When you want to start with fitness, it is important to prepare yourself well. In this article, we want to give you some fitness tips for beginners when you start. Because muscles develop not only through intensive training, but also your nutrition and rest are important. Often, the type of food and the amount are stumbling blocks. Therefore, the article: starting with fitness.
Types of Exercises
When you start with strength training, you basically have the choice between two types of fitness exercises: isolation exercises and compound exercises. When you do an isolation exercise, only one muscle is actually involved in the execution of the exercise. If you opt for compound exercises, multiple muscles are involved. Many athletes who are just starting out with fitness choose isolation exercises with the idea that they can make specific muscle groups grow harder. The opposite is true. Muscles are more susceptible to growth when they work together. The collaboration between muscles increases due to improving intermuscular coordination. Additionally, multiple muscle groups work simultaneously, making your workouts more effective and efficient. You can then incorporate isolation exercises into your schedule later if you want to give specific areas extra attention.
Muscle Groups
Many beginning athletes who do fitness often train a limited number of muscle groups. Namely: biceps, shoulders, abs, and often chest on Monday. After all, Monday is chest day. If we look at the anatomy of the human body, we see that there are still a few muscle groups missing. You need to keep and train your body in balance, so it is necessary to train all muscle groups. So, also the muscle groups that you do not prefer or muscles that are not visible when you wear pants. Therefore, use a split schedule, where you train a different muscle group every day, but over the whole week, you train your entire body, or use a full-body schedule where you train your whole body each time.
The Basic Exercises
Earlier, we described the necessity for beginner fitness enthusiasts to focus on compound exercises. If you want to use these compound exercises, you can choose from 8 basic exercises with which you can train your whole body at once. Handy if you want to develop results and strength quickly, but also handy when you have little time. These basic exercises are:
Chest: Bench Press
Shoulders: Military Press
Shoulders: Upright Row
Back: Lat Pulldown
Back: Cable Row
Biceps: Barbell Curls
Triceps: Lying Triceps Extension
Legs: Squat
Lower back + Hamstrings: Deadlift
How Many Days to Train
When you are just starting to train, it is sometimes difficult to determine how many days you should and can train. A guideline is that you should always give a muscle group 48 hours of rest to recover completely. Then you quickly come to 3 days a week, where you train a different muscle group each workout. What does your week look like then?
Monday, Day 1: Legs
Many beginning athletes go with the flow and, like everyone else, train their chest muscles on Monday. Every Monday is chest day is a well-known phenomenon. But a disadvantage is that everyone wants to train their chest muscles on Monday. So, all bench presses or other fitness equipment for chest muscles are busier on Monday than on other days. Therefore, do not start training your chest muscles on Monday, but start training your legs instead.
Start the leg workout with squats. Squats are one of the most challenging but most effective exercises for your whole body. After squats, you can do the leg press. Then focus on the hamstrings and then focus on the calves. Always go from large to small, even with your legs.
Tuesday, Day 2: Chest and Triceps
Because you trained your legs on Monday, you have the freedom to train any muscle group of your upper body on Tuesday. In this example, we assume chest and triceps on Tuesday. These are muscle groups that are often trained on Monday, so expect little crowding on the equipment and machines when training chest on Tuesday.
Start the chest workout with the basic exercise: bench press. Arnold Schwarzenegger was a fan of incline bench press because he believed his chest muscles could never be big enough at the top. If you train the upper part of your chest muscles, the bottom grows as well, was his theory. After bench press, you can focus on the chest muscles individually with dumbbell press and you can exhaust the chest well with the peck deck or dumbbell flys. Because training your chest muscles puts a lot of strain on your triceps, you can train them afterward. It is also advisable to switch this around and train your triceps after your back workout.
Wednesday, Rest Day
Thursday, Day 3: Back, Shoulders, and Biceps
Because when doing shoulder exercises, you often use a large part of your triceps and chest muscles, we take 1 day of rest between training days. This allows you to train your back, shoulders, and biceps on day 3. Start the training with the back: cable rows, lat pulldowns, and upright rows. Then move on to the shoulders and do the military press and do some isolation exercises for the shoulders afterward, where you specifically train the front, side, and rear. Then you can train the biceps with barbell curls. Regularly alternate this with hammer curls.
If you have an extra day off for training on the weekend, you can add an additional day of your choice with the above schedule.
Nutrition
As we described earlier, many beginning fitness enthusiasts are focused on workouts. But training is only part of the realization of muscle growth. Besides the stimulus, the training, you also need to take in enough building materials and rest well. After all, muscles grow during rest. So what should you eat? Many building blocks come from protein, also known as proteins. The main sources of protein are:
Steak
Lean beef contains essential proteins and is often eaten by bodybuilders. In addition to proteins, beef also contains other nutrients, such as iron and creatine. Be careful not to consume too much red meat.
Chicken
Another source of protein is chicken. Chicken, like beef, contains a lot of protein and is very lean. This is ideal for people who want to build muscles. As an alternative to chicken, you could also take turkey.
Tuna
Tuna, or as Jessica Simpson called it, the chicken of the sea, is one of the best types of fish to eat if you want to build muscles. It contains almost as much protein as chicken and beef, but a big advantage of tuna is that it also contains important fats such as Omega 3.
Protein Shake
To avoid tiring yourself out with steak, turkey, chicken, and tuna all day, there are also supplements in the form of protein shakes that you can take to get the necessary protein.
Eggs
Another source of good proteins is eggs.
Oatmeal
A good source of energy is undoubtedly oatmeal. Start your day well and start with oatmeal, which ensures a slow absorption of carbohydrates, giving you a stable energy level throughout the day.
Brown Rice
Like oatmeal, brown rice is recommended as a good source of carbohydrates. The advantage of brown rice is that it is slowly absorbed and therefore does not cause an insulin spike.
Fruits and Vegetables
Do not forget that, in addition to proteins and carbohydrates, you also need vitamins and minerals. You can get these from your vegetables and fruits. In addition, fruit is a good and light source of carbohydrates. Good to alternate or to enrich your oatmeal or cottage cheese with.
Nuts
Essential in your diet are your fats. The fats we mean here are not the fats you get from the frying pan, but from nuts. The nuts recommended are almonds, walnuts, and peanuts.
Cottage Cheese
Finally, before going to bed, have a bowl of cottage cheese. Cottage cheese contains proteins that are slowly absorbed by your body, allowing it to have enough building blocks to prevent muscle breakdown and promote muscle growth during sleep.
