"Dear Anna, I am brand new to resistance training, where should I start?"
First up, congratulations on deciding to increase your strength and muscle tone! This is awesome! Whether you are doing this at home starting with bodyweight only or you are hitting the gym, EVERY workout is a step toward a healthier, stronger you with better bone density & better mobility smeared on top.
I would recommend starting with total body workouts so you get more bang for your buck… for me this doesn’t mean a circuits or HIIT sesh (sorry everyone!), it means a programmed workout where you can focus on your technique, increasing the difficulty of the movement over time and understanding what you are doing and why you are doing it. The way to build strength and tone is to get good at the basics… and to rinse & repeat those basics, whilst making them progressively more difficult over time.
Total body workouts 2-3 times/week mean that each muscle group is being trained more regularly across the week, this helps you see adaptations a little faster. It also means you can use something called supersets (2 exercises back to back) to save time. This works best if you do something like lower for the first exercise and upper/core for the second so that you are not battering the same body part in the same set, we’ll leave that for later on down the line when you’ve been training for a while. Trisets can also be helpful (3 exercises back to back) on the time saving front too.
For those of you starting off in the gym, I would start with your bigger movement patterns toward the beginning of your workout… things like the Leg Press, Rows, Pulldowns, Bench Press etc. This is because they are technically more difficult AND because they require a lot more coordination and effort so we do them when we feel the most fresh. Put your smaller muscle groups in toward the end of the workout or as the second exercise in the superset because they usually require less overall effort and are probably a little bit less important when we are starting out… things like your tricep dips, bicep curls, calf raises and the like.
The most important thing is to create a workout that leaves you feeling energised and successful… and that slowly progresses you toward your goals. If you need workout structure so you know what to do and when to do it, check out my Flex program with in-gym and home options available, only £99.99 for the whole year.
Any fitness or nutrition related questions just let me know!
Anna
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