After reading the past several blogs in this series, you may have been convinced to not just get started training, but to abandon this silly nonsense about waiting until the new year to action. Good for you — less talk and more action makes you my kind of people. But now that you’re ready to get down to business, you may be wondering what exactly to do. I’m so glad you asked. Let’s go over the down and dirty about what exercises give you the most bang for your buck.
Strength Training for Beginners
As most of the articles in this series have been, this too is geared primarily to those who are new to training or have been away from it for some time and are getting started back. With that in mind, the best exercises you should focus on are what are referred to as compound movements. Compound movements use more than one joint or set of joints. There are a relatively limited number of exercises that fit this description. The best ones to begin with are the back squat, bench press, deadlift, overhead press and bent row. These five movements are not just great choices for beginners, but are also the same exercises that should make up the core or foundation of any strength training program for people at any level of advancement.
Best Strength Training Exercises for Beginners
There are several reasons why these five exercises are the best to focus on. First, they require minimal equipment. Second, they are the most effective at eliciting quick results. These exercises utilize the most amount of muscle mass, move the weight over the longest effective range of motion, and allow you to use the most amount of weight, thereby making them the most effective exercises to get strong quickly. Third, these movements are also very safe. These are very normal movement patterns that recruit lots of big muscles, which makes them inherently safe to do – even if you’re not yet very skilled at performing them. A fourth thing that makes these movements ideal for getting started is that they are easy to scale back to whatever is an appropriate starting weight. It’s not difficult to find a 15 lb. barbell. I seldom have encountered a person who needed less weight than that on any of the lifts as they were getting started. Sixth, these movements are also very easy to incrementally add load. You can easily acquire the equipment which allows you to add as little as 1 lb. at a time. Finally, these movements are highly “trainable”. That means you can get stronger at them for years and years on end – even decades – if you are motivated to do so. You just can’t say all that about most other exercises. The downside to these exercises I’ve listed here is that they often require coaching in order to learn to execute them well. This is money well spent, though, since it can save you years of stalled progress and further minimize the already low risk of injury.
Strength Training for Beginners in Greensboro, NC
So those are the best exercises to begin with and quite frankly to always keep as the backbone of your training program, no matter how advanced you become in your strength training. They are safe, easily scalable, require minimal equipment, and elicit the fastest strength gains over the longest span of time. Get a barbell and start learning them. Feel free to contact Revolution Strength & Conditioning if you are looking for a coach. We’ll be glad to teach you the lifts or provide programming to ensure your safe progress.