GET FIT FAST – The Simple Guide To Success As Beginner

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When starting out in your fitness journey, it’s all too easy to get confused where to start because of the seemingly dizzying number of diets, programmes to follow, exercises to choose from and that’s before we even begin talking about if you should take supplements.

But the great news is that you can get great results with a few simple changes and steps. You don’t need to train like you’re Arnold Schwarzenegger and training every day, several hours per gym visit to get results. A few simple changes in what you eat, adding extra steps throughout the day and a couple of short sessions lifting weights a week can and will have a gigantic impact in your overall health.

This article is the written form of a video which is posted on the youtube channel (embedded for you to checkout too of course). The goal of this video and indeed is to help complete beginners who feel intimidated by the gym or perhaps aren’t quite certain what diet advice to follow or where to start.

Instead, the approach I advocate for is simple: Focus initially on the ‘big rocks’ such as improving your sleep, making small tweaks to your diet and follow a sustainable and simple workout programme (detailed below) and as you grow in confidence and progress in your journey, you can ramp things up as you need to (or indeed, want to).

Improving your health is very much the same as you’ve probably used to improve in anything – whether that in business, school and so on. Don’t go in thinking everything, now! Small and consistent goals and victories is what leads to success. For example, if you’re currently not eating particularly great, drinking a lot of sugary drinks and not doing much exercise (or none at all), then simply making a couple of basic tweaks can net you a long way.

Here’s a few of those big rocks (so to speak) you can work on first; in no particular order:

• Start reducing sugary drinks – IE, substitute Coke with Coke Zero
• Start walking more. Get off the bus a stop earlier, park a bit further from the shop, take a ten minute walk after lunch, go for walk after breakfast on the weekends.
• Feel free to start adding more cardio in other forms: going for a bike ride, taking up tennis, going for a hike, whatever you need to do!
• Sleep is key – if you’re getting 6hrs or less a night, going to the gym isn’t the priority. Sleep is critical to repair your body, improving insulin sensitivity, enhancing brain functions and more.
• Start phasing out unhealthy snacks with better choices. There’s tons of great tasting ‘snacky’ recipes you can make yourself or options such as protein yogurts and fruit if you’re in a pinch.
• Aim for two – three gym sessions a week, focusing on increasing strength. More muscle helps you look better, age better, and burn more calories.
• Don’t look for a ‘quick fix’ where you drop 10 or 15lbs of fat, gain some muscle as part of a specific diet or for an event in a few months. Instead, make healthier choices part of your life so you can continue gradually seeing small improvements.

If you’re a total newbie to the gym you don’t need to make it a full-time commitment like a professional bodybuilder. Just two days a week lifting weights with a primary focus on the big, foundational (such as squats and pressing) exercises will grant you excellent progress. This is great for those who’re time limited: 30-60 minutes of lifting twice a week and after six months you’ll honestly feel like an entirely different person.

After 6 to 12 months you can add an extra day, or add exercises as required. *IF* you have the freetime and desire, it’s perfectly cool to go three or four days a week from day one; but don’t sweat it in the slightest if that feels too much. Twice a week, say Thursday and a Sunday, or two gym days in a row will be absolutely perfect.

Also – I know there’s many enlightened ladies out there who are aware of this, but there’s still a myth that lifting challenging weights will make women ‘bulky’. Speaking very broadly, ladies can train almost identically to men in terms of the exercises they do, the rep ranges they target so on. The rule remains the same – train with a weight which feels like it is a challenge but with good control.

Remember that muscle doesn’t turn to fat, or fat into muscle; to keep things ultra simple for this article; the two processes are both quite different. Fat can be thought of as your body carrying around an energy source between meals, and if you eat excess calories eventually those calories are deposited as fat stores.

Gaining additional muscle size and strength can be done while losing fat (though, this is much easier as a beginner versus someone who has been lifting let’s say 3 years consistently).

Ultimately you’ll want to put on lean mass (muscle) by lifting, as this has a host of benefits particularly as we age. But also, the more muscle you’ve got the more calories you burn just by being alive. With this all said, below are some general tips of what to focus on when lifting as a beginner, followed by a couple of easy to follow but effective programs.

What to focus on as a beginner in the gym:

• Focus on form and not weight initially. You need to learn correct movement patterns. If in doubt, do ask a PT at the gym, it’s literally what they’re there for!
• Don’t push reps until you can’t lift the weight, save that for later. Instead, consider ‘failure’ to lift the weight when you can no longer move it in good form.
• Start with a weight which allows you to perform 8-12 reps (with GOOD, CONTROLLED FORM). I can’t stress enough here, challenge yourself but form is the priority.
• After a few weeks, you can add a small amount of weight, or push for an extra rep; assuming doing so doesn’t affect form. eg, you were dumbell press 24lbs for chest for 12 reps at the start, with good form. Now you raise that to 26 or 28lbs for again, 12 reps *IF* the form is maintained.
• Big lifts such as Squats, deadlifts and dumbbell chest press give you the most ‘bang for your buck’ and your strength and ability to recruit muscle will skyrocket really fast.
• If you have old injuries or other problems causing pain doing an exercise such as squats, you can easily google a substitution, so squats can be replaced with, say leg presses, dumbell benchpress with machine shoulder press.

As a beginner, should you lift weights two or three days a week?

Two days a week is plenty to make rapid progress as a beginner – and frankly, if you’re coming from being a couch potato it’s good to ease into things slowly. With that said, three days a week would also be excellent, and probably net you faster progress, especially if you had some physical activity previously (example, maybe you go hiking or play Tennis with friends) but are now looking to kick things up a notch.

There’s absolutely no wrong answers here – and remember, if you start at two days a week, and feel you can add more you can absolutely do that. The goal is improving your health and wellness; so complimentary to your life – not a punishment.

I’ve friends who go to the gym after work twice a week (example, tuesday and thursday), and then go on a hike or bike ride with their wife and kids on a Saturday or Sunday – weather permitting. Do what suits you and makes you happy.

What about doing cardio?

In each of the lifting programmes I’ve outline below, I included a suggestion to add cardio after weights. Now, while it’s great to add cardio – and has a MASSIVE number of health benefits, you don’t need to do it at the gym. Going to the gym after work during the week and take the underground (ie, you’re a londoner) – okay, just get off a few stops earlier and walk.

It’s your day off, you trained early in the morning and don’t wanna walk on a treadmill? Go for a nice walk or a bike ride. Maybe the next day you’re going to play sports with your friends.

You can also get a few ten minute walks a day in too. I want to stress – starting out, you do *NOT* need to stress and be perfect. You do NOT need to do 30 or 60 minutes on the treadmill each and every day, from day 1. Ease into things, it leads to considerable more sustainable, long term mindset in health that ultimately serves you much better in the long run.

Example routine for two days a week (Upper Body / Lower Body Split):

Each exercise should be 8-12 reps, with 3 sets. To be clear, that means if you’re doing leg extensions for example, you would start with the first ‘rep’ and lift the weight 8-12 times with good form. If you cannot complete 8-12 in a row without struggling, lower the weight. If it’s too easy, do the reverse.

Rest a few minutes, then repeat the process another two times (so 3 sets total). Rest times can vary between exercises. For example, doing a squat might see you need to rest 3 minutes before you can realistically complete another set with the same intensity. But, seated leg curls you might only need a minute or 90 seconds.

IMPORTANT: For the first exercise in each bodypart each day, start with a light weight to ‘warm you up’. This warm up set isn’t counted in the set total.

Day 1 (Lower Body – Quads, Hamstrings, Glutes and Calves):

• Squats or Leg Press: Squats are great for bang for buck, but if you’ve got injuries then Leg Press is perfectly fine!
• Deadlift – either dumbbell or barbell. Again, technique is most important
• Seated leg extension 
• Seated or lying leg curl
• Calves using either calf raise machine or leg press, etc. 
• 15-30 minutes cardio (AFTER WEIGHTS)

Day 2 (Upper Body – Chest, Shoulders, Back and Arms):

• Flat Dumbbell bench press or Chest Press Machine 
• Seated Dumbbell Shoulder Press or Shoulder Press Machine
• Dips (using assisted machine)
• Lat pulldown machine 
• Dumbbell or machine row 
• 15-30 minutes cardio (AFTER WEIGHTS)

The above lifting routine is a great way to start your journey into fitness. You can also add a little cardio at the end of each session if you’re feeling particularly brave. Combine this two day split with the aforementioned extra steps throughout the week.

Push / Pull / Legs Bodybuilding Split

If you want something a bit more advanced, push / pull / legs is an absolutely fantastic that’s a very well established classic for a reason. Each workout has its own separate day (ie, Push could be on Tuesday, Pull on Thursday and Pull and Sunday) and it’s super flexible. Even pro bodybuilders who’ve won multiple titles use variants of this split – albeit adding and substituting exercises as required and increasing the number of workouts (ie Day 1-3 lifting, day 4 off, day 5-7 lifting, day 8 off and repeat).

But, you don’t need to worry about any of that – as a beginner, three sessions a week is perfect, and providing you get all your workouts in a week you don’t need to stress too much. For example, if you work shifts or similar difficulties in schedule, if your push day needs to be monday week 1, then tuesday week 2 that’s fine – but do ensure that you roughly hit all 3 workouts within a week.

Also, as a quick tip – legs are the most tiring body part, so if you can schedule it on a day where you’re not going to be working a long day for example, that’s probably going to benefit you.

OR = you can choose between the two (ie Benchpress OR Dumbell press)
| = followed by

Day 1 – PUSH | Chest, Shoulders & Triceps

• Chest: Bench Press OR Dumbbell Press x3 | Cable Flye or DB Flye X3
• Shoulder: Dumbbell Press X3 | Lateral Raises X3 
• Triceps: Rope PushDowns X3 
• 15-30 minutes cardio (AFTER WEIGHTS)

Day 2 – PULL | Back and biceps :

• Back: Machine Row Or Cable Row X3 | Dumbbell or Barbell Row X3 | Neutral Grip Pulldown X3
• Biceps: Close Grip underhand Pulldown X3 | Cable Curl X3 
• 15-30 minutes cardio (AFTER WEIGHTS)

Day 3 – Legs | Quads, Hamstrings and calves:

• Quads: Leg Press X4 | Leg Extensions X5
• Hamstring: Seated Leg Curl X4 | Straight Leg Deadlift OR if unsure, Lying Leg Curl X4
• Calves: Calf Extensions using leg Press X4 or Seated Calf Machine
• 15-30 minutes cardio (AFTER WEIGHTS)

Again, not to sound like a broken record but focus on form here above everything else. Your body will quickly learn how to use what muscle you have (and grow stronger muscles too might I add) so you can add poundages to the exercise, but you want to adopt healthy habbits first.

As you grow stronger, you can switch exercises, add additional exercises and so on. But these above programmes are pretty quick to finish. The pull routine can be completed in less than 40 minutes.

What to eat and how to improve your diet

I’ll go further into this in other videos and content on the website – but for now, consider the cliches to be true. Eat your veggies, focus on proteins (chicken, salmon, cod, lean beef and so on), potatoes, salads, rice and other such things.

Realistically, if you’re coming from a pretty bad diet – it might be hard to make the switch all at once, so begin by making gradual improvements if that is easier for you. Improve your snacking options, switch sugary drinks to diet sodas, water and so on. Get better at making gradual improvements to your diet. Small changes will go a long way. A single can of coca cola (330ml) sports 139 calories, so if you’re averaging two cans of that a day switching to Coke Zero alone can save you almost 2k calories without ANY other changes present.

If you want a slightly more advanced tactic – start to track your foods over a two to four week period. Eat as you normally would, but use something like Cronometer or MyFitnessPal (not sponsored, I use Crono personally) to track. You can then can average your rough daily calories and aim to cut them by 250-500 per day.

I’ll get deeper into this in another article and video, but for a complete beginner, just the small tweaks mentioned above (such as reducing sugary drinks, making small substitutions to snacking) is a great place to start.