#66 - Strength Training 101: Unlocking Muscle Potential for Beginners

Ever wonder how to unlock the true potential of your muscles and kickstart your strength training journey? Well, buckle up, as I, Gus Holland, guide you through the essentials of muscle building in a way that’s perfect for beginners. You'll discover the power of higher loads, the efficacy of low rep ranges, and the importance of rest for optimal muscle recovery. We're talking controlled tempos, workout structuring, and the art of energy management with simple supplements – all the secrets you need to fuel your fitness quest. Plus, I'll reveal how to bolster your nervous system for peak muscle activation and weave in critical balance exercises to keep you injury-free, especially when the stakes are high. And don't miss out on the bonus three-day training split designed to light the fire of your strength training regimen.

Moving forward, I'll walk you through a strategic five-day workout plan that smartly alternates muscle groups for maximum gains. Starting with the legs and marching through a comprehensive mix of back, chest, and shoulder workouts, you'll learn why mastering form, reps, and rest periods isn't just fitness jargon—it's your roadmap to success. We'll also tackle the often-neglected rear delt exercises that can truly transform your back training. I'll share essential tips for keeping injuries at bay and lifestyle hacks to help you maintain zenith-level energy throughout your workouts. Remember, it's not just about lifting weights; it's about lifting each other up. So let's connect, share experiences, and grow stronger together in this community. Join me and let's embark on this strength-building odyssey with gusto.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey everybody and welcome to a new episode of Way of Life. I'm your host, gus Holland. Today is going to be focusing on the beginner stage and basics of strength training. So strength training will require a higher load or higher volume of training, paired with lower rep ranges, and includes longer rest periods. So these longer rest periods are going to give you your muscles a little bit more time. I mean, obviously you're exerting more force because you're doing heavier weight with a lower amount of reps, but it's these rest are going to give you time to get more oxygen in your blood.

Speaker 1: 0:52

Obviously, a lot of strength trainer and training athletes bring some sort of glucose based supplement. I've seen everything from actual gummy candy to adding a little bit of sugar to their water or even just various sports drinks or supplements. So for all workouts you're going to still maintain that controlled tempo. Normally you're going to have two to five sets, I would say, per exercise and you're going to have somewhere between a two and five minute rest, and there are some outliers that take longer rests or shorter rests, but I would say that's about the average. Once again, I'm going to go over a three week of, I mean three time per week, four time per week and five time per week training split, and, once again, these are just examples, not necessarily what you should follow by the book or and I'm not saying that you can't alter these to fit your training style or your preferences, but I'm going to just stick to the basics, like I said, and, yeah, hopefully this helps you all out. So, before I get into these specific splits or training programs, I do want to explain that strength training, especially for a beginner. I mean, obviously you want to watch out for injuries and whatnot, but strength training is summed up as using your muscle mass to generate force and train your nervous system specifically to allow yourself to recruit and activate your muscle groups to generate the most amount of force while maintaining a high amount of intensity and efficiency within not only the movement but in all aspects of your training. So a lot of things that are, or not a lot of things.

Speaker 1: 3:31

A lot of times what is overlooked within the strength training regimens is your balance and stabilization. So lots of times you're training for explosive movements or you're gonna be training for, for example, like a powerlifting meet, your or a strong man event. That'd be the best example A lot of those movements. Although they're very heavy, they require an immense amount of force immediately, basically an explosive. You'll hear it in football if you've ever played football. They say it takes flow through the movement or whatever. There's different terms.

Speaker 1: 4:25

But the something that you can focus on on your off days is your stability and balance and everything. Because when you're performing these lifts, especially at competitions or meets or what have you, you're often going to the point of failure or complete exhaustion and with these types of movements, a lot of most of the I wouldn't necessarily say most, but it might be a good 50-50 split but a lot of injuries are sustained during those moments of complete exhaustion and you're either somebody's losing their balance, they're or losing their form, forgetting some of the safety techniques that should have, and most likely have been, went over before the start of the competition. And so a really good thing to do is to not focus on, but kind of as an on an accessory day or a rest day or whatever, is to train different modalities or not modality, different forms of stability and balance. But, as promised, here is the three day split, just an example, so you could start off the first day doing a shoulder pre. Well, oh yeah, still warm up with the cardio, still do some form of stretching, or I prefer to do static stretching on off days. So you want to do some sort of like an active stretch, a dynamic stretch, beforehand before actually lifting. That's going to increase blood flow to the target areas and prevent injury.

Speaker 1: 6:25

But enough rambling. So you start with, as an example, shoulder press doing. What I like to do is, for all of these exercises, three to four. No, yeah, yeah, yeah, three to four. Sets of my sweet spot is like five reps, so that's a good thing to do. So I'm going to do a little bit of a stretch and then I'm going to do a little bit of a stretch and then I'm going to do a little bit of a stretch. So, depending on the exercise, I will change the amount of sets. I normally keep the reps around five, unless I'm going very heavy, like on a deadlift or something like that, and I might do three reps but do like four sets of three or something like that. But anyways, keep that in mind.

Speaker 1: 7:24

And but you start off. You start off with a shoulder press. This can be a machine shoulder press, it can be dumbbell shoulder press. I Personally try and stay off machines as much as possible because they reduce your the use of your stabilizers. So, especially for shoulders, that's a big deal, but some form of shoulder press, like I said, three sets of five or six. You're gonna do the long rests in between three to four minutes. You can do a form of a row, whether that's a bent over row With a dumbbell or a t bar row with a with a barbell, some form of row. Then you're going to do some form of chest press which is like a. It can be with dumbbell or barbell. You can do incline, flat bench or decline, it's your preference on this or or multiple, you know you could say well, I'm gonna do Incline and decline this week and then next week I'm gonna focus on flat bench or something like that, just to add some variety. Then you can. I would do one more Shoulder pressing Exercise. This can be, if you're a strongman, this could be like a log press or a circus dumbbell Not circus, don't know um, but yeah, like a dumbbell press or Just a bar, a strict barbell overhead shoulder press, your choice on that.

Speaker 1: 9:23

Then you're gonna do some form of tricep Pulldown, press down, whatever you want to call it. So I personally prefer to use the like the rope attachment and where you flare at the end of the the movement. But you can use a like a cross cross cable tricep press or Some some some form of a tricep press. It's really up to your preference. So that would be an example for day one of a three-day split.

Speaker 1: 10:02

Then day two is Pretty much gonna be all legs. This is Obviously like on on calf stuff. You can, you, they can. They can use a lot more Damage to them, I guess, for them to grow. But you might do like two sets of six to eight instead of Like three sets of three or something. But yeah, you can do calf raises, glute bridges, hip thrusts, barbell, squat, leg press, seated calf raises, standard calf raises, any of those exercises.

Speaker 1: 10:53

I would say, try and hit about six different leg exercises, unless you're, you know, and it's it's gonna be different, especially if you're like, if you're doing something like I mean, you could just go and do like four exercises as opposed to six, but they're like much more demanding on you, such as Dead lifts or something you know, a major, a major lift. That would be day two. Now on day three, you're going to Do something to target the areas that you've already affected the basically like what I do. What I try and do is like, feel what's the most sore and Hit that again, basically almost to warm it up but also to help move out some of that lactic acid. So for a lot of people that's gonna be the legs. You can do another form of like glute, bridge or or thrust exercise you know some sort of like hip mobility, you know, to warm that up and you can hit calf raises again. That'd be a good kind of warm-up on that. And then you're gonna hit it back and you're gonna try and do two to three exercises for back Once again, somewhere between three to five sets, and I'd say about fiber apps. So this can be.

Speaker 1: 12:42

There's a bunch of different variations of rows. This can be some form of like lat pull down that's what I personally love, lat pull down and like a seated, even like a seated machine row, like an alternating row. Those are pretty good then. Yeah, then you hit arms one more time, basically because why not? This could be just like a standard dumbbell bicep curl I personally like to superset, like one of my favorite things to do is do some form of bicep curl, whether it's dumbbell or like an easy grip bar, but like a moderately, like in between, like a moderate and heavy weight.

Speaker 1: 13:47

I like to do that. And then I like to immediately like superset it with some hammer curls, and those are dumbbell hammer curls. So I, what I do is, just as an example, like, we'll say, doing curls like your beginner, so you're doing, like we'll say, 20 to 25 pound dumbbell curls standard, very controlled, focusing on your breathing and your alternating. So you're, you know, you curl your right arm with your left arm down, put your right arm down, curl your left arm up, right, and each arm you'll we'll say, we'll say you're doing six reps, so you'll do six reps on each arm. Set the dumbbells down, take like not that long, like 15 to 30 second break and or, if you're feeling real, real good, just go straight into it. But then you hit a set of six hammer curls, same amount of weight, if you can and if not I would I'd go down by about five pounds, like, if you're curling 20, is you can, you could hammer curl 15s or something like that. And so once you've done a set of each of those on both arms, that's when you do your extended rest in between. So that'd be like two to three minute rest, do another superset to the two to three minute rest, do another superset. So altogether you're doing three sets of six of both a bicep curl, ice, I guess, isolated, alternating bicep curl and a hammer curl. So one, you're gonna get a crazy pump. Two, you're gonna really hit your bicep well and you're gonna feel it. So I like it, I like it a lot. But that is, that's a three-day split. That's just a sample three-day split. You can change those exercises up, you can add exercises and if it's if that's too much for you, subtract exercises until you get you know always progress, you know, until you get to a better level.

Speaker 1: 16:16

Kind of goes without. Well, it doesn't go without saying. I should have said it at the beginning. But in my opinion you should hit abs as often as you can and you should always involve some form of cardio. Even if it's just 10 to 15 minute warm-up on a, on a bike or something, I don't care, do something. Or brisk walk outside, I don't, do not care, do something. But so then we're gonna do a four-day split. I'm not gonna list every single exercise, just kind of kind of cluster it up, kind of simplify it, and that way I don't waste all your times.

Speaker 1: 17:07

So, anyways, four-day split, we'll say day one is we're gonna do arms and legs, I mean, I'm sorry, abs and legs. So you're gonna do, like we'll say, six leg exercises. This is including a calf raise, leg extensions, leg press, squat. You know you're gonna do, I would say, like once again, three to five sets of about five or six reps on all, pretty much all of those. Then you're gonna do two to three minute rest in between each exercise. So, yeah, that's really that sums up day one. That went by a lot quicker than I expected.

Speaker 1: 18:09

But then you're gonna do day two. That is very much like a. You're alternating between, like you do like a one back exercise, like a standard row excuse me, like a standard row as like a warm-up thing and just to kind of get your back activated. Then you're gonna basically alternate exercises between chest and shoulders and then finish it off with one bicep or tricep exercise. So altogether, once again, you're doing, I'd say, about seven, try to shoot for like seven exercises same amount of reps and sets, same amount of rest in between, but just alternate shoulder and chest exercises as long as you can like. Sometimes the gym is too crowded. Sometimes you're in a giant rush and you just need to like knock stuff out so you can. You can group stuff up. But yeah, try and alternate if you can.

Speaker 1: 19:16

Third day legs again same same thing, except try to include at least one like big lift, you know, like a, like a Romanian deadlift or something like that. Do like five sets of five on that, then we'll see day four. You're going to basically like shoot for like two arm exercises, like a, like two different variations of a bicep curl, and then you're gonna do back like three variations of I would. I would do like two to pull down variations and then like some form of row, whether it's bent over or like horizontal row, but yeah, you could do like a wide grip pull down, and then you could do a neutral grip pull down. That's just simple example. Then you're gonna do I would shoot for two exercises to target your rear delts, so that kind of, you know, help ties into your back and everything. Maybe like a, like a bent over rear delt raise with a dumbbell. That that's pretty good. Yeah, and once again, with all these trying to abs as much as possible, try and get some cardio in and let's see.

Speaker 1: 21:03

So five-day split. That is basically, you're gonna do the four-day split and then you're just adding a fifth day, and the fifth day you're going to be hitting shoulders harder, it's gonna. It's gonna be basically a repeat of day two. So, to sum it up, it's like day one, legs, day two, that little bit of back, that one or two little tricep or bicep exercises, but your alt and then the rest is alternating between chest and shoulders. So that's day two. Day three is legs again. Day four is exactly what I just explained like a minute ago, with focusing on back and rear delt, rear delt. And then the fifth day is almost it's like a hybrid between day two and day four. So you're going to do like one one back exercise, shoot for like three shoulder exercises and I like to do like two chest exercises.

Speaker 1: 22:37

So another super set that I'm really, that I really like is to do some form of bent, of bench press with a corresponding fly, so you get the weight that you need. You know the, the correct weight dumbbells that you use for flies, and so if you're doing like incline, you would do a set of incline and a set of in, I'm sorry, a set of incline bench and then a set of incline flies and then rest and repeat, rest and repeat three sets of like six to eight or whatever. You still do those long rests though the two to three minute rests, keeping and keeping in mind to always brace correctly and breathe correctly during these exercises, staying on top of your hydration and if, since you're a beginner, you know, fill, fill out these programs and then be like man, I just get like 60 or 70% done with my workout and I'm just more, I'm just worn out, I'm just exhausted. So one I would try and try and take some sort of very small amount of sugar supplement, like maybe bring in a couple pieces of candy just to try it out, to see, because not everybody responds like this. Some people are diabetic, you know there's, there's all kinds of stuff that go into factor with this. But try some form of like mild dose of sugar, basically, and see if that helps you. Like, while you're resting you're like 40% done with your, with your exercise. You know, chew on something, chew on a couple gummies, sip some water. You know there's also all those. There's multiple different companies that do hydration packs that you just add to water. Those are really good and some purpose. You know some have sugar in them, some are purposely sugar free and you know, use those to your discretion and whatever works for you. That's really about it.

Speaker 1: 25:11

And yeah, injury prevention, man, because you want to do as much, you want to train at like you're shooting for like a lifestyle change. So the longer you can train without injury is the longer that you can train without breaking that cycle. That you know that that change in your life. You know it's real easy if you, if you get like two weeks in you lose some weight, blah, blah, blah, and then you like pull something and you're like man, I got gotten doctor said I got to sit out two weeks. You know I'm gonna sit out two weeks and then two weeks turns into two months, then you gained all your weight back. Then you're, you know, just starts that cycle back over again. So main thing is, in my opinion, injury prevention and staying healthy. So if, let me see here I'm gonna check my notes see if I missed anything, but I'm pretty sure that that about covers it for the for the beginner level of strength training.

Speaker 1: 26:23

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