian deadlift, lunges etc. Hip abductor exercises are the hip abductor machine, banded side kick etc.
Before you start doing an exercise, stretch and do a light jog for 5 minutes. The purpose is to increase your heartbeat and increase blood circulation, if you start doing an exercise without any preparation then your body won't be prepared for it and you won't perform your best.
Here's a training split for beginners:
Chest day:
3 sets of dumbbell/bench bench press
3 sets of incline dumbbell/bench press
3 sets of chest flys (machine or dumbbells)
back day:
3 sets of dumbbell/barbell rows
3 sets of seated cable rows
4 sets of lat pulldowns
4 sets of back extensions
shoulder and traps day:
4 sets of seated dumbbell shoulder press
4 sets of lateral raises
4 sets of reverse Flys (machine or dumbbell)
4 sets of upright rows (barbell or dumbbell)
4 sets of dumbbell/barbell shrugs
arm day:
3 sets of tricep pushdowns
3 sets of dips
3 sets of overhead tricep extension (dumbbell or cable)
3 sets of dumbbell/barbell curls
3 sets of hammer curls
3 sets of incline dumbbell curls
leg day:
4 sets of barbell squats
3 sets of dumbbell/barbell lunges
3 sets of leg extensions
3 sets of Romanian deadlifts
1 set of leg curls
2 sets of of lying leg curls
4 sets of barbell calf raises
4 sets of calf machine raises (your gym might not have this machine and have the rotary calf one instead)
3-4 sets of hip abductors if you want to workout your glutes
abs day:
4 sets of machine crunch
4 sets of knee/leg raises
4 sets of high to low woodchop
As a beginner, youre gonna have muscle imbalances so use dumbbells as much as you can. Dumbbells also improve the stabilizer muscles.
Make sure to get enough rest, don't go working out if you're still sore, and make sure you get 8 hours of sleep.
Nutrition:
Nutrition is as important as rest, if you have shit nutrition you will end up losing muscle mass. To maintain your weight, you need 2200 calories a day. To increase your weight (bulk), you would need 2500 calories a day. Consuming 2500 calories a day will increase your weight by a little amount, you should aim for 3000 ideally. When you work out, you create small tears in your muscles, which then the body repairs and the muscle grows bigger. Protein is used by the body to repair muscle, if you don't consume enough protein then you will take a long time to recover and will lose muscle mass since the body doesn't have enough protein to repair the tears in your muscle. You should consume at LEAST 1.2 grams of protein per how many kg you're. If you're 70 kg for example, then you need to consume at least 84 grams of protein daily. Ideally you should aim for 1.6 grams of protein per kg. Animal products are the best for protein since you digest all of it. Milk, eggs, beef, chicken etc. If there's 6g of protein in a egg, then you will digest all 6g of it. Beans and other foods are a different case tho. Beans and other foods lack some acids so you won't digest all of the protein. For example, lentils have a protein digestibility of 0.57, which means your body will digest 57% of the protein in lentils. If a bowl of lentils has 20g of protein, your body will digest 11g of it. If you struggle to hit your protein goals, you could buy whey protein. Whey protein is high quality protein and in 1 scoop there's like 24g of protein (depends on brand). You can use an app like myfitnesspal to track your calories and protein. Another supplement you can take is creatine. Creatine boosts athletic performance, strength and speeds up muscle recovery.
Its also advisable that you run 3 times a week for at least 15 minutes. Running makes your heart stronger and its something necessary if you want to live a healthy life. After all, our bodies were build for running, not muscle. It also reduces body fat, which is something you want if you want a lean look. Don't do cardio before your workout, do it after you finish. If you do it before then you will be exhausted and won't perform your best.
Tip: bring a bag so you can put your clothes, water, phone, towel etc inside. It's considered gym etiquette to bring a towel with you. I personally don't do it because I don't give af but if you're self conscious about what other people think of you bring a towel.
