10 Strength Training Tips for Beginners -

Kaitlin Little

When most people think of strength training, the first things that come to mind are heavy barbells, hardcore machines, and tanned grunting guys. It’s no wonder then that most people find strength training intimidating at first.

But don’t let those misconceptions fool you. There’s a great deal more to strength training than meets the eye. It’s an essential part of a healthy lifestyle for everyone. Strength training makes us strong, and the simple fact is, life’s easier when you’re strong. Carrying groceries, cleaning the car, or chasing after the kids—it all gets easier.

It’s also one of the most effective ways to burn fat and build lean muscles. Whether you’re just starting your journey with weight loss or trying to shift the last few pounds, strength training will boost your resting metabolic rate, enabling you to burn more calories throughout the day. Plus, it can prevent age-related muscle loss and helps preserve bone mineral density, allowing you to maintain your independence (and stay out of a nursing home) for longer. [1] [2]

If you’ve never tried strength training before, check out these 10 tips to dispel your fear, make lifting fun, and gain fast rewards.

What is Strength Training?

First, let’s clarify what strength training actually is. Strength training, also known as resistance training, is any activity that improves muscle function by exerting force against a resistance. There are three main types of muscular fitness that we can target in strength training including:

Muscular strength: the muscle’s ability to exert force against a resistance. For example: what is the maximum weight you can lift once?
Muscular endurance: the muscle’s ability to sustain contraction or perform repeated contractions. For example: holding a plank or performing push-ups to exhaustion.
Muscular power: the muscle’s ability to exert maximum force in the shortest time possible. It’s a combination of strength and speed that enables explosive movements. For example: how high can you jump?

Tips to Get Started

1. Prep your Muscles and Joints

It’s important to prepare your body for the demands of strength training before lifting any weights. A proper warm-up should raise your body temperature and increase blood flow to your muscles. Begin with a 5-minute warm-up of brisk walking or light jogging, followed by a series of dynamic stretches that target the muscles and joints you plan to focus on in your workout.

Dynamic stretching is a form of active movement. Unlike static stretching, which involves extending a muscle to its end range and passively holding that position for 20 seconds, dynamic stretching involves moving through a range of motion several times. The aim is to loosen up your muscles and increase your range of motion, which reduces your risk of injury and increase muscle force during your workout. [3] Examples of dynamic stretches include leg swings, trunk rotations, and arm circles.

2. Begin with Bodyweight Exercise

You’ve decided to give strength training a go. Although, you’re still wondering how you are going to lift those heavy weights. When it comes to strength training, there’s no need to jump straight into the deep end! In fact, the best place to start is with bodyweight exercises.

Bodyweight exercises require minimal equipment (in most cases none at all) and can be performed just about anywhere. So there’s really no need to hit the gym straight away. You can perform an entire bodyweight workout from your home.

Bodyweight exercises are a fantastic way to gain strength, improve balance, and master your form (technique) before adding resistance. You can start with low-impact exercises, such as squats, lunges, planks, or push-ups.

3. Start with Two Days a Week and Build up

Depending on your specific goals, you should perform strength training three to five days per week. However, when you’re first starting out, it’s best to ease your way in with just two days a week. According to the national guidelines, two days is the minimum amount needed for health benefits. [4] However, once your body has adjusted to the demands of strength training, usually over the course of about three to four weeks, you can gain additional benefits by adding in an extra day.

Gradually building up your weekly routine will help prevent injury and reduce the occurrence of DOMS, or Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness. [5] DOMS usually develops 24 to 48 hours after performing any strenuous exercise that your body is not accustomed to. It’s described as a dull ache often accompanied by stiffness and tenderness and is caused by tiny microtears to individual muscle fibers. DOMS is nothing to be concerned about, but it can temporarily affect your muscle strength and range of motion.

4. Work all Body Parts

Maybe you’re working towards those chiseled abs, but that doesn’t mean you should forget about your legs, your arms, or your back! When it comes to strength training, your weekly routine should cover all bases. Bodybuilders often use split programs to assign specific body parts to certain days. Leg day anyone? But when you’re first starting out the best approach is a full-body program.

Full-body programs aim to target every muscle group in each session, ultimately maximizing calories burned and addressing muscle imbalances. You can do this by alternating between upper body and lower body exercises. This way, your upper body has time to recover while your lower body works and vice-versa. You can also alternate between pushing and pulling exercises. For example, push-ups and pull-ups, or overhead press and lat pulldown.

5. Master Your Form First

Instilling good habits from the start is paramount. Proper form will ensure you not only work the right muscles but more importantly, reduce your risk of injury. Investing in a personal trainer, at least initially, can help you learn the correct positions, motions, and grips while also providing helpful cues and important feedback. But there’s also plenty of free resources online to help you learn proper form too.

Once you’ve got a good grasp on technique, you should continually check your form throughout your workout. Ask yourself: are my knees tracking my toes? Did I brace my abdominals? Am I holding my breath or shrugging my shoulders? It’s common to let technique slide towards the end of a fatiguing session, but this is precisely when injuries occur.

6. Select the Right Weight/Resistance

Once you’ve mastered your form, progress your workout by adding light resistance in the form of kettlebells, resistance bands, medicine balls or dumbells. Each exercise will require different weights. For example, it’s highly likely that you’ll be able to squat a much heavier weight than you can bicep curl, simply because your quadriceps, hamstrings, and glutes are much larger and more powerful muscles.

When selecting a weight, choose something that’s heavy enough to challenge you without sacrificing form. As a rule of thumb, your muscles should feel fatigued by the time you hit your last repetition, like you couldn’t possibly do one more rep. If you’ve just breezed through 15 reps, that’s a sign you may need to go up a weight.

7. Choose the Right Rep Range

Reps, short for repetitions, refer to the number of times you perform each exercise within your workout. When you’re first starting out, don’t over complicate it with a different number of reps for each exercise. Instead, for each exercise, the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) recommends that beginners perform 3 sets (rounds) of 12 reps and take 1 to 2 minutes to rest between sets. [6]

Once you’ve gained your confidence, you can begin tailoring your rep-range to your specific fitness goals. If your primary goal is to build muscle, choose a moderate weight that allows you to perform 8-12 reps. If your goal is to improve strength, choose a lower rep-range around 5-6 reps and a heavier weight. If you’re interested in sculpting lean muscles and building muscular endurance, choose a lighter weight and perform between 15 and 20 reps.

8. Progress at Your Own Pace

Progression is an important part of any strength training program. It involves manipulating the variables of your training session to gradually make your workout more challenging. As your body adapts to your current training load, progression is necessary to ensure you keep improving. Otherwise, your progress may become stagnant, and you might stop seeing results. With that said, you should only progress once you’re physically and mentally ready.

Fortunately, for beginners, there are many ways to make bodyweight exercise more challenging besides adding resistance. For example, you can increase the number of reps (e.g. take 10 squats to 20 squats), extend the duration (e.g. add an extra 15 seconds to your plank) or as mentioned earlier, amp up the frequency (e.g. increase from 3 days a week to 4 days a week).

You can also make slight adjustments to the exercises you’ve already mastered. For example, make your plank more challenging by raising one leg, or progress your knee push-ups by advancing to your toes. Provided you have healthy joints and good balance; you can also spice up your sessions with more dynamic exercises, such as squat jumps or power lunges.

9. Always Refuel the Tank

During your workout, you should drink small amounts of water frequently to prevent thirst. It’s also important to rehydrate afterward to replace fluids lost through sweat. As a general rule, you should aim to drink a minimum of 2 liters of water per day. Sports drinks with electrolytes are only necessary after strenuous exercise lasting longer than two hours. [7]

A balanced post-workout snack consumed within at least 30 minutes is also a great idea. Choose a snack with about 10 to 20 grams of protein to boost muscle repair as well as carbohydrates to help replenish your glycogen levels (body’s main energy store). If you’re strength training to lose weight aim to keep your snack below 200 calories and be wary of your overall calorie intake to ensure you remain in an energy deficit. If you’re aiming to build muscle and bulk up, protein supplements can provide the optimal level of amino acids to facilitate muscle growth and strength. 0.6 – 0.9 grams per pound of body weight per day is deemed to be desirable and safe for healthy, active individuals [8]

10. Don’t Forget to Rest

There’s one thing you will quickly learn about strength training—it makes you feel a little sore. As mentioned earlier, strength training causes tiny microscopic tears to your muscles, which then need adequate time to repair. It’s this cycle of tear-and-repair that makes muscles stronger.

When first starting out, give yourself 24 to 48 hours recovery between each session. It can help to pre-plan your rest and work days in advance. For example, you may want to strength train on Mondays and Thursdays, cardio train on Tuesdays and Fridays, and use Wednesday and the weekend for rest.

As you build up you can aim to strength train on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, perform light cardio on Tuesdays, Thursday, and Saturday, and take a complete rest on Sunday. Beginners have a tendency to go all out at the start and then set themselves back with an injury. Try to listen to your body and train accordingly. Soreness is OK, pain is not.

There’s no Better Time to Start Strength Training

Strength training isn’t just for bodybuilders. It’s an essential part of any exercise program and offers an array of health benefits. However, if you have a history of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, or arthritis, or do not exercise regularly, it is recommended that you consult with your health care provider before beginning a strength training program.

References

8. https://jissn.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1550-2783-4-8

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