For anyone on a fitness journey, even as a beginner, starting a workout routine is crucial.
However, there’s a lot that goes into starting your own fitness routine.
Especially if you’re a beginner, getting started with your workouts can seem complicated and overwhelming.
And I don’t blame you!
There are tons of details in an exercise routine. Things can get overcomplicated pretty quickly.
That’s why it’s so important to learn how to start a simple and effective workout routine.
In this post, I want to explore how to successfully start a beginner workout routine so you can maximize your fitness journey right from the start.
The Importance of a Workout Routine for Your Fitness Journey
No matter who you are, entering the gym can feel pretty overwhelming at times.
Looking around, there are so many people, so much going on, and so much commotion.
This is especially true if you’re a beginner. It feels like everyone in there knows what they’re doing, but you.
This feeling multiplies if you go into the gym without a plan for your workout!
You might try to think and come up with a workout plan on the spot, but there’s just so much going on around you.
With all of this extra thinking and confusion, the already overwhelming feeling you had is now ten times worse!
That’s why it’s so important to create a workout routine.
When you create a workout routine, you give each day and each workout a plan.
You’ll never go into the gym again feeling like you don’t know what you should be doing.
Because everything you’re going to be doing, each day of the week, is already preplanned and predetermined for you.
What muscles you’re going to train, what type of workouts you’re going to do, and what exercises you’re going to do. It’s all already planned out for you!
So no more of that anxious, confused feeling you get when you’re trying to come up with a plan for your workouts on the spot.
A Workout Routine Helps You Work Towards Your Goals From The Beginning
One of the major things to keep in mind when starting your fitness routine are your individual fitness goals.
When you create your routine, you want to create it based on these goals.
You’ll then have a routine that gives every single week and every single workout structure.
Structure where every workout you do reflects your goals and gets you closer to achieving them.
When you have this predefined plan for your workouts, you know that every workout you do will be productive and get you closer to where you want to be.
Knowing this should help you get rid of any doubts you have about your workouts.
Giving you more confidence that you know what you’re doing is right, and that you’re getting closer to your goals each day.
How to Start a Successful Workout Routine As a Beginner
Choose a Workout Style for Your Routine Based on Your Goals
The first thing you want to do to start creating your workout routine is to choose a workout style that’s best for you.
However, it can be difficult to choose if you don’t know what your goals are.
Since each different workout style serves a different purpose and does different things in your body.
Think about it, weightlifting doesn’t work your body the same as cardio does. And cardio doesn’t work your body the same as yoga does.
Each of these workout styles interacts with your body differently, helping you achieve different goals.
That’s why the first step to choose a workout style is to first define your goals.
Then you can determine which workout style works most effectively for these goals.
Be honest with yourself and establish exactly what it is that you want to achieve from your workouts.
Maybe you want to improve your endurance, build muscle and lose fat, lose weight, body recomp, or whatever else it may be.
Doing this will help you set and achieve realistic gym goals for yourself. As well as choose a workout style that best reflects these goals.
Combining Different Exercise Styles to Meet Your Goals
If you’re unsure about what exercise style will work best for you, or if there are multiple you want to do, then choose multiple!
It’s super common for people to combine different exercises styles. There’s so many different benefits to each one, it’s almost impossible to choose only one!
Additionally, mixing up your workouts is always a good thing. This challenges your body and keeps it working in different ways.
For example, tons of weightlifters, including myself, incorporate cardio into their weightlifting routines.
This helps provide some additional benefits to a weightlifters routine, while also maintaining a full time weight training routine.
So don’t stress too much about what workout style you should choose, especially at the beginning.
Experimenting and mixing things up is a must to find what workout style, or styles, you enjoy the most while also reflecting your goals.
Determine the Frequency of Your Workouts as a Beginner
The next step to creating your workout routine is to determine how often you’ll workout.
Generally, your workout routine is on a weekly basis.
Meaning you create a weekly routine, then continue repeating that same routine each week until it’s time to change up your workout routine.
When you’re deciding how often to workout, there are a couple things you’ll want to keep in mind.
First, consider how often you’ll actually be able to workout.
Considering work, school, family, relationships, etc, etc, our time schedules can get pretty tight.
And although we may want to work out as often as possible, that’s not always realistic.
You’ll want to really consider what is a realistic frequency for you to workout. By keeping your routine more realistic, you make it more attainable.
The second thing you’ll want to consider is how often you actually want to workout.
You might be available to workout every day of the week, but you might not actually want to.
And that’s okay! This whole thing is about making a routine that you enjoy and that works for you.
Create a Workout Split For Your Beginner Workout Routine
After determining your exercise style/styles and how often you’re going to workout, the next thing you’ll want to do is create a weekly workout split.
What this means is that you’ll plan out your routine for each day of the week/
This will then become your workout split that you’ll repeat each week.
There are a few steps to create your weekly split:
First, consider how many days you determined you’re going to workout.
These days will be your workout days and all the remaining days will be your rest days.
Next, if you’re plan is to lift weights, determine which muscle groups you want to pair on each day that you workout.
A weight training sample split might look something like this:
There are a lot more details that go into creating a weightlifting split.
If you’re someone who wants to start a weightlifting routine, then you might want to check out my post on how to start a weightlifting routine to make things easier.
Whereas if you’re plan isn’t to lift weights but instead is to do cardio or any other form of exercise, determine how long your workouts will be and what exercises you’ll do each day.
An example cardio training split:
Finally, if you’re plan is to combine exercise styles, determine which style of exercise you want to do each day.
Along with which exercises and workouts you’ll do on each of those days.
Like this, a combination weight training and cardio sample split:
Essential Tips for Starting an Effective Workout Routine as a Beginner
Below are the best tips to keep in mind to make your new routine most effective.
Start Slowly to Transition Easily into Your Workout Plan
When you’re making any type of lifestyle changes, your goal should be to make the transition as easy as possible for yourself.
The best way to do this is to make changes slowly and gradually.
Especially if you’re someone who normally lives a more sedentary lifestyle, starting a workout routine can be a little shocking for your body.
It’s not used to the consistent activity, so things can feel uncomfortable. Especially at first.
The problem with this is that our bodies naturally avoid discomfort.
When we feel uncomfortable, our body mistakes this discomfort for some kind of threat or problem in our lives.
Our first instinct is then to resist and try and get ourselves back to where we feel comfortable again.
Which in terms of your workout routine, could cause you to end up quitting pretty quickly if you follow these instincts.
What we need to realize is change is meant to be uncomfortable, especially at first.
Anything worthwhile in our lives requires us to take a step out of our comfort zones first.
So when it comes to getting our bodies more active and working out consistently, pushing through the initial discomfort is worth it in the end.
Ease Into Your New Routine
The best way to make these changes the most comfortable is to ease your way into your new workout routine.
Don’t be afraid to start as slowly as you want. You don’t need to jump right in to the most intense workouts possible, six days a week.
Any type of activity more than what you’re doing now is progress. Even if that means only working out once or twice a week initially.
By starting off slowly, the transition is likely to be much more comfortable for you. With these small, gradual changes, you increase your likelihood of sticking to your routine.
That’s why it’s so important to make sustainable changes no matter how small over extreme, instant changes.
Regardless of where you start, if you continue pushing yourself as time goes on, you will continue to see progress.
Incorporate Lots of Rest into Your Exercise Plan
Rest in any type of workout routine is extremely important.
Without proper rest, you risk your body becoming run down and burned out.
Although you might think less rest means more working out which means better progress, that’s not the case.
Exercise induced burnout is real and has tons of unhealthy side effects.
That’s why doing more in the gym isn’t always better for you or your progress.
Because of this, when you’re making your workout routine, you want to incorporate tons of rest each week!
Even as a beginner or someone who isn’t training super intensely, rest is still a crucial part of any workout routine.
No matter who you are or what type of exercises you do, rest is essential for your body to recover and heal.
Without enough time for recovery, your body won’t grow or perform as well as it otherwise could.
This results in slowed progress or no progress at all!
Because of this, there’s no reason for you to be scarce with rest in your routine. It does your body no good and it does your progress no good!
To get proper rest in your beginner workout routine, it’s recommended to incorporate at least one to two full rest days in your routine each week.
If not even more.
On top of that, it’s recommended to give your body at least 48 hours between training sessions for a single muscle group.
For example, if you train legs on Monday, you should wait at least 48 hours before you train legs again.
Don’t be Afraid to Adjust Your Routine To Your Liking
Once you create your new workout routine, it’s important to remember that things aren’t set in stone.
It’s perfectly fine to continue adjusting and improving your routine as you learn and as time goes on.
You might learn more about the gym, what you like, your goals may change, or you might want to try something new!
Whatever it may be, I encourage you to change up your routine from time to time.
Most people in the gym do!
Especially if you weight train, it’s important to know when it’s time to change up your workout routine.
Doing this is a great way to keep your body challenged, trying new things, and keep yourself from becoming bored with your workouts.
Takeaways
Starting a workout routine as a beginner is essential to see maximum progress in the gym.
However, when you go to start your workout routine, things can seem pretty complicated and overwhelming.
But they don’t need to be!
By following these simple steps and tips, you can successfully create an efficient and effective beginner workout routine.
This will kickstart your fitness journey and help you reach all your goals you want to achieve.
More of My Posts On Women’s Weightlifting And Fitness:
10 Key Muscle Groups Women Should Train [A Complete Guide]