Workout Tips for Beginners

Getting off the couch and into the gym can be an intimidating process, especially when everyone seems to know a lot more than you do. To be successful in your fitness goals, it's important to start off on the right track. Far too many beginners get started on the wrong foot, develop bad habits, and then struggle to achieve their goals of building muscle and burning fat.

I don't want you to struggle with more challenges than you already have to—many are avoidable! If you can make your first steps positive ones, you'll make excellent progress right away and avoid feeling lost at the start of your fitness journey.

Take the first step with these 10 must-read beginner training tips. Apply them to your burgeoning health and fitness regimen for early success!

Going to the gym once is definitely a great start, but you won't see positive changes in your mind and body unless you make hitting the gym a habit. I know it might sound like an impossible task, especially if you feel you have a full day already, but working out 3-4 times each week for at least three weeks is absolutely essential to your budding success.

Building lifelong habits takes time, but once you've built those habits into your daily schedule you'll notice that missing them is irritating.

Building lifelong habits takes time, but once you've built those habits into your daily schedule you'll notice that missing them is irritating. "Experts say it takes 21 days to create a habit, " says Barbara Bolotte, BPI athlete. "This means it won't be until after 21 days of consistent work at the gym that it'll bother you to miss a workout."

When skipping the gym is more of an annoyance than a relief, you know you're on the way to success. Give yourself time to make the habit stick. One week is not enough. Be consistent in your plan and you'll move forward very quickly toward your goals.

Beginners often learn by watching. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but if you copy somebody doing a lift improperly, it means you're not doing it right, either. Most often, bad form comes from trying to lift too much weight too soon. When that happens, most people turn to momentum rather than muscle contraction to move the weight.

"Your efforts need to be focused and controlled, " says James Grage, co-founder and vice president of BPI Sports. "The key is to isolate muscle groups and strategically work them through various exercises, angles, and techniques." The better you can actually contract each muscle group correctly during a lift, the more your muscles will grow.

More weight can wait. In the grand scheme of things, how much you can biceps curl matters very little. What's important is learning how to squeeze your muscles to move the weight rather than using your hips to thrust the weight up.

Beginners interested in fitness can be easily distracted by complex training techniques found in magazines and online articles. If you've never stepped foot in a gym or haven't been in one for a long time, going right to isolation moves that work just one muscle group at a time won't bring you the best results.

"The key is to isolate muscle groups and strategically work them through various exercises, angles, and techniques."

To get the best results for muscle growth and fat loss, it's best to start with compound lifts like the squat, bench press, shoulder press, bent-over row, deadlift, pull-up, and lunge. These lifts require you to use multiple muscle groups at the same time. Doing them will allow you to lift more weight, hit more muscles, and increase your metabolic rate much better than you could doing dropsets of isolation movements like triceps extensions.

To start, select lifts that require you to use at least half your body to do them. You can add isolation work as you get going, but start with the moves that will give you the most bang for your buck.