Gym Noob

DJ85

DJ85

DJ85

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Joined
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Aberdeenshire
I'm just starting back at the gym. haven't really been properly since I was 21 or so, now 33. I seem to be going about aimlessly for the first few days then downloaded an app called JEFIT and found a programme to stick to. currently doing the following,
Monday - chest
Tuesday - Back/traps
Wednesday - Delts /Abs
Thursday - Triceps/Biceps
Friday - Legs
Then I take a Friday off then start the process all over again. does this sound like a good enough routine to get me started off?
I've started to get quite sore the first week of doing it (into my second week now) and got recommended by someone to start taking protein shakes but there are so much nowadays I don't know which one to buy. I don't remember there being so much choice before. been looking at gold standard whey and USN anabolic muscle fuel, but ingredients vary. I do have a healthy diet but I don't consume anywhere the recommended protein content for when training.
Any advice would be appreciated
 
Stronglifts. :)

And if this is your first week back in a decade, you are going to be sore whatever you do. Don't worry about brotein shakes and just eat a healthy, balanced diet.
 
David Flett said:
I'm just starting back at the gym. haven't really been properly since I was 21 or so, now 33. I seem to be going about aimlessly for the first few days then downloaded an app called JEFIT and found a programme to stick to. currently doing the following,
Monday - chest
Tuesday - Back/traps
Wednesday - Delts /Abs
Thursday - Triceps/Biceps
Friday - Legs
Then I take a Friday off then start the process all over again. does this sound like a good enough routine to get me started off?
I've started to get quite sore the first week of doing it (into my second week now) and got recommended by someone to start taking protein shakes but there are so much nowadays I don't know which one to buy. I don't remember there being so much choice before. been looking at gold standard whey and USN anabolic muscle fuel, but ingredients vary. I do have a healthy diet but I don't consume anywhere the recommended protein content for when training.
Any advice would be appreciated
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What is your goal? Weight loss or weight/muscle gain?
 
Just noticed I had reply's sorry!
mrthingyx said:
Stronglifts. :)

And if this is your first week back in a decade, you are going to be sore whatever you do. Don't worry about brotein shakes and just eat a healthy, balanced diet.
Click to expand...
I'm in to my third week and I'm no longer feeling the pain except the day after I do my legs. I eat as healthy as I can but can't resist some chocolate now and then.
@Ryan5Zulu
I started about 2 months ago with weight loss as I started to get a bit of a beer belly so cut out the drink and started eating better and dropped from 90kgs to 86.5kgs which I'm happy with.(5ft11) if that makes any difference. Now I'm looking muscle gain.
 
I'll second what @mrthingyx said: Don't bother with protein shakes to start. I also believe that the best (and easiest) and gains are made in the kitchen: healthy food and minimise the processed sugars. If you enjoy chocolate, why not look at a dark chocolate instead of milk chocolate? Lower sugar content and you still get the chocolate kick.

Then, try get a good amount of healthy proteins in your day. Do you have a gym buddy?
 
Ok I'll hold off with the shakes for now, maybe I need to eat some inbetweeny meals. At the moment I'm having toast,beans and scrambled eggs in the morning, baked tattie with a topping for lunch and usually try chicken based meal with rice for supper. I take it the more I eat the more I'll grow.
No gym buddy for 3 weeks while I'm offshore, when I'm home I go with my wife but she does a different routine more lower body workouts.
 
David Flett said:
Ok I'll hold off with the shakes for now, maybe I need to eat some inbetweeny meals. At the moment I'm having toast,beans and scrambled eggs in the morning, baked tattie with a topping for lunch and usually try chicken based meal with rice for supper. I take it the more I eat the more I'll grow.
No gym buddy for 3 weeks while I'm offshore, when I'm home I go with my wife but she does a different routine more lower body workouts.
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Yea, if you can keep the inbetweeny meals healthy, that would be a great help! The problem is when you get hungry and only junk food is easily accessible. Oats and peanut butter in boiling water is one great snack I stumbled into if you are in to that. Are you getting some veg in too?
 
I used to be a personal trainer over a decade ago and visit the gym 3 - 4 times a week now. Nutrition, rest and workout are the 3 areas that you'll need to focus on and will be the key to reaching your goals.

It looks like your already focussing on nutrition, which is what most people tend to ignore. Getting an app to keep track of what you're eating each day can really be an eye-opener, even if it's just for a short while to get that hang of things.

There are loads of different workout plans out there. I've personally had great success with doing a progressive overload. Forget, trying to do 3 sets of 10 reps for example. Aim to do 3 sets between 6-8. Once you manage to do this, increase your weight slightly. For example, 1st week you do 7,7,6 reps at 20kg. The following week you do 8,7,7 at 20kg so you move up to 22kg next week & try getting between the 6 - 8 rep range.

Give your body at least 24 hours rest before working out the same muscle groups again. This is key to reduce the risk of injury and allows your muscles to repair.

One last tip - Get a plan and stick to it for at least 6 months. Keep track of your progress as this helps with the motivation when you see improvements along the way. At the end of the 6 months, if your progress has slowed down, change to a different plan. If you're still improving, stick to it.

I hope this helps.
 
@Ryan5Zulu
oats and peanut butter sound a good shout I'll give that a try for snacks I've tried a few protein bars as well some aren't to bad. Most a bit on the dry side. I do try chuck a heap of veg on the side of most things I eat even if it goes or not.

@DamoC
I've been trying g a downloaded app from the app I mentioned above to get me started and once it feels light I've been moving up but my gym at home doesn't match tue gym offshore so been a lot of substitutions.
So far I've been doing

Monday - Chest
Bench press 5x8 the 5th being my 1rep max
Incline press 4x8
Decline press 4x8
Dumbbell fly 3x8
Incline fly 3x8
Dumbbell incline press 3x8
Machine inner press 3x8
Dumbbell palms in press 3x8
Machine fly 3x8
Tuesday - Back/Traps
One arm row 4x8
Barbell bent over row 4x8
Cable seated row 4x12
Cable straight arm push down 4x8
Wide arm lat pulldowns 3x8
Dumbbell shoulder shrugs 4x10
Wednesday - Arms
EZ bar bar curl 4x8
Dumbbell incline curl 4x8
Alternate bicep curl 4x8
Cable tricep pushdown 4x8
Bench dips 4x8
EZ bar French press 4x8
Tricep vbar pushdown 4x8
EZ reverse grip curl
Thursday - Delts/Abs
Dumbbell shoulder press 4x10
Front raise 4x10
Side raise 4x10
Cable delt row 4x10
Front plate raise 4x10
Side bends 3x30
Cable upright rows 3x8
Friday - Legs/Abs
Leg press 5x8
Air bike 4x40 or as much as possible
Side bend 3x30
Ab roll out 3x8

Then I usually take a break for a day then start again. Is this substantial or is it a bit much I do not know.
 
Holly molly that's a lot of volume! :eek: Also your doing a lot of cross over work. Like back day uses biceps, yet, your training biceps on it's own separate day as well. All classic mistakes newbies make.

You also are only really working each major muscle group once a week. Muscles start to de-train themselves after 48hrs.

My suggestion is to look at a 3 day upper / lower split.

You could do strong lifts I suppose.
 
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That does seem like a lot, especially when just starting up again. A 3-day upper/lower split as Opethdisciple suggests is a good starting point, you could even increase it to a 4-day if your schedule permits and you're recovering in time.

I typically aim for about a 45 - 60minute work out. It's long enough that I can push myself, but not too long that I'm overdoing it. Your Monday workout looks like it will take about 80 minutes.
 
Yes it does take a fair bit of time on mondays and on wednesdays probably 1hr 30 mins each. Had a quick google so a upper lower for 3 day would look something like
Mon-upper
Tues-off
Wed-lower and so on through the week?
I'll have to go have a look through some of the routines that I can download from my app. Does anyone have any recommendations where to have a look?
I'm free every day really but would like to keep it to an hour a day as after an hour I'm usually worn out, tend to be lifting ok and heavy at the start then by the end I'm a lot lower on the weight. Think I need to lower the sets and reps as well
 
An upper lower split 3 days a week is essentially ABA BAB etc..

So three non consecutive days a week.

This will give you some good ideas.

Another thing, if you are completely new and don't really know what your doing, then for the time being you could stick to using machines rather than free weights until you build up some strength and get more confident in what your doing etc..
 
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Thanks that link was very helpful. I'll sit later and try
Make up a split. it says to do one workout per body part but what about chest where theres incline,flat and decline bench? would you alternate each upper day?
 
I've had a read up on that link and attempted to make up my own split, ive lowered my sets down to 4 like it says and between 4-6 reps for most going heavier if 6 reps are easy.
Opted for a 4 day split as I have a lot of spare time during the weeks
how does this look? Any opinions possible change outs or criticisms welcome:p tried to stick to thinks I'm comfortable doing, or done before.
I'm flexible with days if its maybe better having a day off in between every gym day.

Monday- upper
Bench press 4x4-6
Barbell rows 4x4-6
Barbell shoulder press 4x4-6
Lat pulldown 4x4-6
Tricep pushdown 4x4-6
Ez bicep curls 4x4-6

Tuesday - lower
Squats 4x4-6
Leg press 4x4-6
Romanian deadlift 4x4-6
Calf raises 3x8
Ab rollouts 2x8

Wednesday - rest day

Thursday - upper
Dumbbell shoulder press 4x4-6
Lat pulldown 4x4-6
Bench press 4x4-6
1 arm rows 4x4-6
Tricep pushdown 4x4-6
Dumbbell bicep curls 4x4-6

Friday - lower
Lunges 3x8
Leg press 3x8
Pull through 3x8
Calf raises 3x8
Cable crunches 3x8

Saturday - rest day
Sunday - rest day
 
I'm a relative noob and have adopted a 2 day split focusing on differing areas of the body:

Workout A

Squat (smith machine - no access to squat rack)
DB flat bench press
Hex bar bent-over row
DB flyes
Cable lat pull down (can only do 4 bodyweight chin ups :o)
Tricep extension (normally cable overhead)

Workout B

Squat
Hex bar deadlift
Overhead BB press
Cable lateral raise
Cable bicep curls

There are fewer exercises in workout B because deadlifts absolutely destroy me. I alternate those workouts, working out 2-3 days per week. Each workout takes about an hour.

I find that if I concentrate only on back, leg, or chest on a certain day, I knacker that part of the body too much so the later sets aren't anywhere near as heavy as when I do the above split.

I also start at 3-4 sets of 6 reps for most of those exercises then increase the weight when I can do 4 x 8.

Not saying it's the best but I'm trying it and happy so far. Have also just committed the cardinal sin of ordering 1Kg of chocolate smooth impact whey protein from MyProtein, as I'm too lazy to prepare lots of natural protein.
 
David Flett said:
I've had a read up on that link and attempted to make up my own split, ive lowered my sets down to 4 like it says and between 4-6 reps for most going heavier if 6 reps are easy.
Opted for a 4 day split as I have a lot of spare time during the weeks
how does this look? Any opinions possible change outs or criticisms welcome:p tried to stick to thinks I'm comfortable doing, or done before.
I'm flexible with days if its maybe better having a day off in between every gym day.

Monday- upper
Bench press 4x4-6
Barbell rows 4x4-6
Barbell shoulder press 4x4-6
Lat pulldown 4x4-6
Tricep pushdown 4x4-6
Ez bicep curls 4x4-6

Tuesday - lower
Squats 4x4-6
Leg press 4x4-6
Romanian deadlift 4x4-6
Calf raises 3x8
Ab rollouts 2x8

Wednesday - rest day

Thursday - upper
Dumbbell shoulder press 4x4-6
Lat pulldown 4x4-6
Bench press 4x4-6
1 arm rows 4x4-6
Tricep pushdown 4x4-6
Dumbbell bicep curls 4x4-6

Friday - lower
Lunges 3x8
Leg press 3x8
Pull through 3x8
Calf raises 3x8
Cable crunches 3x8

Saturday - rest day
Sunday - rest day
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You're free to try it.

For your heavy sets do 4 x 6-8 with a 3 mins rest and for things like biceps and triceps the rep range you've chosen is a bit heavy. Especially towards the end of a session. Do 2 x 12 -15 with 1 min rest.

On your lower day you can add a set of hamstring curls and even hyper extensions.

I would also suggest you watch some videos on YouTube to get an idea of correct form ect before you start doing stuff using machines and free weights.
 
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I done the monday upper yesterday and man it's weird doing a bit of everything in the same day. It only took me 40 mins and feel fresh today. Think it was because it took me till my 4th set to see what I could do a comfortable 5 reps with so only really had the last set to go heavy. Is there any warm up sets involved or do I just use yesterday as a benchmark and start off with what I finished with as a start off point next time. I changed the arms to 2x12 like you mentioned, worked in well.

Participant said:
Cable lat pull down (can only do 4 bodyweight chin ups :o)
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Same as I can do 2 max haha.
Lower workout later on today see how I get on.

Been watching videos on deadlifts as not really tried before
 
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