One of the questions I get asked most often is how I figured out how to train. How many reps? How many exercises? How often for each body part? How much weight? How will I know if I’m doing it right? Trust me when I say there really is no perfect answer. What I’m learning on my journey is that you really learn as you go. We all are—even the most experienced trainers and bodybuilders I know are still learning, experimenting, and still changing their workouts up. Isn’t that cool? It’s one of my favorite things about training—you’re never an expert, and you can always keep learning and trying new things. Like I’ve mentioned so many times before, it’s important that you try to educate yourself as much as possible. Use different resources. Bodybuilding.com and Oxygen magazine are two of my FAVORITES, and they’re so easy to access. Not sure how to use a piece of equipment? Ask trainers and other fitness professionals in your gym. Health and fitness can be a part of everyone’s life, but not everyone chooses for it to be. I hope that I can give some insight into some of these “how” questions I mentioned earlier so you too can start to structure your own workouts and gain more confidence with all this weight lifting stuff!
How should I structure my workout split each week?
A lot of this really depends on the time you have. Aim for at least 4-5 workouts a week if you want to really build muscle and see results. That should really just be weight training NOT CARDIO. Cardio is a whole other post! Remember that muscle will burn fat, so you want to focus on building muscle. Of course any time in the gym is better than none at all, but I would aim to be there an hour or so. Your major body parts/ muscle groups are: legs, back, chest, arms, and shoulders. Abs and calves need to be thrown in there too, but you can just add those onto whatever other parts you’re training. Depending on where you are lagging and what areas you really want to grow, you can train them as many as 2-3x a week. You ideally want to have 1-2 days of rest between training sessions. Try to just focus on 1 or 2 muscle groups each workout and train them HARD. The idea is to make your muscles do more work, getting to hypertrophy (or muscle failure—we’ll talk more about that in a sec.), so that they repair and grow. Doing so will yield more results than doing a total body workout 4-5x a week , I promise! A good split could work like this—Monday—legs, Tuesday—arms and shoulders, Wednesday—OFF, Thursday—back, Friday—chest and shoulders, Saturday—yoga or a spin class. SUNDAY—off. There are ton of other examples out there though—find what works for you!
How many exercises and how many reps?
Here’s the fun part. You can get creative with this. When I first started, believe it or not I didn’t know that difference between a rep and a set! I’ll share— a repetition or “rep” is how many times you will do each exercise or motion in a “set” which is really just a set of reps. For example, you can do 3 sets of pushups, with 10-15 pushups or (“reps”) each set. You would do 10-15 pushups, rest for a minute or so, another set of 10-15, rest, and then do your least set. For beginners, I would focus on form and technique. Building out higher volume sets into your workout routine will help you get to hypertrophy, but your workout should include a mix of both. I started with using workouts I found online, and would sometimes build out my own. Once I started working with my coach, he designed my workouts during Prep, but now I am back to using those as a framework and getting creative on my own as well. I would shoot for 7-8 exercises each workout, doing 3-4 sets of 12-15 reps each. That will give you a pretty good place to start.
How much weight?
It’s called working out because it takes WORK! Your training sessions should not feel like a walk in the park—you need to push yourself! This is different for everyone. Here’s a good rule of thumb: if you can knock out all of your reps easily and not feel your heart rate increase or your breathing change, you need to add more weight. Your last 2-3 reps should be somewhat of a struggle. The key here though is to keep good form. If you lose your form, you can hurt yourself and that’s no bueno. You will need to try different dumbbells and amounts of weight out to see work works for you. A good starting weight for shoulder presses should be around 10-15 pounds for arms, and likely the same for bicep curls, but again see how many you can do. You can do more reps with less weight and fewer reps with more weight. If it’s heavy, you’re doing it right! You will be surprised how quickly your strength increases.
How will I know if I’m doing it right?
If you’re sore (not hurting—just sore!) the next day, that’s a good sign. Sweat is good too! Keep pushing yourself every workout, every day, and eating the right foods, and you will see results. You will know when you’ve pushed yourself. Consistency is key. Make this a priority and it will pay off. We all start somewhere. The great thing is that there are a ton of resources out there that can show you proper form and technique, you just have to seek that information out. I’m here to help too!
Thank you all so much again for your support and interest in my site! I know things aren’t as exciting now that I’m not prepping for a show, but my hope is that this platform can help and encourage others to live a healthy lifestyle. I have a special place in my heart for women who are scared of the gym and clueless as to where to start, because I was one of those girls. You can do this! If I can, anyone can.
Till next time,
-Mere