Beginner Workouts

1. How can we measure the workout?

Every workout that we do, is measured by 3 parameters:

• Intensity
• Volume
• Density

Below, we’re giving you a short description of each parameter, however, feel free to check out our full article on Training Parameters.

Long term goal

• Achieve a pleasing to look at physique (That will, of course include bigger arms, chiseled abs, round shoulders and an overall feeling of muscle symmetry and correct proportions)

Short term goal

• Learn the correct technique on each basic exercise
• Improve your physical properties- Strength, strength endurance, cardio, cardio endurance
• Improve your eating and sleeping habits

Full body workouts

During the first 4 weeks of your training cycle, you will be doing full body workouts every other day (Alternating between workout A and B), as well as 1-2 cardio sessions a week. These workouts include 3-5 sets per muscle group, using basic exercises.

An important thing to note here is that the exercises are done in an antagonistic fashion. Antagonists are two muscle groups, that are located in the same joint but have opposite functions- flexors and extensors. (e.g- Biceps & triceps)

Warm up

Warming up before every workout is MANDATORY. Take 10-15 minutes to get into the workout- Stretch, flex, rotate. Take 5-10 minutes to do some light cardio in order to get your blood moving. (You can do light running or rope jumping.) This, combined with the pyramid sets on the first exercises, will prevent you from injuries, which are the thing we least want during our beginner’s phase.

Workout A

Workout B

Cardio

To understand how you should approach that one cardio session you have during the first two weeks of your training cycle, read our article on Cardio for beginners.

Important note: Do NOT exceed 15-25 minutes per cardio session. As you can read in our ‘cardio for beginners’ article, the extensive aerobic workouts get into a ‘competitive fight’ for energy with the weight training workouts, therefore, as a response you have a weakly pronounced adaptive reaction from the organism, impeding the so-desired muscle hypertrophy (growth).

Week 3-4

During weeks 3 and 4, you keep on doing workout A and B, as well as one more cardio workout. Your cardio workouts take place on Tuesday and Saturday.

Important note- As we said, during the first 4 weeks, your primary focus should be learning the proper execution of each exercise. Weight can be added on every single exercise, as long as you keep proper form and full range of motion. However, you MUST NOT reach failure during the first 4 weeks of your training cycle.

Full body CWS workouts

Week 5-8

Alright, now that you have learned some exercises, developed some strength, endurance and cardio capabilities, you are ready to expose your body to some new, previously unseen stress- Sets until failure.

To implement the principle “Sets until failure” we will be using the CWS (Classical Weider System for beginners).

To get a good read on the CWS, click HERE.

The CWS can be applied on workouts A and B.

This method of training is very simple. The exercises are done consequently in 2 working sets. In order for the body to be prepared for the working sets, we use a pyramid method for the first two exercises.

The pyramid goes from higher reps with lower weight, to lower reps with higher weight. Weights for the working sets should be picked accordingly and the extreme amounts of intensity must not be reached.

Set 1- 15 reps (Warm up)

Set 2- 10 reps (Warm up)

Set 3- 6 reps (working set 1)

Rest for 2 minutes

Set 4- Until failure, maximum effort (This is our second and last working set)

After that we move on to the next exercise, with no rest whatsoever.

After the first two upper body exercises done in pyramid fashion, we do two sets for every other exercise for the upper body – One with 6 reps and the second until failure.

When we move on to the sixth exercise, that involves the legs, we do the same pyramid, in order to warm up the legs and prepare them for the heavy loads.

Important note- If you feel strong and confident enough, you can use a barbell for your squats, instead of doing them with your bodyweight, on your Workout A day. You can also start adding weight on your tricep bench dips, by putting a disk on your legs.

By week 8, you should already be noticing change in how your body looks and handles higher workloads. If you’ve done everything correctly, and kept your nutrition in check, you should be stronger, better looking with higher endurance levels, both strength and cardio wise.

Now that you’ve made some decent progress, it’s time to move on to split-like workouts (You’re still in the beginners’ phase, but we shift the training sessions from generic, full body workouts to more goal-focused ones.)

Week 8-16

So, for the next two months, you will be splitting your workouts into Upper and lower body workouts. This means you will be able to learn new movements, as you can include one more exercise per muscle group.

Week-to-week summary

Week 1-4

• Learn exercises
• Start developing strength, strength endurance and cardio endurance

During this period, we have 4 workouts per week

Week 5-8

• Expose your organism to new stress by increasing the intensity on your newly learnt exercises and reaching failure

During this period, we have 3 workouts per week. We have less workouts but more intense stress.

Week 8-16

• Get used to more frequent workouts with bigger volume, by splitting them into Upper and lower body days and adding more exercises