are you motivated to go to the gym on your own and you really want to start seeing results and
you want to make sure when you're going to the gym you're actually doing things that are going to get
you those results don't worry that's what i'm talking about all in this video today i'm going
to help you design a beginner strength training program from scratch to make sure that every time
you go to the gym you're actually doing things to get you to your results don't get me wrong anytime
someone makes the choice to move their bodies or go to the gym is amazing but imagine if you could
be really doing the exercises you need to be doing and pushing yourself and challenging yourself in
the right way to really make the most out of every single trip to the gym i'm filming down here today
for my private studio core conditioning located in surrey bc and make sure you watch this video
all the way to the end i'm going to explain to you in the most basic form for beginners how to
set up a strength training program for when you go to the gym to make sure you're using progressive
overload and make sure you're including warm-ups cooldowns how much cardio do you want to use so if
you're a beginner and you do want to start taking the gym seriously this video is for you if you're
a returning subscriber welcome back guys i know a lot of you requested this video so here it is
as promised but if you're new here my name is michelle roots kinesiologist
personal trainer nutrition coach and certified strength and conditioning specialist this channel
is all about helping you on your fitness and fat loss journey by answering questions
and breaking down simple fitness and nutrition tips to help you on your journey so if you're
not yet subscribed make sure you subscribe to my channel and hit that bell to be notified for new
videos coming out every single week okay i don't want to waste any more time so let's dive right
in so you are motivated to go to the gym on your own but when you get there you actually don't know
what to do and you're just picking random machines you're maybe doing oh i'll just do legs today oh
i'll just do arms today but you don't really have a specific training program to follow this is
often what sets people apart from the people who really get results and the people who continue
to go to the gym and feel great they don't really get to that point where they're getting stronger
and they start to feel leaner and really start to learn how to push themselves in the gym following
a specific training program will really help you with that even if you're making it yourself
now quickly although i said i am gonna break it down for you simply in this video today in the
most basic form for beginners but i've done a lot of the work for you already if you're looking for
a simple beginner eight week strength training program for the gym check out the links in my
description below i have three day splits and four day splits simple training programs you can follow
through my app all the information is in the description below if you just want to purchase
that program and follow it for eight weeks you'll be given a link to download my app and you will
follow the entire program it is separated into two phases phase one is a beginner and basic
exercises and then in the second four weeks we enter phase two and we're advancing you just
a little bit more to show you what progressive overload looks like and really how to challenge
yourself so again watch this video to the end see if you can do it on your own if you'd rather just
follow a program that i've already created for you based on all the principles i'm going to
give you in this video today check the link in the description below i'd be happy to help you
out okay let's pretend i'm you i'm gonna sit down and create a strength training program for myself
to follow at the gym the first thing you want to ask yourself is how many days a week can you
commit to strength training or going to the gym every week and be realistic make sure you decide
on days that are actually realistic and it's not going to be extremely stressful for you so
for example if you've never gone to the gym before or you're currently going to the gym three days
a week don't say that you're gonna start going five or six days a week start with a three day
split or four days so that's the first thing you want to do is you want to decide how many
days a week are you going to go to the gym if you can commit monday wednesday friday there you go
you're going to be doing a three day split you're going to go monday wednesday friday to the gym
and then your tuesday thursdays are going to be rest days if you can commit four days a week best
case scenario you're gonna go monday tuesday thursday friday okay or you could do monday
wednesday friday saturday whatever works with your schedule but most important thing
is setting a schedule you can stick to long term if you watch any of the other videos on
my channel if you haven't go check them out i am always talking about nutrition and fitness should
fit into your life you shouldn't have to work your entire life around your fitness and your nutrition
it's a lifestyle so if you are on this journey you want to make sure you can stick to it
long term and it's not something that's going to take over your entire life especially if you're
just starting out you can still get great results when you're strength training properly just three
days a week we'll talk more about that later in the video so there you go first things first i
want you right now to decide what days a week are you going to commit to the gym decide that
write it down right now go right now okay second thing so now that we know how many days a week
you're gonna work out let's talk about our splits so if you are a beginner and you have decided
you're going to do a three day split so if you're committing monday wednesday and fridays to your
gym days you might want to either do a full body monday wednesday friday all full body workouts
or you can focus on legs on monday wednesday you focus on upper body and thursday you focus on full
body i highly recommend if you are just beginning and you haven't done a lot of strength training
to do an upper lower split because you are going to probably be a little bit sore i don't recommend
training to make yourself super sore but most likely if you're going to start lifting
weights and you haven't done it a lot or you're going to start really challenging yourself and
increasing your weights you probably will be a little bit sore at least for the first bit so
that's a great way if you're starting out to kind of break up you're still going to hit your legs
twice in the week and you're going to hit your upper body twice in a week because in that full
body you'll be working your upper body and your lower body and your core but if you are a beginner
and you do prefer doing full body workouts that's okay as well you could do monday wednesday friday
full body workouts i can't really say that one is better than the other again for people who are a
bit more advanced yes we usually split up upper and lower because they are doing more exercises
for their lower body to really start to see strength gains but if you're a beginner you can
still get great results from full body workouts three times a week now what about if you've
decided to commit four days to your workouts so let's pretend you've done monday tuesday thursday
friday i would recommend again we do those splits you would do lower body maybe legs and glutes
on monday tuesday would be an upper body wednesday could be a cardio or an active rest day thursday
you are back to legs and glutes lower body friday you are back to upper body so that's again another
way of giving your body time to recover which is very very important and i will touch base on that
in a little bit when you are designing your training program you want to make sure you give
rest days or what we call active rest days which i'll discuss in a minute now i just want to say
quickly i'm not going to touch base on the very many other variables you can do with splits push
days pull days back glutes and biceps you can do chest triceps and shoulders there's so many ways
we can create workout splits throughout the week but because this is just a basic beginner
video i don't want you to worry about that for now either pick upper or lower or full body
keep it simple at the beginning until you're in a groove and then you can start
isolating different body parts and playing around with your different splits okay so now you know
what workouts you're going to be doing what days a week you are going to do them
let's talk about exercise selection so when you're looking at selecting exercise and when myself as
a personal trainer and when i'm running even my group classes here at my studio you always want to
make sure you're working your body in all planes of motion so we have a frontal plane a sagittal
plane and a transverse plane so put in the most basic way front to back side to side and rotation
you want to make sure you're working your body in all those different planes of motion to really
work your muscles in the right way and make sure your exercises are more functional so that you can
actually function better in life isn't that what we all want to get out of our strength training
anyway right well one of the things of course you all want to blast body fat get leaner get stronger
but functioning better in life should be high on the priority list and next you want to make sure
all of your exercises you've selected for your workouts in the week are hitting every major
muscle group so legs glutes shoulders chest back arms and core and abs so we choose the exercises
based on which workout you've chosen to do for example if you are doing a lower body workout
on a monday let's go back to that three-day split exam so you want to make sure in your lower body
workout you're working all of the muscles of the lower body such as in your upper body workout you
want to make sure you're getting chest back shoulders arms and then in your full body
workout you want to incorporate both lower body and upper body exercises and try your best to hit
your chest your back especially the bigger larger muscle groups again there's so many things i can
talk about here i could talk about this for days compound exercises in your full body workouts
which are going to blast more calories i made a video all about that the compound exercises
in order to blast more body fat check out that video right here i'm not going to touch base on
all of that in this video right here because again i broke it down for you already so check out that
video i'll link it in the description below i also created a second video breaking down all
of the proper form for all of those exercises okay so now that we're talking about exercise selection
there are five main things that every strength training and just overall training program should
include strength exercises cardiovascular exercises flexibility exercises warm up and
cool down and activation type exercises so again when we're designing an entire training program
you want to make sure all of your workouts have a proper warm up and cool down with some flexibility
type exercises if you're looking for a simple five minute dynamic warm-up bop check out this
one right here i created that for a lot of my clients that i train whether online or in person
they just go through the video it's five minutes and it's a great dynamic warm-up can also be used
as a cooldown as well strength workouts should include some kind of activation at the beginning
based on the muscle groups you're using so if you're doing a lower body workout you want to
do some activation and flexibility stuff to really get your glutes firing get your quads firing get
your heart rate up get your muscles loosened up with some dynamic stretching to make sure you are
ready to go into your bigger lifts and your body is prepared to lift the weights that you're asking
of it most importantly to prevent injury but also to really get the most out of your workout just
the same as fueling your body before your workout and fueling your body after your workout you have
to prepare it as well by warming up and cooling down so that is also important to include into
your training program okay so we touched a little bit there on exercise selection and how to set up
your training program for an entire week but if there's one thing you take away from this video
these are the main movements you want to make sure your body is performing every week in your
training program so there should be hinge exercises meaning deadlifts there should be
squat exercises back squats goblet squats single leg squats there should be some kind of a press
meaning an overhead press as long as your shoulders are okay with that overhead press with
the barbell dumbbell press some kind of a rowing exercise so for example a cable row you could do
single arm dumbbell rows um pull-ups chin-ups something that is going to work your posterior
chain and your upper back muscles and then there should be some kind of a pushing exercise so a
bench press or a chest press and lastly there should be some kind of a carrying exercise so
if you're not familiar with a farmer carry there are so many different suitcase carry where you're
literally just walking with dumbbells at your sides i talk about the farmer carry in my video
all about compound lifts if you're not sure what it is go check out that video again it's linked in
the description below so refresher we've got hinge squat press pull or row push carry and just making
sure you are doing these specific movings and getting your body stronger and used to stabilizing
in these movements will help you function better in life prevent injury and of course
build lean muscle and blast body fat which is what we want out of our strength training program so
as a personal trainer and kinesiologist i've been doing this for over 15 years so when i am creating
these training programs for clients i am looking at so many different other factors injuries daily
life what kind of job they have all these things come into play when i'm creating their program
but again that doesn't mean that you aren't able to sit down and create a basic beginner workout
for yourself based on this information i provided i could go into more detail about open chain and
closed chain exercises unilateral and bilateral exercises all of these things that i take into
account when i am designing programs for people but again i don't even want to go there right now
because this video is just for beginners if you want me to make a more advanced video for example
you've been doing this and you know everything i already talked about in this video and now you're
ready to take it to the next level let me know in the comments below and i'd be happy to make like
an advanced version of this video right here if you want to really take your training to the next
level so let's just do a quick recap and overview first of all you go to the gym on your own
amazing let's make sure you are doing the right exercises and following a great program to make
sure you really get your results and continue to challenge yourself one pick your schedule again
pick the days that work best for you commit to it create your program and again we're gonna run with
this monday wednesday friday example the three day split monday you're doing legs upper body
on wednesday friday you were doing a full body so now you're gonna sit down and create your
workouts so when we're looking at our lower body workout a basic rule to follow is do your bigger
harder lifts at the beginning and then work into what we call accessory work after so your
lunges and your single leg and a bit harder more difficult exercises where you won't be lifting
as heavy weight so if you are doing squats or deadlifts those should be at the beginning of your
workout and again just try and create your program based on hitting every single muscle of the lower
body if you're just starting out she's about five or six exercises and stay in about a six to eight
maybe ten rep range if you can do comfortably with good weight and you wanna pick a weight
where you are maxing out at that eighth or tenth rep if you probably could have done 15
the weight is too light and you need to go up so that's a great way to know if you're lifting heavy
enough if you want to know more about progressive overload i also made a video for that check out
that video i'll link that in the description below to know when you should be increasing your weights
and if you are actually performing progressive overload in your program i tell you all about that
so once you have selected five or six exercises if you're a beginner five or six is enough
in your workouts write it all down schedule it in and when you are at the gym you are going
to track how many reps you did at what weight and you are going to continue to track that as you go
so the second time you go back to that lower body workout in the second week you're going to try
and challenge yourself or you're going to see how many reps and what weight you did in that workout
and continue to try and challenge yourself and increase your rep range or increase your weights
and then you just keep doing that and this is how following this training program some might find it
boring but to be honest in order to get the best results working on the same exercises and getting
better and better at those over and over again is actually the best way to do it and then switching
it up every four to six weeks this is how you really learn progressive overload and learn what
your body is capable of if you're doing a new workout every single time you go to the gym how
do you know if you're ever getting stronger you're always doing new exercises so there you go guys i
really hope this video was helpful i know i could talk for hours and i probably rambled a little bit
because i'm very passionate about this topic it's what i do on a daily weekly my entire lifely basis
is creating programs for people and helping them get stronger so if you are looking for pre-made
programs something that i've already done the work for you you just download my app
and follow through the program i'll leave the link in the description below as to where you can sign
up for that program i've got a three day and a four day split one for the gym one if you only
have dumbbells say your gym has a little bit less equipment or you just want to do it from home and
all you have is dumbbells i have a program for that too or if you're looking for personalized
online coaching where me and you would sit down look at your life look at your goals and i would
create a personalized strength training program just for you to really get you where you want to
be i'll leave the link in the description below as to where you can contact me and find out more
information about that as well so thanks again for watching guys i really hope this video was helpful
it's time for me to get a quick lift in before i go back to my littles see you guys next week
you