Hi there! If you've found your way to this document, you've likely seen my talk on "Refactoring your health", where I don't go into too much detail on how to do weight training. This page is my attempt to provide one more layer of information to get you started. Some opening caveats:
- I am not a trainer or medical professional - this is based on what I have learned and what I personally prefer. You should start new fitness activities with the advice and support of a medical professional.
- The most important part of strength training (especially for beginners) is consistency and injury prevention. Start small and build up slowly but steadily. You will get where you want to go eventually, but it requires time and patience.
Let's cover some basic parameters for strength training, and then dive into some specific techniques.
Any balanced strength training program will include the following core movements: push, pull, squat, hip hinge, and core stabilization. A full body workout routine probably includes all of them in a single session.
- Push: Pushing forward with your arms, as in a push-up
- Pull: Pulling something up to your chin, pulling yourself up, pulling something horizontally, as in a pull-up or row
- Squat: Bending your legs and pushing back up, as in a body weight squat or leg press
- Hinge: Bending at the waist, sometimes exploding upward after doing so (this is what you do when you jump), as in a deadlift, box jump, or back lift
- Core: Core stabilization muscles that aid the other movements, exercised with planks, sit-ups, etc.
You will not get stronger if you do the same weights and the same number of repetitions day in and day out. You must incrementally increase the amount of load you are putting on your body to force it to adapt (get stronger). Keep this in mind as you progress in your training, and ensure that you are always pushing yourself past you previous best, if only by a little bit.
Just to be extremely clear, let's say you do bench press on Mondays. One week, you might do 3 sets of 8 repetitions with 165 pounds on the bar. The next week, you should try to do the same sets and reps, but with 175 on the bar. Or maybe the same weight, but 3 sets of 9 reps. The jumps don't have to be huge (and indeed probably shouldn't be), but if the resistance you're using doesn't steadily trend upward, you won't see any improvements over time.
If you are a very, very beginner and just doing daily body weight exercises, you don't need to worry about splits yet. If you have started training a bit harder and are starting to incorporate equipment, you'll probably need to settle on a "workout split".
If you do any reading on strength training, you will see quite a bit of discussion about "workout splits", or what exercises to do on what number of days per week. There are no firm right answers for this, but here are the most common options:
- Full body splits - full body workout on Monday, Wednesday, Friday
- Upper/lower split - upper body exercises (push, pull) on Monday and Thursday, lower body (squat, hinge, core) on Tuesday and Friday
There are also PPL or "Push, pull, legs" splits, and "Bro" splits (body part splits up to 5-6 days a week). I don't have experience with these splits.
I personally prefer a three day full body split. Full body workouts are very flexible and can be performed with a variety of equipment, and the days can move around a bit if needed. This is helpful for me because I travel for work, and at home need to be flexible sometimes too. I also just prefer it to having two dedicated leg days a week, which is kind of a bummer (for me).
You don't need to do cardio to lose weight or get stronger. Weight loss is primarily determined by calorie intake in your diet (calories burned from cardio is kind of a drop in the bucket). However, cardio has other benefits and may be enjoyable.
On days I don't do strength training (and on some days when I do, depending on how I feel), I favor low impact, steady state cardio like walking (often uphill on a treadmill at a brisk pace), hiking, or biking. I also like to do sports when I can, like pickleball, curling, or whatever else I can get up to.
I try to make sure I do something active every day no matter what. Sometimes I do just take a day off if my body feels like I need it (~once every 40 days?) and I've had ~2 vacation weeks over the last year where I just let my body rest. I generally just try to listen to my body and make a call on whether I feel sore (fine), or close to injured (bad).
It's also important to point out that even if you feel like you could lift 5+ days a week, your body still needs to recover in order to build muscle (lifting tears down your muscles so that they grow back stronger). If you're never allowing your muscles to heal, you will be defeating yourself that way too.
You will struggle to get stronger if you're not eating enough protein and other macronutrients required to fuel and grow muscles. A general guidline is that you should eat ~0.7-1.0 grams of protein per pound of lean body weight you want to target.
If you are just getting started with strength training, I wouldn't necessarily suggest that you run out and get a gym membership or buy a bunch of equipment right away. More important than WHAT you do is establishing the habit of strength training on a regular basis. Your goal should be to form an unemotional relationship with exercise such that it feels like brushing your teeth. You neither love it or hate it - you just do it every day as a maintenance task.
Consider starting with body weight exercises that target full body strength. Do this (or whatever subset you can) every morning:
- 10x inverted row (see here for how to do this with no equipment)
- 10x push-ups
- 15x body-weight squats
- 15x good mornings - you can use a broom handle instead of a bar, or just pretend you have one
- 30 second plank
This circuit has a pull, push, squat, hinge, and core exercise, thereby covering all your bases. Once you can do this regularly every day, consider doing all the exercises again a second or third time! When you're doing this circuit 3-5 times every morning, you're making great progress already.
Training with body weight only is great, and you can make a lot of progress only doing this. But eventually, training with equipment might let you perform more challenging movements without adding more and more repetitions (as is typically required with just body weight).
The first layer of equipment you might consider if you want to keep working out at home are kettlebells and a pull-up bar (most homes can use a free standing tower like this one - just an example, I don't have an affiliate link or anything :).
I personally also love using kettlebells, and they're a great option to have on hand at home. An upgrade on a body weight only workout that includes kettlebells and a pull-up bar/power tower would look like this (I still do circuit training, where I do every exercise once and then repeat with this set of equipment):
- 5x pull-ups
- 15x goblet squats holding a kettlebell
- 10x push-ups (do them holding a kettlebell handle with each hand for more challenge)
- 15x kettlebell swings
- 15x leg raises (assuming you have the power tower as linked above)
Doing this circuit 3-5 times feels like a solid full-body workout, and I will still do this often at home as needed.
For maximum flexibility to ramp up resistance, working out at a gym with proper equipment can become desirable. About two months into body weight training every day at home, I felt like I wanted to push myself a bit further than was reasonably possible at home, and got back in the gym.
I have tried both a four day upper/lower split and a three day full body split. I prefer the latter, and use a variation on the program linked there.
I think the evidence and literature I have encountered point to an upper/lower split four days a week as the optimal choice for building muscle. However, I prefer to have more days per week devoted to non-lifting activities as exercise, so I use a full body split three days a week instead. This a conscious trade-off I am making (for now). I would recommend trying both approaches as described and linked above, and settling on one that is sustainable and preferable for you.