No matter your reasoning, we presume you are here because you have decided to start going to the gym and better your health. Like most of us you want to pursue better health, and getting tips and ideas from Fitness Fahrenheit is one way.
However, you must act upon your ideas and get down to the gym. You must choose a workout, what kind of training to do, if you need gear, consider nutrition, and more.
We can help you get started with your training and figure out what will work for you. If you’re a bit stuck on how to get started at the gym, stick around we have the answers for you!
Start Your Training
There is a lot of difference between just starting a routine for workouts without any distinct solidified plan, and starting a routine with specifics of things you need to be considering every single day.
Beginning randomly can help, but you need to at least know what you want to work on, otherwise, your progress will be minimal.
What Are Your Goals?
If this is totally new to you, and you have never experienced this before then an outlined plan will be very beneficial for you. Note that a good plan works for anyone, no matter their experience or knowledge.
Being aware of what you want to do and pursue is the first major step in getting your gym routine underway.
Are you wanting to build on your muscle mass, improve your conditioning, or just work on your general health overall? You might want to lose fat or just improve your strength.
What will work for you is tailored to you and will help you reach your goals in a sustainable way.
Choose A Workout & Timing
Once you know what your goals are, you now need to work on a workout split. This is a plan for how you split up the work you do over a time period, which for most would be a week.
You need to have balance, otherwise, you will be left with no energy for your workouts, you need time to recover as well. So, you need to determine how frequent your sessions will be, most choose 3 or 5 days.
If you want to work out more often, then you may want to reduce the frequency of your workouts, however, if you do not work out often then you want to increase your workout intensity.
Pick Your Exercises
Next, you need to pick what your exercises will be. Each exercise that you pick needs to serve your goals and your body type. A powerlifter will do many bench presses, deadlifts, and back squats.
Those who have an agility goal will consider turning to the squat rack.
The majority of your training should be filled with exercises that improve whatever qualities you wish to work on and improve.
Exercises are often isolation exercises or compound exercises, which you choose is important as they have some very distinctive differences for you to keep in mind.
Organize How You Work Out
Workouts so begin with whatever compound exercises you have chosen as they require a lot of energy. Then, depending on the day you have planned ahead, you may wish to follow up with more supportive and tailored accessory exercises.
Typically, you need to begin with the lifts which will use more muscles and need you to be more focused. After these then you can shift down to doing more isolated and smaller movements progressively.
Reps & Sets
The number of reps and sets that you perform in any exercise will dictate how it affects your body. If you aim for more strength then lower reps with heavier weight will be more gainful for you.
On the flip side, if you drop the weight down and perform more repetitions overall then this will help your cardiovascular system endurance and muscular endurance.
Compound exercises will often match best with lower repetition ranges, and then isolation exercises match best with endurance exercises. It is much easier to do 20 or so repetitions for biceps curls than back squats.
Consider the following:
- 1 to 2 repetitions for power.
- 3 to 6 repetitions for strength.
- 6 to 12 repetitions for hypertrophy.
- 12 or more repetitions for endurance.
There is so much to know in the gym, but knowing how to get started and what will work best for you and your goals is very important. Set your goals and set a routine that you will happily stick to and soon enough you will see results!