I’m (43M) just starting my gym routine and was wondering about some guidelines where to get informed about good workout schedules, in example which group of muscles to do on which day for optimal effect?
E: I’m 176 cm (5 foot 9) / 86 kg (190 lb) now. Want to reach 80 kg (175 lb).
I want to lose that belly and work on overall fitness/muscle
Greg Nuckols has a good beginner program: https://www.strongerbyscience.com/program-bundle/
It’s like $10, and you can customize 3 to 5 days per week. It also comes with intermediate to advanced programs once you’ve gotten all the mileage out of the beginner program.
Definitely take it slow - every day you’re out of the gym sore is a missed opportunity. Gym gains are made over years, not weeks.
Thanks. I’ll check it out. Yes, i see now how getting myself sore prevented me from working out (and doing regular stuff was impacted too).
Obviously, do whatever routine you want to do, but know that novices usually do not need body part splits. You should be able to, for example, bench three days a week.
So my recommendation to novices is usually:
- perform a full body routine Mon/Wed/Fri
- do some conditioning work on Tues/Thurs
- eat enough protein
- drink enough water
Over time when a full body routine stagnates, you can switch to something with less frequency. I usually recommend an upper body / lower body rotation at that point.
100% agree.
I like doing an A/B workout, where A is one full body workout, and B is another. Both are legs/push/pull, but just different exercises. Here’s an example for someone just getting into lifting who wants to be fit:
A - Bulgarian Split Squat, DB Bench, DB 1-Arm Row
B - Kickstand Romanian Deadlift, DB Overhead Press, Pulldown (or Assisted Chinup)
3 sets of 8-12 reps each. Just alternate the two and lift 3x a week. The other two days can be LISS.
For five days a week, I do an upper-lower split. I tend to do lower body Monday, Thursday and Saturday, and upper body Tuesday and Thursday, taking Wednesday and Sunday off (I may do cardio stuff those days).
My priority at the moment is legs, due to a bad knee which I’m focused on keeping stable and strong. You could switch this to having three upper days per week with two lower, if you’re more focused on upper body growth. Or you could even do a push-pull-legs, but then you’d only maybe hit legs once a week, which I think is too little personally - again, all depends on your goals.
With any split, you can easily find a free starter program if you look around. Then you can tweak it based on your own needs. As an example of the content: for my upper days I focus on hitting upper back, lats, some lower back, chest, front, side, rear delts, as well as biceps and triceps. And I add abs at the end. For lower body days I do glutes, quads, hamstrings, calves, adductors and abductors. Sometime o add abs on leg days too.
Which exercises you specifically want to do for each muscle is really down to preference. If you’re very new to it, you could start off with machines, and over time you can tweak your programme to be more varied e.g. with free weight, cables etc. The main thing at first is to learn the form of each exercise, and to track your reps and weights, so you and progressively increase those over time, for growth.
Thank you so much for the ideas and pointer. This is great. You definitely got me thinking and planning. I cannot wait to start implementing my own routine which will be a little bit tweaked version of your. Definitely I’m starting with rhe machines before I’m moving to free weights. I will be tracking my progress and I need to find good quality source of guidelines on how to do the exercises properly. I want to perform them correctly from the beginning for better results and to avoid injuries. Thanks a lot!
It’s common knowledge that Tuesday is best for eccentric muscles.
Haha I’m sorry, I’m also keen to see answers to this question.
I need to get back into it myself.
I think an equal component to number of days you can go, is how long you can go each day.
That being said, I’d recommend the StrongLifts 5x5 program to begin with. It’s an A/B program, meaning in just two workouts you get a total body workout. There’s no reason you can’t use it 5 times a week. Week 1 would look like A/B/A/B/A and then Week 2 would be B/A/B/A/B and so fourth. I’d put the rest days after every B exercise.
The downside of this is StrongLifts does squats every day, so you’d be doing squats two days in a row.
It’s still a great beginner program. You may chose to only lift 3-4 times a week and throw in some very good cardio on additional days.
This program will probably take 1:15 the first few times you do it, but you should be able to get it down to an hour or less for each workout.
I use StrongLifts as a beginning program but also modified it over time. Now I’ve moved to PPL which is technically a 6-day a week program but you can just do 5 days a week and keep up the rotation the next week. It’s a longer workout. I’m lifting for at least 1:30, but usually 1:45 each time. It’s a lot more volume but the gains are large. I would start with PPL because it’s lot to jump into as a beginner.
I am basically using the templates from RPstrength (They now have a cool app). For 5 days it is:
- Chest, Shoulders, Triceps
- Back, Traps, Biceps, Forearm
- Quads, Glutes, Hams, Calves, Abs
- Shoulders, Chest, Back, Triceps, Biceps, Forearms
- Glutes, Hams, Quads, Calves, Abs
I’m not a gym person yet, but does it really matter so long as you are not getting muscle fatigue/actual pain?
I’ve just recovered from muscle pain I’ve got because of too heavy start a week ago so I’m seeking better approach ;)
