Your First Week in the Gym

So, you have decided to finally take the plunge and join a gym, but what now? The gym can be an intimidating place, and this is only amplified when you don’t really know what you are doing. It doesn’t take long for the excitement of getting started to switch to the fear of people looking at you because you are doing things wrong. So let’s go through the basics of what you should do in your first week in the gym to set yourself up for long term success.

Set some goals:

Before we set foot in the gym let’s think about why we signed up in the first place, what are you hoping to get out of training? Having some well thought out goals to achieve will help keep us on track as we work towards them. Having well thought out goals also allows to break these down into weekly/daily tasks which we can check off each day to make sure we are keeping ourselves accountable. When it comes to general gym training our goals will usually fall into either fat loss, muscle gain or a combination of both. Some people may have performance goals (think athletes wanting to improve in their sports), but for the purposes of this article we will assume body composition is our main focus.

So how do we set good goals? The SMART principle sets a good foundation for goal setting as it forces us to dig a little deeper than the standard, broad goals we here like “I want to lose weight” or “I just want to be healthier”. If you are not familiar, SMART goals stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time Based. This essentially means we want to set goals which we can measure our progress on, that way we can see progress, make adjustments when necessary and actually achieve them at some point.

In addition to SMART goals, I find it also helps to set pass/fail goals for the week, ideally these would be the smaller step you need to take each week to move towards your larger goals. As these are smaller and easier to tick off, I find it helps for them to be simple, for example training at least 3 times this week. These pass/fail goals leave no room for excuses, you either did them or you didn’t. This allows us to find reasons why when we review.

So why am I talking about long term goal setting when this article is about your first week in the gym? Well because training should be a long term commitment, having one good week in the gym is pointless if you fall of the rails a week later, so having clear cut goals should keep us on track so that we only need to have one “first week in the gym”.

Train movements, not muscles

Now let’s get into some actual training, it is important to realise that lifting weights is a skill and that no one movement uses just one muscle. Every movement you do in the gym will require multiple muscle groups working together to perform, so with this in mind when we begin, we want to think about training movement patterns to develop strength more than training individual muscles.

There are 4 main movement patterns we would usually perform when strength training:

Knee dominant (Back Squats, Leg press, Leg extension)
Hip Extensions (Deadlifts, Hip Thrusts, Romanian Deadlifts)
Push (Bench Press, Shoulder Press, Push Ups, Triceps Pushdown)
Pull (Rows, Pull Ups, Lat Pulldowns, Bicep Curls)

These can be broken down further, think horizontal push (Bench Press) as opposed to vertical (Shoulder Press), plus core training I would consider a fundamental movement, but to keep things simple we will focus on the above 4.

As a beginner it is important to prioritise these types of movements and perform them all to prevent muscle imbalances and injuries in the long term. A good rule of thumb is to perform an even amount of each, so if you are performing 10 sets of pushing exercises a week, have 10 sets of pulling exercises to go with it. As well as an even amount of Squat (Knee) and Hinge (Hip) type movements. One final point on muscle imbalances is that we also want to avoid left to right imbalance, so when training make sure to try and include exercises where your left and right side work independently of each other, so using dumbbells for presses and rows, or single leg work like lunges for legs.

So lets put this all together with an example “First day in the gym” workout:

Exercise Sets x Reps

Back Squat 4x8

Romanian Deadlift 4x10

DB Bench Press 3x10

Superset

Bent Over Row 3x10

Lat Pulldown 3x12

Superset

DB Shoulder Press 3x12

Lunges 3x10

Superset

DB Curl 3x15

Superset

Triceps Pushdown 3x15

Plank 4x00:45s

As we can see there is an even spread of pushing and pulling, while also having a single leg movement and a mix of barbell and dumbbell work. If you are reading this article not sure what to do in the gym, feel free to try this workout a few times and see how you go. If any of the exercises are too difficult just be sure to swap them for easier variations, but make sure that the ones you are swapping follow the same movement pattern.

So now that you have a basic understanding of how to put together a workout, how do we extend this over the following weeks, months and years?

Have a program

The number one thing that will stop you in your tracks when getting started is not having a program. You don’t necessarily have to hire a Personal trainer (but it’s a good idea) or pay top dollar for an online coach. But having some sort of program to follow will be a huge difference maker for not only your results but just your general confidence walking into the gym. Imagine how much more confident you would feel walking in and having everything you need to do set out for you ready to go, as opposed to just winging it, not sure if you are doing the right exercises, in the right order or the right volume? Having a program just makes life easier.

With that in mind, make sure it is a good program. How do we define good? Glad you asked! A good training program first and foremost should be moving you closer to your goals and suit your lifestyle. No point doing a 5x per week powerlifting program if you are a full-time worker, who can only make the gym 3x per week, who only wants to lose a few Kilos and get a bit stronger. Pick a program you know you will be able to give your all to and you will be well on your way to a result.

Secondly, a good program should have good exercise selection, think back to when we talked about training movements, a good program should meet these pre-requisites. You should also make sure that you can actually perform all the exercises to an acceptable level for them to be effective, there is no point having barbell back squats in the program if you cannot do them without nearly dying. Speaking of which:

You are going to suck at everything,
but that’s okay

Like I mentioned earlier, lifting is a skill, and like any skill, unfortunately the first time you do it you are not going to be amazing at it. Often when I train new clients who have little to no experience in the gym they have this expectation that if they cant do everything perfect that they suck and that they have somehow “failed”. Luckily, everyone started out this way and the good old “we all have to start somewhere” is true in this regard. Starting out its expected that everything will be harder, but that’s simply because your body is just learning how to move, so the best thing you can do is stay consistent in that first couple of weeks and you will see huge jumps in improvement session to session just by showing up.

The biggest piece of advice I can give you is to stay in the game for that first few weeks, simply because this is the hardest time and the only way it gets easier is if your body adapts. Think of the first couple of weeks in the gym like a tutorial to a video game, it’s not all that flashy and everything is new and a bit confusing. But the fundamentals need to be done to move forward. I see plenty of people stop and start over their first few weeks and this only drags out this “tutorial phase”. So, do you want to get stuck in the tutorial forever? Or do you want to play the game?