Resistance Training Guidelines - Beginner

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Exercise Selection and Structure

Exercise Selection and Structure for Beginners should include full-body exercises for the recommended amount of sessions in a week.

Machine-based exercises that require less skill such as Chest Press, Leg Press or a Hamstring Curl is recommended. It’s really important to build skills for resistance training with exercises that have less degrees of free movement.

Overall: Machine-based exercises that target multiple muscle groups.

Frequency

1 -2 p/w

Volume

When a person first begins their resistance training journey, we want to keep the sets and repetitions of exercises controlled and of a low dosage. Too much stress on the body can cause damage and it’s not the way you want to start your experience in resistance training!

Sets: 2-3  |  Reps: 8-12

Rest

Rest periods are important to allow us to recover and do more work. Overworking, fatiguing and no resting has the potential to injury us.

We need to allow our bodies to restore our immediate energy use so we can continue to perform with good technique.

When starting out, recommended that you have a 2-3 minute break between sets.

Intensity and RPE

Intensity for Beginners and resistance training can be a really hard thing to figure out. RPE is a useful tool to help guide beginners to help decide what weight is appropriate to use for their exercises

We want to have enough intensity to help us improve. Too much intensity and we will be too sore to continue training, too little and you won’t get any results!

The scale below is a good guide to the intensities and their descriptions.

For Beginners: aim for a 6-7/10 RPE.

Progressive Overload

There are several ways in which you can increase and progressively overload to continue to improve.

The important thing is you pick one variable to manipulate, changing too many things won’t allow your body to adapt and improve. Here are the ways in which you can change it:

• Weight: Increase by 2-5% per week
• Increasing reps
• Increasing sets
• Decreasing rest periods
• Adding exercises
• Changing the amount of time under tension
• Manipulate RPE

As shown above, there are several things we can do to add load and apply progressive overload.

For beginners, recommended to keep it simple and utilise weight as your overload.

Summary

• Full body: machine-based exercises
• 1-2 sessions p/week
• Sets: 2-3 per exercise
• Reps: 8-12
• Rest: 2-3 minutes
• Overload: pick 1 variable. The simple and recommended one is weight.
• Intensity: 6-7/10 RPE
• Consistency!