The PERFECT Beginner Workout Guide (Sets and Reps Included)

 Today, we continue our perfect workout series. And this one's all about the beginners; I have a perfect full-body workout for you that can take you through step by step. I will give you exactly what you must do, not just for a couple of weeks but three months; I want to ensure you get this right. So, Guys, let's start breaking down 10 essential movement patterns that every beginner must master. Okay, so it's not only important to understand that there are these 10 movement patterns that you have to master.

 But within the movement patterns, there's some exercise variation that we want to build upon; we're going to take them from level one to two to three. The difference between these levels is either the complexity of the exercise or the amount of weight you can use to load on the exercise; it's going to be important to make sure you're pushing yourself forward. In both of those cases, what does it look like? The first movement pattern is something we call the horizontal push. This is where we use the shoulders, the chest and the triceps to do a movement, like, let's say, the pushup at the most basic level. I liked the pushup as a level one variation because it demands that you build some scapular control with your hand's place from the on the ground; we move from there, though, to a dumbbell bench press, we take away the ground as something that can assist us in building that stability. And we now have to have that stability ourselves. 

The good thing about using dumbbells is that they can float freely if you have any Stark imbalances between the right and left sides; you're going to see it here because when we move to level three, we perform the barbell bench press, if you have those imbalances, there, they can be hidden. Because both hands are placed on a fixed bar, we move on to the next movement pattern. And this is the vertical push. Here, we're talking mostly about the shoulders and the triceps overhead pushing activities; we start with a one-arm dumbbell press. And it's easier to move one arm at a time because you can look for imbalances between the right and left sides. And less core control is demanded of you by using just one dumbbell at a time. But when we step it up to level two, we must push them together. 

Again, additional weight moving over your head requires more core stability and control. But we will get to that if we progress the right way. And we move to level three here. And that's, once again, where we incorporate the barbell overhead press; you have to move your body around the bar instead of the dumbbells around your body, which increases the complexity. But you can also load this exercise even heavier. We then move to the next pattern, the horizontal pull. So now we're talking about the biceps and back, and we start with the chest-supported row.

 When we get in this position, we don't have any demands on our low back strength to be able to do the row; we can focus on our ability to get stronger and develop those pulling muscles; we can take away that support, though and move in level two to a tripod position. And here, you still have a little support; you do not have to support your entire body and space with your lower back. But you have minimized that level of support and increased the demand and the weight used here on your pulling muscles. 

And then, of course, we can move freely at level three to the barbell row, where now you do have to have that support and strength of the lower back to keep your body in the right posture and position to be able to pull in this case, heavier weights, we then move to the fourth position here and is the vertical pole. And we know you guys are talking about a pulldown at the base level here. And if you have access to a pulldown machine, you can weight this to the degree that even a very rank beginner can do with lightweights being used. 

Or, if you don't have access to that, you can use a band over a pull-up bar into an abandoned version of a pulldown. When we take it to the next level, we're trying to get ourselves to be able to do pull-ups. So now we use a band, though and an assisted pull-up situation; this band will unweight your body by anywhere from 50 to 80 pounds, depending upon the resistance of the band you're using. Our goal is ultimately to get to level three, which is your ability to do pull-ups themselves without assistance, which brings us to our fifth movement pattern. And that is the hinge. And it's not about pulling with your upper body at this point. 

But learning how to pull with your posterior chain and hips. Because there are some of the most powerful pullers in the entire body. If you learn how to do it, right? So what we do is we start with something here called a pull-through at level one; we focus on hinging back at the hips and then using a powerful hip extension to drive yourself back to a vertical position. And we take it to level two here with an RDL, not having to take it fully off the ground as you're willing to deadlift, but simply learning how to use those hips and an abbreviated range of motion to get through that powerful hip extension. And, of course, as I mentioned already, level three takes it to the floor through one of the best exercises we can do. 

And it's the deadlift, the gold standard of posterior chain strength and development. This brings us to the next movement pattern: the squat. And here, guys, we're talking about your ability to move your body up and down in space. And, of course, we're going to start with a variation of a dumbbell drop squat. What I like about this more than any other is that it will teach any beginner the exact place their body should be in space when they perform the squat because the dumbbell will drop right down to the centre of gravity and take your body into the right position. 

But we can't load that heavy enough to progress forever. We have to learn how to bring that dumbbell up and level to two goblet position positions. It's a bit more challenging, but you have to control that up there, which is a perfect transition to level three. And it's the classic back squat. And here, of course, it revealed the greatest weight while still staying true to the mechanics for us, perfecting the squat with the lighter weights. Now, the seventh and eighth movement patterns are related. 

They're a variation on the lunge. And as an athletic strength coach, guys, I can tell you right now that the lunge is one of the most overlooked but beneficial movement patterns you need to master. We start with a static variation; we're just going to move our body up and down in space, similar to a squat, but with one leg out in front of the other. And we start with a simple bodyweight split squat, right unweighted. Remember, the complexity of the weighting of the exercise determines which level we're at. To take it to level two, we now add weights in the same dumbbell split squat position, working each side but going straight up and down and building the strength in our quads. 

Then, we take it one step further to one of my favourite exercises of all time, the dumbbell Bulgarian split squat, working one side, but certainly, we can increase the load we use here and the challenge on the front leg. Then, we want to add some movement to it. And that's where the dynamic lunge variation comes in. At level one, you're looking at, again, a bodyweight situation; we're performing a reverse lunge. I like the reverse lunge because it's more forgiving on the knees. If you have any current knee issues, we take it to level two, adding a single dumbbell to the situation; we do a single-sided or a suitcase. Reverse lunge. 

This is good because it will demand an increase in the ability of your hips in the frontal plane while you still perform that sagittal plane motion. And, of course, we can add one more dumbbell to the equation in level three to perform the heaviest variation. And it's simply the dumbbell reverse lunge; we move on to the ninth movement pattern here, guys, and it's a core flexion move, realizing that the flexion of the spine and the rotation of the pelvis are crucial to learning how to contract your abs properly, we're going to start with something very simple a level one with a roll-up. 

This Pilates movement teaches you how to get up off the ground and control that segment by segment as you lower yourself back down to the ground, which brings us to level two, where we can now perform something called the jackknife. And with the legs now checked off the ground, we have some additional weight challenges because the legs themselves will provide that. At level three, we have something even more difficult: the hanging D raise, which now demands that your body can be controlled while hanging from a bar; we're trying to curl the pelvis and not just use the hip flexors and lift the knees. And then, finally, we have the carry, which is another one of those overlooked movement patterns.

 But no less important, guys are going to learn how to build your grip and hand strength and be able to move it in space dynamically; we start with a suitcase carry at level one where we have a single dumbbell at one side, of course, going to be working both sides, we move to a farmer's carry, where we have a dumbbell in each hand now, which is going to increase the amount of load that you're carrying around. And then, we move to the overhead carry, the third and most challenging of these.

 Once you get those arms up overhead, as I alluded to back with the press, more core demands are placed on your body. How do we work through these levels and these movement patterns to have the exact plan we need to follow? Well, we start with our first month of training here, and it's divided into three workouts, an A, B and a C; the A and B workouts are your total body workouts performed alternatingly on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. So you go in week one, A, B and A, and then week two, B, A and B, you will repeat that through weeks three and four; the C workout will fall in the days in between on Tuesdays and Thursdays throughout the entire month. 

So now, with those 10 movement patterns, how do we split them up throughout a, b and c? When we start with an A and A, we start with the squat movement pattern, followed by the vertical push of the horizontal pole. Then, the lunge, in this case, the static lunge variation. Then, to be worked out, we have the hinge, the lunge, this time done dynamically, the horizontal push, the vertical pole, and the C workout. We paired together the last two I mentioned, the core flexion and carry movement patterns. What does that mean now for month one specifically? What are you going actually to follow? We have those movement patterns again, broken down into those three workouts.

 And the exercises that we drop in here are those level-one exercises. Each exercise will be performed for three sets, with 12 to 15 repetitions to form failure or failure alone on the bodyweight-only exercise. The goal here, guys, is to build up your ability to perform and master these movements. It's about something other than lowering the weight. That's why the rep range is higher. And you might say to yourself, but I already do benchpress. We're taking a step back here; we're only talking about six workouts this month. I want to ensure that you learn how to build that foundation once again from the ground up to master these movements to set you up for nothing but success down the line. 

So, each workout shown here can do that for you and prepare you for the next month. This brings us to month two; a month now, we have increased the level to the level two exercises. The structure will stay the same. We still have The same grouping of the movement patterns, except this time, with the change in exercises, we have new workouts. So now we have D, E, and F, with D and E being those total body workouts done alternatingly on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. And then we have those core and carry workouts done on Tuesdays and Thursdays with the level two exercise is now in place here, guys; you can see as I drop them in, the goal has changed a little bit, transitioning away from just building that foundation to now actually trying to build strength upon that foundation, and the reps and sets will change as well, the reps are going to drop down to the eight to 12 range, picking a weight that you fail within that rep range. 

But still, completing every single repetition you do in good form also gives you the option to add a set here to build upon that volume as you continue to build your experience in these movement patterns, which then sets us up for that success, as I've said at level three. So now, in month three, guys, you actually can do this for longer than a month talking about an article that keeps on giving here, guys, I wanted to make sure that our beginners out there had something to follow where they can make the best gains and experience the most success possible. We've built that foundation up. And now we're going to break it down again, one more time with the H, the G and the I workout still broken down with the same grouping of movement patterns. But now we have introduced those level three exercises. 

And what you're left with in these level three exercises are the traditional barbell exercises that you can perform for strength and three sets of five or three by eight fashion with the idea being to build that foundation of strength now on that stable foundation that you've taken the time to rebuild from the ground up as we perform these exercises. 

Guys, if you can do the three sets of five, you want to make sure that you continue to add weight progressively to overload these movements; you would do that by adding five pounds to each workout on each lift. If you successfully achieved the three sets of five in the previous workout, if you didn't get all three sets of five, then you will repeat the weight you used in the previous workout. If you fail again, you may overshoot the weight you chose. You drop that down by five pounds and repeat until you can master all three sets of five in terms of the weight you'll use here, guys. First, you will pick a weight you know you can perform the five reps for. However, it will still challenge you; you'll always be able to adapt them as we go based upon the success or failure I just mentioned. And with that, guys, you've got a step-by-step game plan. 

As always, I'm leaving the screenshots here for you to take and ensure you can follow this plan step by step. And where would you go from here? It is up to you guys. If you want to continue building that strength, you can stick to that third phase here, level three, and continue to add weight. Do that if you want to shift your goal entirely. You want to focus on building muscle, whatever it is, guys; I've got step-by-step plans that include nutritional game plans as well.