The Beginner weight training workout routine to build muscle, strength, and stamina.

When I was a young pup, I didn’t know jack-shit about lifting weights.

I just went to the gym and moved some weights around. That was about it.

I had no concept of exercise form, technical mastery, progressive overload, intelligent workout programming, nutrition, or the other principles of muscle building.

Don’t get caught up in those terms, I’ll explain what they are here shortly.

If you’re reading this you probably want to make a change.

You want to learn how to reshape your body. You want to get stronger.

The more serious you take it, the more fun it is.

You get the results. You get all the benefits. It makes it a lot of fun because you feel amazing doing it.

Everyone is a beginner at some point. Don’t get caught up thinking the gym is just for young guys. The gym is for everyone that wants to improve.

Age does not matter. Beginners can be 18 years old or 88.

We are all on our own timeline. You got to start somewhere.

No prior gym experience is required. You just need the will to do the work.

That being said, let’s get into it.

Weight Lifting 101: Why Lift?

Lifting kicks ass. It’s fun and rewarding. It makes you look good and feel good.

Lifting weights is a personal challenge. It’s you verses you.

Don’t compare yourself to anyone else. As long as you continually make progress, then it’s working.

When you look good people notice. And when you feel good, you notice how life just seems better.

Lifting is the best way to look good and feel good.

That is because lifting is the only way to reshape your body.

Lifting is the best solution for sustainable fat loss.

Building muscle absorbs calories and you’re a lot less likely to get fat after losing weight, if you build muscle.

Lifting is #1 for Health

Lifting weights is the best thing you can do for your health.

Regular weight training helps you live a long and productive life.

Fit people live longer and they are happier. They are more resistant to illness and disease.

People with fit bodies are mentally healthy, because like the ancient Greeks said, “A healthy body is a healthy mind.”

Weight training workouts burn fat, expel toxins from your system, and rejuvenate you from the inside out.

Lifting Weight is for EVERYONE

Everyone lifts weights.

Even swimmers, golfers, tennis players and nascar racers lift weights.

The benefits of weight training for overall health and performance are undeniable.

The highest performing (and highest paid) CEOs in the world all hit the weights.

You don’t have to be an athlete or powerful CEO, but you can look and feel like one.

Hell, you can even be one someday if you want it bad enough.

It doesn’t matter if you’re black, white, tall, short, fat, skinny, able bodied or disabled. If you can move, weight lifting can help you life a better life.

Weight Training Destroys Anxiety and Depression

Feeling down in the dumps?

A little iron therapy can pick you right up.

Meditate with the weights and get outside of your head for a little while.

The calm and clarity I feel after a hard workout is unlike anything else I’ve experienced.

Mental illness is correlated with body illness. Keep your body fit to protect yourself.

Re-Create Yourself with Weights

You can use the gym to recreate yourself.

Drug addicts have cured themselves by trading in needles and pills for barbells and heavy presses.

Obese men and women on the verge of death saved their lives by lifting weights.

I personally changed my entire life by hitting the gym at 5:30am every morning. It has improved every aspect of my life: physically, financially, and spiritually.

Weights can sculpt any average Joe into a Greek God and help him become Enlightened.

Lose Fat!

There’s no better way to lose your gut than with regular weight training.

No combination of carb-blockers and cardio can come close to what weight lifting can do.

Build Muscle = Get Babes

Listen up, boys.

Being physically strong and standing tall and proud, just does something for your soul.

You will radiate confidence. And confidence is the Key to finding a Ms.

Sure, you can pull females with a dad bod, but you better have some smooth talk and a fat wallet to back it up.

Being ripped will immediately make you more attractive. Even with clothes on because a chiseled body gives you a chiseled face.

But before we get into all that, you gotta learn the ropes…

Body Weight Training

Bodyweight training? I though this article is about weight lifting.

It is, hang in there with me a sec.

Before you hit the weights, you need to build some muscle with bodyweight exercises.

As soon as you can do:

• 10 push ups
• 20 situps, and
• 30 bodyweight squats

all in a row. Then, and only then, should you lift weights.

This is the right way to prepare your body for the weight room.

Do it right, or you might regret it. Trust me, muscle imbalances are a real bitch to fix.

Weight Lifting Exercises for Beginners

After you’ve mastered the bodyweight exercises, you can move on to weight training.

Lifting weights will drastically increase your strength and muscle gains.

Beginner should focus on compound exercises using a barbell.

These exercises are:

• Bench Press
• Squat
• Deadlift
• Barbell Rows
• Military Press
• Pull Ups

These lifts are the foundation of every great workouts.

All the big dogs of bodybuilding used them throughout their career.

You could workout using only these exercises for your entire life and still build a great body without any other lift.

A compound movements with a barbell are the core of every great weight training or bodybuilding program.

What is a Compound Exercise?

Compound exercise requires more than one joint to change angle to push or pull the weight.

Bench press, for example, requires movement at the elbow and shoulder joints.

Or with the squat, there’s movement at your knees, hips, and ankles as you raise and lower the weight.

More joints means more muscles engaged.

In fact, the six exercises listed above easy train every muscle in your body.

For this reason, you could do only barbell training and build a body better than 99% of people out there.

Beginner Weight Training with a Barbell

Why train with Barbells?

Barbells allow you to lift more weight than dumbbells. Machines are not even part of this discussion.

Beginners should train with free weights only.

Machines come later when you know how to handle a barbell.

The benefits of lifting weights with a barbell include:

Build strength and muscle

When you’re first starting out with weight training, you will know you are building muscle if you are getting stronger.

Train for strength first and your muscles will have to grow to handle the increased weight.

Strengthen Your Central Nervous System

Weight training develops your nervous system. This improves body control and coordination.

The more you weight train, the more you train your nerves to control your muscle fibers.

Conditioning your central nervous system allows you to contract your muscles harder. The harder you can contract your muscles, the better shape you will be.

Full Body Training is Key

The beginner routine ensures that you develop balanced muscles and strengthen your entire body as a single unit, just like nature intended.

Even when performing an exercise like bench press, your legs, abs and butt should be flexed hard throughout the entire set. This is called bracing.

Bracing will occur naturally when lifting heavy using compound  barbell lifts.

This also ensures muscle balance so you don’t favor one side of your body over the other, which could lead to muscle imbalances.

Barbells create muscle balance, symmetry, and perfect muscle proportions.

Strive for Perfect Form

Perfect form will ensure your muscles develop fully and will keep you from getting injured.

The right form keeps tension on the right muscles.

Keep tension off of joints and keep it on the muscles if you want to stay healthy for a long time.

Builds Strength and Muscle (Yeah, I said it again)

It bares repeating:

For the beginner, more weight lifted = more muscle.

The more you can lift, the bigger your muscles will become.

That’s your measuring stick for improvement.  Keep moving heavy weight.

Beginner Weight Training: The Progressive Overload Principle

Your body is an amazing machine that is highly adaptable.

If lifting 100 pounds today is hard but you do it anyway, it will be easier to lift 100 pounds next time.

Your body gets stronger every workout IF you push it farther than before.

Muscles, tendons, ligaments, and nerves all re-enforce themselves to prepare for that same weight next time.

That’s why you must lift 105 pounds next time. Because your body is now prepared for 100 pounds. You need to up the ante. Keep your body guessing to keep your body growing.

This is the concept behind Progressive Overload.

Progressive overload is the magical process that builds muscle. It works like this:

IF you lift heavier than your body is used to lifting, THEN you will build muscle.

It’s as simple as that. Do this long enough and you will get results.

There are two ways to achieve progress overload:

1. Increase the amount of weight lifted
2. Increase the volume (reps x sets) using maximum weight possible.

Increased Weight

This is straight forward. Every workout, you increase the amount of weight lifted by a small percentage.

Newbie gains may come quickly. So you could find yourself adding 5-10 pounds to the barbell each workout.

Overtime, this rate of progress will diminish. When this happens, just add 2.5-5 pounds each workout instead.

As long as the exercises remain challenging, you are hitting the mark.

Increased Volume

Volume refers to total poundage moved in a workout.

Sometimes it’s actually better to lift a lighter weight for more reps.

High-volume workouts are done strategically to build mind-muscle connection, burn fat, and build muscle.

The beginner weight training routine blends both of these principles together to maximize muscle and strength gains…

The Beginner Weight Training Routine

The beginner weight training routine focuses on eight basic exercises.

These are the only exercises you need to get in great shape.

Don’t over-complicate it. Master these basics, then branch out and start exploring other exercises.

Beginner Workout Routine Barbell Exercises

The exercises you will perform are:

• Squat
• Bench Press
• Incline Bench Press
• Bent Over Barbell Row
• Military Press
• Pull ups
• Dips
• Deadlift

These exercises will help you build a strong foundation of muscle that you can build upon for life.

Each workout combines a mix of these eight lifts for 12 consecutive weeks.

Workouts are performed 4-5 days a weeks depending on the phase of the workout routine.

For the first phase you will lift 4 days a week. You can lift Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday.

Or you could do Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday…Whatever works for you. It doesn’t matter really.

The Workout Routine

Repetition is KEY for learning.

That’s why I recommend beginners perform high volume sets as part of the workout.

High volume sets are typically 10-20+ reps. These sets serve many purposes:

• Allow trainer to ‘activate’ muscles
• Builds mind-muscle connection
• Increases time under tension
• Naturally prepares the body and mind to increase the weight

This all allows you to focus more on form, and to really feel the muscle working.

There are a few beginner workouts out there like the StrongLifts 5×5.

This is too low on volume and it overloads beginners with heavy weight too quickly before the trainer has developed the right mind-muscle connection.

The first phase is designed get your mind and body to work together to move the weight using perfect form.

The following workout schedule is Phase 1 of the workout which should be done consecutively for 8 weeks.

Beginner Workout 1

• Squat – 6 sets 15, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4 reps
• Bench Press – 6 sets 15, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4 reps
• Pull ups- 30 in as few sets as possible Or Close-grip pull downs 3 sets of 12.
• Leg Lifts – 30 in as few sets as possible

Workout 2

• Standing Military Press – 6 sets 15, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4 reps
• Bent Over Row – 6 sets 12, 10, 10, 8, 8, 8 reps
• Dips – 30 in as few sets as possible
• Leg Lifts – 30 in as few sets as possible

Workout 3

• Deadlift – 6 sets 12, 10, 8, 5, 3, 3 reps
• Incline Bench Press – 6 sets 15, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4 reps
• Squat – 6 sets 15, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8 reps

Workout 4

• Standing Military Press – 6 sets 15, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4 reps
• Bent Over Row – 6 sets 12, 10, 10, 8, 8, 8 reps
• Dips – 30 in as few sets as possible

Repeat this workout cycle for 8 consecutive weeks.

Make sure to lift as heavy as you can for each set. If you can do more reps then what’s shown about you need to add weight.

On that note, make sure you add weight each workout.

For example, if you bench press 95 pounds one workout, the next workout use 100 pounds for the same set.

After week eight, take a week off to let your body recover fully.

During your off days you can run, swim, play basketball, go hiking – whatever you want to do.

Just stay active and make sure you eat a lot of nutritious food. Space out your workouts so there’s a rest day every 3rd or 4th day.

This will allow your muscles to recover and won’t leave you feeling worn out.

But never take more than 2 days of rest in a row. Make a commitment to this workout and make the most of it.

That day off between workouts will allow you to gather energy to come back strong and hit the weights harder next workout.

Beginner Weight Training Phase 2

After you rest a week, it’s time to do another eight weeks of training.

In Phase 2 we add another exercise to each workout.

You’ll also notice a new rep scheme. We will incorporate sets with lower reps to activate your strength.

You must increase the intensity of training in order to grow. This subtle shift will make workouts more intense and force an adaptation response (i.e. trigger muscle growth).

Here you will incorporate burn sets into you routine. The last set for some exercises you will lower the weight and perform 15 reps.

Burn sets are done IMMEDIATELY following the previous set.

With that being said, Phase 2 of the training routine will look like the following:

Beginner Workout 1

• Squat – 6 sets 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 3 reps
• Bench Press – 6 sets 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2 reps
• Pull ups- 40 in as few sets as possible Or Close-grip pull downs 3 sets of 12.
• Leg Lifts – 40 in as few sets as possible

Workout 2

• Standing Military Press – 6 sets  10, 8, 8, 6, 6, 4 reps
• Bent Over Row – 6 sets 10, 8, 8, 8, 6, 6 reps
• Dips – 40 in as few sets as possible
• Leg Lifts – 40 in as few sets as possible

Workout 3

• Deadlift – 7 sets 10, 8, 6, 5, 4, 3, 15 reps
• Incline Bench Press – 7 sets 12, 10, 8, 6, 6, 4, 15 reps
• Squat – 7 sets 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2, 15 reps

Workout 4

• Standing Military Press – 7 sets 15, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 15 reps
• Bent Over Row – 7 sets 12, 10, 10, 8, 8, 8, 15 reps
• Dips – 40 in as few sets as possible

Do this for another 8 weeks. Adding weight as you can but still hitting the rep range prescribed.

Remember, you should struggle to get the last reps of each set.

Beginner Weight Training Phase 3

Now that you have a good 16 weeks of training experience we will introduce more volume and tap into your muscle strength by adding an addition set to each exercise to train your strength.

That additional set will be low-rep and you should try to lift a heavy weight for this set.

After you’ve taken a week off from the weights since Phase 2 pick up on Phase 3.

Train 4 days a week. Workouts are broken into Upper Body and Lower Body splits

Beginner Lower Body Workout 1

• Squat – 8 sets 20, 15, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2 reps
• Deadlift – 8 sets 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 3, 2, 1 reps
• Leg lifts – 50 reps in as few sets as possible

Beginner Upper Body Workout 1

• Bench Press – 6 sets 15, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4 reps
• Military Press – 6 sets 15, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4 reps
• Bent Over Row – 6 sets 15, 12, 10, 10, 8, 8 reps
• Dips – 50 in as few sets as possible

Beginner Lower Body Workout 2

• Deadlift – 5 sets 10, 10, 8, 8, 6 reps
• Squat – 5 sets 12, 10, 10, 8, 8 reps
• Leg Lifts – 50 reps in as few sets as possible

Beginner Upper Body Workout 2

• Incline Bench Press – 6 sets 12, 10, 10, 8, 6, 4 reps
• Military Press – 6 sets 12, 10, 10, 8, 8, 6 reps
• Bent Over Row – 6 sets 12, 12, 12, 10, 10, 10 reps
• Pull ups – 50 in as few sets as possible

Do the above workout for 8 weeks. Then hit the beach to show off your new muscles.

Beginner Weight Training Tips

These are more than suggestions. These are the key to unlock the gains you seek.

Learn them, apply them, and work every day to understand them in the gym.

Use perfect Form!

I can’t stress this enough. Keep your abs tight, maintain good posture and body alignment throughout each lift.

Consistency is Key!

Rome wasn’t built in a day.

You must put in the work everyday for as long as it takes to get the results you want.

You will make better gains working out for 45 minutes 3 times a week than you will working out for 3 hours 1 day a week.

Intensity repeated daily, over time gets you in great shape.

Keep adding weight!

If you can do more reps then noted in the workout, you’re not lifting heavy enough.

You should have to STRUGGLE to get the last rep, if you can even do it at all.

How many times do I need to say this?

You need to push yourself to grow.

Time Under Tension

Time under tension is the consecutive amount of seconds/minutes the muscles is tense due to the weight.

Keep your muscles under the full load of the weight. Lift in a deliberate manner. every rep must be controlled.

Eliminate momentum when lifting to maximize muscle growth.

It should take about 2 seconds to move the weight up and another 2 seconds to bring the weight back down.

Keep Your Abs and Ass Muscles Flexed

Flex your abs and ass muscles as hard as you can every lift.

Flex your abs to stabilize your core.

Squeeze your glutes together like your pinching a playing card between your butt cheeks.

This will engage your core, butt and legs (your largest muscle groups).

This will help you generate power and keep your muscles balanced.

It’s easy to get a muscle imbalance as people tend to favor one side or another.

Flexing your abs and ass hard is a good way to make sure you’re developing your muscles symmetrically and making the most of your workouts.

Develop your mind- muscle connection

Feel your muscle being worked.

Squeeze your muscles as hard as you can at the top of each rep.

Close your eyes and focus hard on the muscles being worked.

Focus on contracting your muscles hard at the top of each lift and fight the weight for 3 seconds as you lower it.

Keep a Training Log

Write down the weight you use for every set.

write down the amount of reps you performed each set.

Next time you do a set of that exercises with the same amount of reps, increase the weight.

If you’re not logging your workouts, you are wasting your time. You won’t progress as fast as you could. Trust me on this.

Meal Prep

NUTRITION.

You need to learn how to eat.

I worked out for YEARS without results because I ate like shit.

I workouts out 5 days a week but ate less than 50 grams of protein a day!

What a joke. Make sure you are eating enough food to grow. Eat lean meats and some kind of green vegetable every meal.

Meal prep makes staying on track easy. You cook a bunch of good food all at once. Then you portion it out into meals. Then when you are hungry, you just eat it.

It’s the easiest thing in the world but makes all the difference.

Nutrition for Beginning Trainers

Nutrition is absolutely critical to your success?

Want to build muscle?

Eat accordingly.

What energy that lasts all day?

Eat accordingly.

Everything starts with the food you eat. If you want to build muscle you need ENERGY and PROTEIN to move and grow.

Not just any energy, you want clean energy.

You get clean energy from all natural foods prepared fresh.

Cut Out the Crap

No fake shit either. Nothing frozen, or fried or picked up from a window.

No processed garbage.

Get Enough Protein

Try to get a gram of protein per body weight. This will help your muscles recover from workouts and grow.

Good sources of protein are beef, chicken, pork, turkey, dairy, EGGS, nuts, peanut butter.

Make sure at least 90% of your protein is from a food source. The remaining 10% can come from a shake or meal replacement.

Skinny Guys need to EAT

In spite of everything I just said, if you are a skinny guy just eat everything you can.

I completely overlooked diet and proper eating when I started weight training and as a result I didn’t gain nearly as much muscle as I could have.

If you’re a skinny guy, eat everything you can get your hands on to put on as much muscle as possible.

If you’re young you have metabolism, school sports and weight lifting working to your advantage so you are unlikely to get fat but you will get ripped.

Don’t Drink Calories

Don’t drink calories if you want to lose fat – 1 or 2 beers a week tops. No juice unless you juice it yourself.

If you’re trying to bulk up don’t worry too much about what you’re eating.

Focus on lifting properly and getting ENOUGH GOOD FOOD (vitamins, minerals, protein) to recover from your workouts.

After you’ve got the working out down, then you can hone in on your diet.

Just don’t stuff yourself with twinkles and ice cream in the mean time and you’ll be fine.

If you’re trying to lean up follow these same rules – Eat enough protein-rich foods to build new muscle and recover from your workouts and cut out the crap food and you will lose weight.

If you’re still having trouble losing fat try this method that I guarantee will help you lose fat.

My Advice to Beginners

Go all in from the beginning.

It’s extremely important when you start weight training that your goal is to build as much muscle as possible.

The first 1-2 years of weight lifting your body produces a flood of growth hormone which allows you to build a lot of healthy muscle quickly.

You can make the best gains of your life in the first two years of training.

Take advantage of this short window while you can – you will thank yourself later as gains will be harder to come by after that.

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