Beginner Weight Training – Start Here

I won’t claim to be any authority on weight training, especially advanced techniques. But I do tend to obsess whenever I find a new fitness idea to latch onto, and lately for me that has been weight training. I probably can’t even estimate the number of hours I have spent reading about it in the last couple of weeks without being embarrassed to admit I spend that much time on the computer combing through ebooks, websites, blogs, you name it.

Anyway, my own personal weight training program started off pretty simple and has since gone through several mutations until it finally reached the stage it is in now. What I would like to do here is go through each evolution of my training program to explain to you why I chose the weights, reps, and exercises that I have chosen so that you don’t have to waste hours greedily devouring weight lifting studies and experiments as I have.

I began with the idea of creating a one month program that was simple, enjoyable, and packed the most punch into a short workout session as possible so I can shower and get on with my day. At the end of the month, I figured I would just endlessly repeat it until I got tired of doing it or simply stopped making improvements.

Based on my goals of losing fat without losing muscle, I wanted plenty of weight training.  I also wanted to do HIIT simply because it interested me, I had never done true HIIT intervals, and the weight loss benefits seemed impressive from my reading.  Since I have been doing martial arts, I added in some days of plyometrics because that is supposed to be good for developing both explosive strength and cardio.

My schedule looked like this:

My weightlifting routine consisted of a full body workout.  I developed this routine much before I started educating myself about good weightlifting routines, so some of the exercises are stupid, and plenty of great ones are missing.  I fully admit that.  I initially was aiming for 3 sets of 8-12 reps of each of these exercises, with the exception of ab exercises, where I tried to do 50 reps per set:

1. Squats holding weights
2. Lunges holding dumbbells
3. A crazy hip abductor exercise that I never quite figured out
4. Calf raises holding dumbbells
5. Thigh squeezes  (I’m facepalming looking back on this addition)
6. Overhead tricep extensions
7. Biceps curl
8. Something approaching a back fly
9. Chair dips
10. Dumbbell shoulder press
11. Lying on my side using my arms to lift me up – not sure what that’s called
12. Pull ups (or my wimpy jumping pullups where I hang for as long as possible and then fall)
13. Kneeling single arm lat rows
14. Bench press
15. Chest flys
16. Abs bicycles
17. Ab leg raises
18. Scissor kicks
19. Oblique crunches
20. Low and high plank pulses

Two things were apparent after the first workout.  1) Some of the exercises I had chosen were awkward and not really useful, and 2) doing 3 sets of each of those took waaaay longer than I was willing to devote to a single workout session.

My solution was to drop the third set and all of the ab exercises entirely, since I was getting a pretty decent ab workout purely from using my core to stabilize other moves and doing interval sprints.  I also ditched the thigh squeezes and hip abductor moves because I felt they were not worth the time and effort.

Shortly after this point, I read some more information about developing weight lifting plans, and decided to kind of re-vamp my workouts.  I found out that, apparently, it is much more useful and efficient to forget the isolation moves and instead spend more time doing compound exercises that work combinations of muscle groups.  I’m all for efficiency, so I added deadlifts and pushups to my routine.  I kept the bicep and tricep exercises despite the advice to skip them and focus on compound stuff purely because I have wimpy little girly arm muscles underneath my beefy looking layers of fat, and I enjoyed the fact that I could make strength improvements on both of those exercises nearly every session.  At that point, I must have forgotten everything I just learned about not focusing on muscle isolation, because I then added shoulder shrugs to my routine for some reason, along with arm raises.

I also decided to split my routine in half and do one half, designated workout A, on alternating weightlifting days from the other half, workout B.  Workout A had the shoulder presses, back flys, pushups, dumbbell bench press, bicep curls, and arm raises, while workout B had lat rows, deadlifts, pullups, chest flys, overhead tricep extensions, and shoulder shrugs.  Still trying to lift as heavy a weight as possible (no pastel barbie weights for me!), I decided to go for 8-10 reps of each, and do three sets.  This amounted to a little less than a half hour workout, which I was satisfied with.  I kept the weight lighter (at first) on the deadlifts because I found out I have a ridiculously weak lower back, and I didn’t want to hurt myself with bad form since I was un-practiced.

I saved the leg work (weighted squats, lunges, and calf raises) for my interval days because I felt like they were not recovering fully when I did the resistance training on alternating days with the HIIT as I had originally planned.

I did this for a few weeks before heading off to the beach on vacation and COMPLETELY wrecking my diet…  I gave up on exercise for that week too.  When I got back, stepped on the scale, and saw the damage I had done, I decided now is as good a time as ever to do an overhaul and examine the parts that I felt were missing from the routine.  Part of what I felt was lacking was any kind of endurance exercise.  I have heard many times over that HIIT and weight training will take care of weight loss probably better than endurance training, but I felt weird about cutting it out entirely.  For one thing, I may be getting pretty good at doing intervals until I drop, but when I try to jog at a normal pace, I can tell my endurance isn’t really improving.  It’s not getting worse, I don’t think, but it isn’t improving simply because I’m not training it.

I was enjoying the weights routines that I had come up with, but for whatever reason I wasn’t “feeling” the results like I remember I could when I used to do P90x. I went back and took a peek at the P90x weightlifting exercises, and noticed that while many of them were the highly recommended compound exercises straight out of fitness weightlifters’ wet dreams, there were also a surprising number of the so-called “waste of time” isolation exercises, like bicep curls and tricep kickbacks.

So I was left with a choice between doing what the pros say should give me maximum results and doing what I know has worked for me in the past. I went with a mix of both. I made a chart in my exercise journal (yes I do obsess a bit) of every resistance exercise done in P90x and the muscle group(s) it targets. I tossed out the ones I don’t like (tricep kickbacks, upright rows, etc) and threw in a few of my new favorites (like deadlifts). I then divided all of these exercises into four upper body workouts that have 18 exercises each, of which I plan to do one set per workout (because in my last workout I had been doing six exercises for three sets, at a total of 18 anyway, which seemed to suit my time schedule just dandy). I titled them with the most creative names I could think of: Workout A, B, C, and D.

Then I mashed them into a new schedule which includes longer intervals, so I feel like I am still working a bit on steady state cardio, and one day of Tabata-esque intervals so I still feel like I am inflicting an adequate amount of self punishment.

New (and current!!!) schedule:

Month 1

Month 2

Month 3

Workout A consists of 7-10 reps to exhaustion, 1 set each of these exercises (the exception being body weight exercises, where I try to do as many as possible).  Also keep in mind that most of these are from P90x, so if you are recognize the names from there, you would be correct:

1. Pushups
2. Wide overhand pullups
3. Alternating shoulder presses
4. In + Out bicep curls
5. Overhead tricep extensions
6. Diamond pushups
7. Heavy pants
8. In + Out straight arm shoulder flys
9. Congdon curls
10. Lying down tricep extensions
11. Decline pushups
12. Deadlifts
13. Seated two-angle shoulder flys
14. Full supination concentration curls
15. Chair dips
16. Chest flys
17. Close grip overhand pullups
18. Crouching curls

Workout B has the same rules as A, with 7-10 reps except for bodyweight exercises, 1 set each:

1. Military pushups
2. Reverse grip chin ups
3. Deep Swimmer’s press
4. Regular bicep curls
5. Chair dips
6. Wide fly pushups
7. Lawn mowers
8. Seated two angle shoulder flys
9. Static arm curls
10. Dive bomber pushups
11. Back flys
12. Shoulder presses
13. Pushups
14. Deadlifts
15. Lawn mowers again
16. “T” Pushups
17. Overhead tricep extensions
18. In + Out shoulder flys

Note that I write down the weights and reps for each exercise every time I do this, and make a note of when I am able to do more than 10 reps in a set, so I know that next time I should move to a higher weight. I do not necessarily go through these exercises in the listed order because I do them with varying amounts of weight and it would be really annoying to stop and switch out my little adjustable weights between every exercise. I typically start with the exercise I can lift the heaviest on and work my way down to the lightest, placing bodyweight exercises in between exercises that target the same muscle group so I give that muscle group a chance to recover a bit.

Since I am only on month one so far (and obviously tend to adjust a lot as I go) I am deciding it would be a better idea to leave the details for workouts C and D out of this post, and put them in a later post when I have had a chance to do them and decide whether I like them and they fit into my routine.

By the way, as a last thought in this monster of a post, I have some advice if you are planning to start this or any other weights routine. I highly recommend keeping a weightlifting journal.  In mine, I list the exercise, the number of reps I did per set, the weight I used on each exercise, and whether it was a good weight for me or if I needed to move up to a higher one next time. That helps me avoid stagnating because I know exactly how much weight I can lift for each exercise, and I know exactly when I need to start lifting more.

Anyway, my hands are cramped, so I will leave you with a simple “good luck!” And if you decide you would rather take an expert’s advice than my advice (and believe me, I wouldn’t blame you), check out my reviews of P90x, the Beautiful Badass program for women, and Burn the Fat, Feed the muscle for details on each of these and affiliate link goodness.

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