STARTING YOUR TRAINING FROM SCRATCH

Congratulations! You’ve decided that you will no longer be a spectator in your health and that you will undergo the daunting task to finally get your booty off the couch and into a gym. For many, just this step is a huge success and I certainly applaud you. I have a mantra though, don’t celebrate victory or mourn loss for too long and using that mantra, now that the decision has been made, let’s help you figure out what the heck to do in the gym!

If you have access to a television and/or the internet, we all know there is no shortage of ripped trainers, gurus, and others in the fitness industry throwing their workout vision in your face and trying to get you to sign up for the latest whatever program. Unfortunately, those clever marketing techniques fail to address a very important factor in picking a workout, individuality. Human beings are very distinctly different from genetics, to exercise experience, to pain threshold, to typical activity levels, to availability, and the list goes on. In my opinion, the single most important question to ask yourself before starting any training program is why. Why have you decided to go down this road?

In the years that I’ve been a practitioner, I’ve seen at least thirty different answers and none of them are bad. The more common ones I tend to come across are as follows: I want to lose weight, my doctor told me I need to start working out, I want to get stronger, I have (whatever) event coming up and I want to look good for it, and the list almost infinitely goes on. Again, all of the above reasons are great, but they lack specificity. To truly be successful in fitness and maintain that success, goals need to be specific. Since I can write about seventy pages worth of information on goals, lets examine one of the most generic ones, I want to lose weight. Immediately upon hearing this, I ask why, how much, and in how long? As soon as we can determine those answers, it becomes a much clearer path to adherence to that goal.

Setting aside the goal for a minute, lets discuss limiting factors. What are the limiting factors that will work against your goal? The most common ones I see are previous injuries, time, and current exercise level. Lets assume for our discussion that you have no previous injuries and are not limited in your ranges of motion at all. Lets also assume that you can confidently dedicate an hour per day, three days per week. Finally, lets assume that you’ve never worked out in a gym before so you have zero exercise experience. In all honesty, these are my favorite clients because I am not fighting years of movement dysfunction and bad habits. For a person as raw as this, I would prescribe a three day a week, full body plan consisting of Upper Body Pushing Moves, Upper Body Pulling Moves, Lower Body Moves, Core Work and Cardio. It would look something like this:

10 Minutes - Warm-up consisting of foam rolling and dynamic movement

30 Minutes - 3 sets of 15 reps of the following done as a superset (meaning 1a 1b 1c with no rest in between and then a 90 Second rest period after all three movements are done before going to the next set)

1a. Push-up (any beginner variation of)

1b. Pulldown (any beginner variation of)

1c. Squat (any beginner variation of)

2a. Overhead Press (seated, any beginner variation of)

2b. Seated Row (any beginner variation of)

2c. Floor Bridge (hip bridge off floor, any beginner variation of)

3a. Tricep Pushdowns

3b. Bicep Curl

3c. Lunge (any beginner variation of)

5 Minutes - Core Work - 3 sets of 1 Minute Planks, 2 sets of 20 reps of lower back supported crunches

15 Minutes of Cardio - Either stairmaster, rower or treadmill - 2:30 Minute Warmup at a light pace, 10 Minutes of interval sprints using a :30 Seconds on, 1 Minute off format with speeds as fast as you can handle, 2:30 minute cooldown at a light pace

A few notes regarding the above workout: this is a very generic yet fairly complete work out. This is NOT the end all, be all of fitness. This is simply a guide to get a beginner started and moving in the right direction. There are many elements to training that are difficult to discuss through written word and those elements include tempo, effort, proper loading, body positioning, core bracing, posture, proper alignment, line of pull, and the list goes on. You can view all if not most of these exercises on YouTube or some other platform online to check for general proper form. In addition, once you feel as though you are starting to progress and you can do the reps with good form and with relative ease, the cardio is getting easier and you are adding weight to loaded exercises, it may be time for you to reevaluate. Go back to your original specific goals and see how you’ve done. If you’ve attained an acceptable level of success, which is individual to you specifically, it may be time to move on by setting new goals that push you further along.

Bottom line here is that if you are truly a beginner, establishing some sort of consistent routine is better than what you were doing before. The beauty of fitness is that it doesn’t have a final destination. You can constantly find different ways to challenge yourself and establish new measurable goals to facilitate further improvement. There are a few intangibles that I want to mention. The old adage of no pain no gain is a bit silly. If there is too much pain, there often times is no gain. I always harp on the importance of quality sleep, quality nutrition, and quality stress management techniques in order to get the most from your workouts. Remember your goals, remember your why, remember to appropriately establish your expectations and most of all, remember this: EFFORT plus CONSISTENCY produces RESULTS. Be an eager participant in your own health, be patient, learn as much as possible, put in as much effort as you can and stay consistent. Over time, you will see results and it will push you to strive for more and that’s the underlying purpose to Four Weeks to the Beach. At that point, you’ve found sustainability.

Any questions, feel free to email me at aram@4weeks2thebeach.com and as always, keep up the good work!