The Beginners Workout Guide For Building Muscle

You’re an eternal beginner. You get on a program and fall off just as fast. You skip the gym if it’s raining.

Sound familiar? Don't blame yourself. Your problem probably isn't a weakness of character (although you need some steel in your spine too)—it's probably that you're not following the right strategy. Pry the snooze button off your alarm clock, because with a little effort, you can adopt good exercise and diet habits, thanks to this plan from Brian Grasso, a trainer and life coach in Montreal. (Photographs by Marius Bagge)

The Beginner's Guide to Interval Training >>>

The Beginner's Profile: If any of these points sound familiar, this workout's for you.

Mantra: “I’m just not consistent.”

Longest streak of consistent gym-going: 6 weeks

Best lifts: 225-pound bench press; “What’s a squat?”

Typical dinner: Anything/everything

You tell yourself: “If Carrot Top can get ripped, so can I.”

THREE THINGS TO KNOW BEFORE YOU START

Start Slow: “The body and mind are terribly homeostatic machines,” Grasso says. “They constantly search for comfort and consistency,” so deciding to make a slew of changes at once often leads to failure.

“Making minor amendments to your daily routine will fl y under the radar of your conscious thought and become positive habits.” In other words, if you start so gradually that you barely notice the change, you’ll be more apt to continue it and make more changes without them ever seeming daunting.

Train two days per week:This isn’t asking a lot, so try to go at the same times every week. Get used to making appointments with yourself and keeping them. But if you don’t feel like working out, don’t. Just go to the gym, walk in, and leave if you want. The important thing is that you establish the habit of going. At the very least, change into your workout clothes when you get there—you can change back out of them and leave right away. In no time, you’ll be going to the gym and staying to train, and regular exercise will be a part of your life.

Stand up straight: Want an easy way to tell if you’re performing your exercises correctly? Check your posture. The correct starting position for most exercises is shoulders back, chest out, standing (or sitting) tall, with your abs tight. Good posture, good form.

The Beginner's Guide to Weight Training >>>

THE BEGINNER'S MEAL PLAN

Your goal should be to eat at least one healthy meal per week. “I believe in making modest changes to the diet that don’t leave people feeling trapped and anxious to return to their old habits,” Grasso says. Choose just one meal to eat that you’re sure is healthy. Don’t psyche yourself out here—use common sense. Lean meat and fish, fruits and vegetables, whole grains and raw nuts and seeds are all fine. Eat what you like the rest of the day. Do this for two weeks and then up it to two healthy meals per day. Continue in that fashion and you’ll find you’re eating healthy most of the time. Get the full beginner's meal plan >>

HOW TO DO THIS WORKOUT ROUTINE

Frequency: Perform the two workouts (Day 1 and 2) once per week, resting at least a day between each.

Time Needed: 35 min

How to Do It: Perform the exercises marked with letters as a group. Do one set of A, rest, then one set of B, then rest (note that some groups have an exercise “C”), and repeat until all sets are complete. Then go on to the next group. Perform three sets of 8–10 reps for each exercise.

After 1 Month: By this point, working out has become part of your routine, and you look forward to it. If not, continue to at least show up at the gym (even if you don’t have the desire to go through with the workouts) until the habit sticks. Remember to continue adding healthy meals to your diet—you should be at two per day by now.

DAY 1

1A) Dumbbell Squat

Rest: 30 sec.

Hold a dumbbell in each hand and stand with your feet shoulder width apart. Squat down as low as you can while keeping an arch in your lower back.

1B) Push-Up

Rest: 60 sec.

Place your hands on the floor outside shoulder width and tighten your abs. Keeping your body straight, lower yourself until your chest is about an inch off the floor.

2A) Dumbbell Reverse Lunge

Rest: 30 sec.

Hold a dumbbell in each hand and step back with one leg. Lower your body until your rear knee nearly touches, and your front thigh is parallel to, the floor.

2B) Dumbbell Reverse Lunge

Rest: 30 sec.

Hold a dumbbell in each hand and step back with one leg. Lower your body until your rear knee nearly touches, and your front thigh is parallel to, the floor.

2B) Standing Dumbbell Shoulder Press

Rest: 60 sec.

Hold a dumbbell in each hand at shoulder level. Brace your abs and press the weights straight overhead.

3A) Bulgarian Split Squat

Rest: 30 sec.

Rest the top of one foot behind you on a bench or chair. Lower yourself using your support leg until your rear knee nearly touches the floor.

3B) Dip

Rest: 30 sec.

Grab onto the parallel bars of a dip station and lower your body until your upper arms are parallel to the floor. If you can’t do dips, do a lying triceps extension with an EZ-curl bar

3C) Russian Twist

Rest: 60 sec.

Sit on the floor with a dumbbell or weight plate in both hands and recline your torso to a 45-degree angle. Hold your arms out straight and twist as far as you can in one direction and then to the other side.

4) Stationary Bike

Pedal at a moderately hard pace for 12–20 minutes.

DAY 2

1A) Dumbbell Romanian Deadlift

Rest: 60 sec.

Hold a dumbbell in each hand with the weights against your thighs. Bend your hips back and lower your torso, allowing your knees to bend as needed, until you feel your lower back is beginning to lose its arch. Squeeze your glutes and hamstrings to come back up.

1B) One-arm Dumbbell Row

Rest: 60 sec.

Grab a dumbbell in one hand, and rest the other hand and knee on a bench. Let your arm hang straight down. Keeping your lower back in its natural arch, row the weight until it touches your side. Perform all your reps with one arm first, and then switch arms and repeat.

2A) Straight-leg Glute Bridge

Rest: 60 sec.

Lie on your back on the floor and rest your heels on a bench or chair. Brace your abs and push onto your heels to raise your hips off the floor until your body forms a straight line.

2B) Lat Pull-down

Rest: 60 sec.

Sit at a lat pulldown station and hold the bar with an outsideshoulder- width grip. Pull the bar down to your collarbone

3A) Dumbbell Single-leg Deadlift

Rest: 60 sec.

Hold a dumbbellwith one hand and stand on the opposite leg. Keeping your lower back arched, bend forward at the hips as far as you can and then extend your hips to come back up. Complete all your reps on one side and then switch sides.

3B) Dumbbell Biceps Curl

Rest: 60 sec.

Hold a dumbbell in each hand and, keeping your upper arms against your sides, curl the weights up to shoulder level.

3C) Plank

Rest: 60 sec.

Get on the floor in push-up position, then lower your weight onto your forearms. Brace your abs and hold the position—body completely straight—for 60 seconds, or as long as you can.

4) Stationary Bike

Pedal at a moderately hard pace for 12–20 minutes.

originally posted by mensfitness.com

The Complete 4 Week Beginners Workout Routine

In the realm of fitness, three-month programs dominate the landscape. You’ve even seen plenty of them in this magazine over the years. Are they effective? Absolutely. But we’re going to let you in on an interesting secret: It doesn’t necessary take eight or 12 weeks to get your feet wet in the gym. Not that you’ll be a seasoned vet after four weeks, but if you can just get that first month under your belt, you’ll get yourself over the proverbial hump where so many fail and give up, and set the stage for a lifetime of gains.

Let’s just call this the accelerated beginner’s guide to bodybuilding. In this plan, your first month of training will be demanding, but not so demanding as to cause injury (or worse yet, burnout), and progressive in the sense that each week you’ll graduate to different exercises, higher volume, more intensity or all of the above. After four weeks you’ll not only be ready for the next challenge but you’ll have built a significant amount of quality muscle. In other words, one month from now you’ll look significantly better with your shirt off than you look now. (How’s that for results?)

This program isn’t just for the true beginner who has never touched a weight before; it’s also suitable for anyone who has taken an extended leave of absence from training. How long has it been since you went to the gym regularly? Six months? A year? Five years? No worries: The following routines will get you back on track in — you guessed it — just four short weeks. Let’s get to work.

WEEK 1: WHOLE IN ONE

You’ll begin the program with a full-body training split, meaning you’ll train all major bodyparts in each workout (as opposed to “splitting up” your training). Train three days this first week, performing just one exercise per bodypart in each session. It’s important that you have a day of rest between each workout to allow your body to recover; this makes training Monday, Wednesday and Friday — with Saturday and Sunday being rest days — a good approach.

The exercises listed in Week 1 are a collection of basic moves that, while also used by advanced lifters, we feel are suitable for the beginner as well. Notice we’re not starting you off with only machine exercises; a handful of free-weight movements are present right off the bat. Reason being, these are the exercises you need to master for long-term gains in muscular size and strength, so you may as well start learning them now. Carefully read all exercise descriptions, starting on page, before attempting them yourself.

In Week 1 you’ll perform three sets of every exercise per workout, which over the course of the week adds up to nine sets total for each bodypart, a good starting volume for your purposes. With the exception of crunches for abs, you’ll do 8–12 reps per set. This rep scheme is widely considered ideal for achieving gains in muscle size (the scientific term is hypertrophy) and is commonly employed by amateur and pro bodybuilders alike.

Notice in the workouts below that your first set calls for eight reps, your second set 10 reps and your third set 12. This is referred to in bodybuilding circles as a “reverse pyramid” (a standard pyramid goes from higher to lower reps), where you decrease the weight each set to complete the higher rep count. For example, if on your first set of lat pulldowns you used 140 pounds for eight reps, try using 120 or 130 pounds on set two and 100–120 pounds on set three.

WEEK 2: SPLIT DECISION

You’re only a week into the program, yet you’ll begin to train different bodyparts on different days with a two-day training split (meaning the entire body is trained over the course of two days, rather than one as in the first week). You’ll train a total of four days this week; the split includes two upper-body days (Monday and Thursday) and two lower-body days (Tuesday and Friday), and each bodypart is trained twice. Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday will be your recovery days.

Several exercises from Week 1 are carried over to Week 2, but one move is added to each bodypart routine — with the exception of abs — so you can train all muscle groups more completely from multiple angles. Chest, for example, includes two exercises: One is a compound movement (dumbbell bench press) that involves multiple joints (both the shoulder and elbow) to work the largest amount of muscle possible, and the other is an isolation exercise (dumbbell flye) that involves only one joint (shoulder) and targets the pecs to a greater extent. (When doing presses for chest, the deltoids and triceps are involved to a degree, meaning presses don’t isolate the pecs as much as flyes do.)

You’ll again employ a reverse pyramid scheme of reps, though in Week 2 you’ll go slightly higher in reps (15) on your third set of each exercise. Fifteen reps may be just outside the ideal muscle-building range, but these sets will help you increase muscular endurance to provide a solid foundation on which to build size and strength going forward.

WEEK 3: THREE ON THREE

In the third week of the program we step it up to a three-day training split: Train all “pushing” bodyparts (chest, shoulders, triceps) on Day 1; hit the “pulling” bodyparts (back, biceps) and abs on Day 2; and work your lower body (quads, glutes, hamstrings, calves) on Day 3. As in Week 2, you train each bodypart twice a week, so you’ll hit the gym six days this week.

One new exercise is added to each bodypart routine to provide even more angles from which to train your target muscles to promote complete development. You’ll hit each muscle group with two exercises of 3­–4 sets each: four sets for large bodyparts (chest, back, shoulders, quads, hamstrings) and three sets for smaller bodyparts (biceps, triceps, abs, calves). The result is 16 total sets for the week for large bodyparts and 12 sets total for smaller ones — again, working in the 8–15-rep range — which is a substantial increase in volume from Week 1.

WEEK 4: TURNING UP THE VOLUME

In the fourth and final week of the program, you’ll train four days in a four-way split that hits each bodypart just once (except for calves and abs, which are each trained twice). Four-day splits are common among experienced lifters because they involve training fewer bodyparts (typically 2–3) per workout, which gives each muscle group ample attention and allows you to train with higher volume. As you’ll see, chest and triceps are paired up, as are back with biceps and quads with hamstrings, each a very common pairing among novice and advanced bodybuilders. Shoulders are trained more or less on their own, and you’ll alternate hitting calves and abs — which respond well to being trained multiple times per week — every other workout. No new exercises are introduced in Week 4 so that you can focus on intensity in your workouts instead of learning new movements.

Rep schemes remain in the hypertrophy range this week, but overall volume increases by adding more sets to individual exercises: up to five sets per move for larger bodyparts, and even 10 sets of calf raises on Thursday. This bump in volume will ensure that your muscles are overloaded sufficiently to continue the growth they’ve already begun experiencing in the first three weeks. Completion of this four-week program now entitles you to go to the next stage.

Originally posted by muscleandfitness.com

WNY MMA an Fitness. 10 min. Jump Rope workout.

 

Jump Rope Basics

If you haven't picked up a jump rope since fourth-grade gym class, it's time for a skip down memory lane. Burn 135 calories in just 10 minutes with this jump rope workout from Marty Winkler, cocreator of RopeSport workout DVDs (ropesport.com). You'll also sculpt your shoulders, chest, arms, and legs.

How To Jump Rope

• Jump 1 to 2 inches off floor, giving rope just enough space to slip under feet — only the balls of feet should touch the floor.
• Keep elbows close to sides as you turn the rope. The movement comes from the wrists and forearms, not the shoulders.
• If you tire out before you finish the workout, drop the rope, but keep arms and legs going. Work up to using the rope full-time.
• To find a rope that fits. We have plenty of ropes here at WNY MMA and Fitness. Place one foot in the center of the rope and lift the handles — they shouldn't go past your armpits.

Minutes 0:00-1:00

Figure Eight

• Stand with feet shoulder-width apart, grasping jump rope handles together with both hands in front of body.
• Trace a sideways figure eight — moving from right shoulder to left hip, then left shoulder to right hip.
• Shift weight from right to left foot as you move your arms across your body.

 

 

Minutes 1:00-2:00

Single Jump

• Jump over the rope with feet together, one jump per turn.

 

 

 

 

Minutes 2:00-2:30

Step Touch

• Holding handles together, swing rope to the left and turn twice in a circular motion as you step to the left and tap right toes by left heel.
• Repeat to the right.

 

Minutes 2:30-3:30

Front-Back

• Jump up with feet together, moving 6 inches forward over the rope.
• On the next turn, jump back 6 inches.
• Continue alternating, jumping once per turn.

 

 

 

Minutes 3:30-4:00

Figure Eight

Repeat as before:

• Stand with feet shoulder-width apart, grasping jump rope handles together with both hands in front of body.
• Trace a sideways figure eight — moving from right shoulder to left hip, then left shoulder to right hip.
• Shift weight from right to left foot as you move your arms across your body.

Minutes 4:00-5:00

Slalom

• Jump over the rope 6 inches to the right, landing on both feet.
• On the next turn, jump 6 inches to the left.
• Keep your feet together and continue alternating, jumping once per turn.

Minutes 5:00-5:30

Step Touch

Repeat as before:

• Holding handles together, swing rope to the left and turn twice in a circular motion as you step to the left and tap right toes by left heel.
• Repeat to the right.

Minutes 5:30-6:00

Double Jump

• Jump high enough to pass the rope under your feet twice before landing.
• Repeat.
• If you have trouble, do single jumps and work your way up to doubles.

Minutes 6:00-6:30

Figure Eight

Repeat as before:

• Stand with feet shoulder-width apart, grasping jump rope handles together with both hands in front of body.
• Trace a sideways figure eight — moving from right shoulder to left hip, then left shoulder to right hip.
• Shift weight from right to left foot as you move your arms across your body.

Minutes 6:30-7:00

Jumping Jack

• Jump over the rope and land with feet wider than hip-width apart.
• On your next jump, land with feet together.
• Repeat.

Minutes 7:00-9:00

Running

• Run in place while turning the rope.
• The rope should pass under one foot at a time.

Minutes 9:00-10:00

Step Touch

Repeat as before:

• Holding handles together, swing rope to the left and turn twice in a circular motion as you step to the left and tap right toes by left heel.
• Repeat to the right.