Beginner workout plan selection guide

There are multiple reasons to avoid getting gym membership, but being clueless or overwhelmed about what to do and fear of looking stupid are at the top of any list.
Workout plan selection is not an easy process and there is a lot that needs to be considered.
How many days a week you can train, is lifting only activity you plan on doing, your long term or short term physique goals, length of activity to name the few.
In this post, different scenarios will be covered so you can have overall knowledge of what is important when you make your decision.

Get your mindset right

Before diving into topic, it’s necessary to set a few things straight.
First and foremost, results are not visible after few workouts, but progress is so there is no excuse for getting discouraged.
Accept that fitness is a lifestyle and that’s the way you need to approach it.
Second, fitness is a long term game of short term goals and victories. You can get creative with your goals or you can set simple goals on weekly, monthly or daily basis . The important thing is to achieve them and win.
These victories will create a foundation of confidence and motivation for future even harder goals and life in general.
But set your goals wisely and when you set them you must fulfil them.
And third, consistency and competitiveness will take you to the moon. Without consistency and beating your last week self there is no progress in a long term.
Training should be uncomfortable and challenging, that is what makes you stronger and better.
Be hungry “not yet Swole Bro”!

What should my goals look like?

I love good questions, so thank you for asking “not yet Swole Bro”!
Setting goals is an important part of fitness journey, it keeps us accountable and give us sense of accomplishment.
Goals should never be easy, but if you are not very competitive person, it is also wise to not set very hard goals.
When you are more experienced, goals should become harder and harder, shoot for the sky, land at the moon kind of thing.
Let’s cover few scenarios:

Example 1 – Overweight or slim person who never did any activity in life.
Daily goal can be to get up and go to the gym. There are so many victories in that action. You broke the hard engrained routine, stepped out of comfort zone, faced your fear and you won.
Your weekly goal can be to go to the gym two or three times, replace one bad food choice with good one or something along those line.
Your monthly goal can be to not miss a single workout etc.

Example 2 – Sporty person who never went to gym.
Daily goal can be to learn about calories and find a new meal you can make.
Weekly goal can be to add a few pounds or reps to each exercise.
Monthly goal can be to not skip any workout.

But overall, what everyone should strive for is to become stronger on weekly basis following progressive overload approach.

The Four Pillars of Fitness

There are four areas in which you can improve your body athletic performance:

• Strength
• Cardio
• Balance
• Flexibility

Since you are here, I take it that your main goal is to build muscle and strength. Nevertheless, other areas should not be neglected, since they also contribute to overall strength and development.
Good thing is that not all of them require a lot of time and dedication.
When thinking of your workout program they should all be included, but not at the same time.
Let’s take for example that strength training will be done three days a weak for 1 – 1.5 hours and you play sports on other days, you don’t have to worry about your cardio.
If there are no activities on your rest days, you should introduce a little running at least two times a weak, your heart is muscle as well and as you get stronger, your workouts will be more cardio intense.
There is also possibility to spare at least 10-15 minutes on your workout days for cardio, but that is my least favourite option.
Those two are the most important areas for any athlete.

Flexibility and balance are the most often neglected areas, but are very important for your long term health and injury prevention.
You should work on your flexibility for at least 5 minutes a day. Microdose those classic stretches and in one month you stretched for 2 and half hours (5 min*30 days). Those improvements compound and that is great for long term.
You can work on your balance whenever you remember. For example, when you brush your teeth, stand on one leg. Be creative and progress over time.

With this approach you will work on all four areas without much thinking.

Diet

Last thing to discuss before diving into our main topic is diet.
Everybody has it’s own habits and choices regarding food, but those should adjust as well if you want to get the most out of your workouts.
Of course, power of habit is strong and it is not realistic to change all of them at the time.
Make slow changes, every week replace one bad food choice with health alternative and improve your diet and health over time.
There are few things keep in mind at you beginner stages:

• Carbohydrates, fat and protein (macronutrients) are the nutritive components of food that the body needs for energy.
• Calorie maintenance is the amount of calories your body requires for proper functioning without any activities, so there is no weight loss or gain. You can calculate it using this calculator!
• To gain or lose weight you need to eat over or under calorie maintenance.
• Micronutrients are also important, so eat your fruits and veggies!

If you are very slim person, you need to eat much more (calorie sufficit) so your body can recover and use extra calories for muscle building purposes. On the other hand, if you are overweight person, you can build muscle and recover even if you are eating less than your maintenance level (calorie deficit)

Workout plan

Let’s get to the business and see what is important and necessary to jack you up!

First decision you have to make is how many days you want to train in a week and when decision is made you stick with it.
As a beginner, you should train at minimum two times a week, but 3 – 5 days would be preferable.
What are beginner programming goals:

• Train every muscle group at least two times a week or as soon as it is recovered
• Incorporate all the necessary compound movements to build a strong muscle base
• Progressive overload is a holy grail of beginner progress

More days you have at disposal, easier it is to create workouts which will cover all muscle groups with as little time as possible. Beginner recovery time is very fast and that should be utilized as much as possible.

The number of sets will be provided in all of the workouts, but the best way to start a program is with as little sets as possible.
If you are willing to put more thought into your workouts and progress start with one working set on all movements, come close to failure and make adjustments based on your body reaction day after.
There are three scenarios:

• There was no soreness and you felt as if you did not train day before – add one more set for every muscle group where this was the case.
• There was some soreness and you felt tired day after, but you felt good before your next workout and went strong – continue with same number of sets for every muscle group where this was the case.
• There was so much soreness and you felt very tired and you barely went to your next workout – subtract one set for every muscle group where this was the case.

Because human body adjusts to workout load, this way you will progress with as little work as possible and your gains will last longer in a long term.

Full body workout routine

In two and three day programs we will use full body workout routine which will allow us to hit every muscle area multiple times a week.
More times we stimulate muscle a week, better the growth.

The core of every full body workout routine, especially for beginners, should be all main compound movements: Squats, Hip hinges, Pulls and Presses.
Beginner lifters react best to these movements, and time efficiency is a huge bonus.
Of course, if we focus only on compound movements, some obvious weaknesses are inevitable. Although all movements stimulate arms to some extent, with time their development will not follow the rest of the body (unless you have great arm genetics).

Full body rules

First, select any two days in a week most convenient to you for a workout and try to leave two days in between for recovery.
For this example, let’s say Monday and Thursday.

Second, it is important to understand the correlation between sets and muscle growth. This is not important if you are complete beginner, but that will change very quickly.
A general rule of thumb for muscle growth is doing 10 – 20 sets per muscle group, meaning if you do 5 sets for chest on Monday and Thursday, you are in the money.
This is much more of a problem in two day plan than in three day plan.
It does not matter wether you do 3 sets of Bench Press and 2 sets of Dumbbell Flys or 5 sets on Bench Press on a same day, what matters is number 10.
Now, you can say “But Swole Bro, if I do 10 – 20 sets for each muscle group I will be in a gym for a lifetime!”, but let’s not be that strict about it.
For example, lower body has much greater potential for growth than upper body, so you can do 8 or even 6 sets for lower body and save a lot of time.
If you play with number of sets for muscle group, keep this rule in mind.

Third, it is ok to replace exercises but do it righteously.
What I mean by that is do not switch squats in both days with leg extensions, that’s soft. But, if you switch squats with heavy lounges on one of days, that is cool since both are tough compound exercises which build muscle.
Do not switch out compound movement with isolation movement if you are a beginner because you lose muscle in a long term and lose your monstrous beginner potential.
Get strong at compound movements and you will get big!

I will provide you with two full body workouts which you can rotate on weekly or daily basis.
Those are not set in stone and you are free to adjust them to your wants and needs, but you need to follow a set of rules.

Workouts

Two day full body program

With proper nutrition and rest, recovery will be complete before each workout, two days a week program allows you to go strong!
Every muscle area will be stimulated and with hard training and good diet, you will progress.

The main upside of this approach is the amount of time you spend in a gym. Everybody can spare three days so there are no excuses and following this workout plan get pretty strong.
Downside is the lack of flexibility and time spent in a gym. Although there are some ways to make the workout shorter, which will be covered later, to finish this workout with proper rest (3-5 min) between the sets takes time and excluding any muscle group will slow the progress.

Take accountability and finish those workouts, don’t be soft Swole Bro!

Three day full body program

This program provides much needed flexibility to your workouts. You can select one day where you can switch exercises for each body part more freely, you can exclude certain muscle group if you are in a hurry etc.
Rotate workout A and B on daily basis or create your workout C following given template where you will incorporate movements you think are missing.
For example, you can select one day where you will do Leg Extensions and Hamstring Curls for your legs. Both of those movements are important for lower body, but not enough to exclude Squats and RDL-s in a two day a week plan.
Of course, you need to spare one day extra for workout, so if you decide to train three days a week be accountable and do NOT skip workouts!

Upper/Lower split routine

This workout routine can be organised into 3, 4, 5 or even 6 days a week plan, but for the sake of this article, lets keep it into 3-5 range.
Number of compound movements performed in workout is lower than in full body case which makes workouts shorter and less mentally demanding.
As you become stronger, this difference becomes much more apparent.
Downside of this approach is that each muscle gets hit two times instead of three times but that can be handled with some programming shenanigans.
Number of sets will be similar so it is not that volume is smaller, but there will be more pre exhaustion.

Upper body workouts based around upper body compound movements (presses and pulls), and lower body around lower body compound movements.

Upper workouts:

Lower workouts:

Rationale

There are probably some things that caught up your eye.
Maybe you are wondering why is such a difference in number of exercises between upper and lower workout, or you have noticed that certain workout lasts longer, etc..

Because of muscle size and higher proportion of muscle fibers, legs have much greater capacity for hypertrophy than the upper body and grow much faster.
This becomes a problem if you do typical four day Upper/Lower split and needs to be balanced.

Let’s cover few different scenarios with Upper/Lower split.

Three day Upper/Lower split

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
Upper Workout A	Rest	Lower Workout A	Rest	Upper Workout B	Rest	Rest

For your lower body, you will do only Workout A and it will be enough for your legs and glutes to grow.
No matter the workout, you should go hard, push the limits and get stronger with EVERY workout!
If you notice that your progress is lagging after few months, feel free to add additional set on your compound movements.

Since lower body workout will be very short, feel free to add some small upper body muscle group at the end of the workout for additional growth.
That can be few isolation sets for your arms or shoulders, but I would avoid bigger muscle groups because they will get enough work on upper body days.
Also, since there is additional day of rest on a weekend, you can add few more sets for your lacking muscle group or additional exercise of your choice.

Five day Upper/Lower split

Five day split provides us with a lot of flexibility which we will use to adjust our workouts.

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
Upper Workout A	Lower Workout A	Upper Workout B	Lower Workout B	Upper Workout C	Rest	Rest

You will get big and strong with five day Upper/Lower split and your workouts will not last as long.
This plan is very flexible. You can play with the different exercises and introduce shoulder work on leg days if you are lacking in that area.

Four day Upper/Lower split

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
Upper Workout A	Lower Workout A	Rest	Upper Workout B	Lower Workout B	Rest	Rest

As we already mentioned, legs are a great beneficiary in this program.
Hard leg training two times a week will definitely put some meat on your sticks Swole Bro.
Total beginners will gain size and become strong with this program no doubt, but they will progress much more quickly in their lower body.
Unless beginner has very weak lower body, I would not propose typical four day Upper/Lower split for first program.

Adjusted four day split

In adjusted four day split, we will replace Lower Workout B with a full body workout. That way we will balance leg and upper body growth.
On full body day, you can do Leg Extensions and Hamstring Curls instead of compound movements, it is up to you.

Example of weekly schedule would be:

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
Full Body Workout	Rest	Upper Workout A	Lower Workout A	Rest	Upper Workout B	Rest

There is a rest day after full body workout because it is much more demanding on your body and upper body requires recovery after it.
The scheduling is flexible and you do you, this is just an example.

How to progress?

As we already mentioned, we will follow progressive overload approach.
There are different ways to achieve progressive overload:

• Raise the weight
• Add a repetition

For every exercise there are rep ranges for this reason. You should pick a weight which does not allow you to achieve the maximum number of reps.
For example, if rep range is 6 – 10, pick a weight which limits you at 6 or 7.
When you finish all your sets with 10 repetitions for particular movement, add 10 pounds and repeat the process.
Adding one repetition is a huge thing which lets you know that you are getting stronger.
It is even harder to add one rep than to raise weight, so don’t take it lightly.

Long workouts?

Some of these workouts can take a lot of time so you might ask yourself if there is some way to make them shorter.

Introduction of Supersets is one way to solve this problem.
Performing two different movements with small rest in between is called Superset.

What is the best way to superset exercises?

There are multiple different ways to superset exercises, but for beginners the most important one is Antagonistic Superset.
This type of superset combines two movements with goal of maximum performance on both.
To achieve that, we will work two movements one after another which are completely opposite.
After push or curl movement, we will perform pull and extension movement and vice versa.

Get some breath in between sets and performance will not suffer.
The only limiting factor with this approach is working capacity. If you get tired fast or your conditioning is bad, it will be much harder to endure supersets.

That is why four pillars of fitness are important or that is why cardio is important for this specific case.
Remember, being jacked and tired is soft!

Conclusion

Let’s summarize all the important stuff.

Get your mindset right and accept the fact that results do not come over night.
Learn to enjoy the process, set your goals right, achieve them and get better!

You need to work on four areas: Strength, Cardio, Balance and Flexibility.
Find the time for cardio so you do not get tired after few minutes of running. Work on your balance while doing some boring things (brushing teeth, drying hair etc.).
Spare few minutes every day to work on few main stretches (reaching your toes, stretching your hips and glutes etc.).

Learn to count calories and get your macronutrients and micronutrients in.
For all the slim guys, eat more to gain weight and remember without weight there is no muscle. One more thing.. if you are not gaining weight, it’s not because you can not gain weight, it’s because you are not eating enough (no matter what you think).
Vice versa also applies.

Decide how many days a week you will train and STICK to it.
It’s ok to go more than that and it’s illegal to go less than that.

Feel free to experiment with these templates but do it righteously!
Don’t replace squats with bench press, but it’s ok to do leg presses every once in a while!

Lastly, make it enjoyable Swole Bro! After all, you are all that matters.

Until next time!