The 12-week Men’s Beginner weight training program is designed to:
Introduce your body to physical exercise
Introduce you to a variety of exercises, training equipment, and training splits
Train all of your major muscle groups
Strengthen your core and primal movement patterns
Encourage body-wide neuromuscular adaptation
Develop a strong foundation of muscular endurance
The Men’s Beginner weight training program is very important because it will lay a strong foundation upon which you can safely build in the subsequent programs. Without this strong foundation, you will be at risk of injury. By the end of the program, you should have developed significant strength (mostly due to neuromuscular adaptation), muscular endurance, and muscular tone, as well as dramatically improved your overall fitness.
The program is divided into four microcycles, each one lasting for three weeks. The first two microcycles focus on full-body circuit training, which means that you will be training your entire body in each workout and having minimal rest between exercises. The last two microcycles focus on split training, which means that you will be dividing your body and training different parts in different workouts.
Please don’t be intimidated by the number of exercises in some of the workouts. You will be flying through them with very little rest, so the workouts will be over very quickly.
Lifters with less than 3 months of consistent weight training experience
Experienced lifters who haven’t trained for more than 3 months
General instructions
Always use an amount of weight that makes completing the reps challenging
Whenever you have to increase the weight, add a maximum of 5 lb (or 2.5 kg) to upper-body exercises or 10 lb (or 5 kg) to lower-body exercises — just enough to make the rep range challenging again
Complete the exercises in the order provided
Try to master the proper form of each exercise, including proper breathing technique. Also, try to develop a mental connection with your muscles and the movement patterns
If training at home in the absence of cable machines and other specialized equipment, see below the exercise tables for exercise alternatives
Don’t forget to warm up before, and stretch after, each workout
Once you have completed the Men’s Beginner program, you must take a deload week (a week during which you must either rest or train lightly). Only then can you move on to the next program
Specific instructions for each microcycle are presented below
Microcycle 1: Full-body circuit (3 weeks)
For microcycle 1, you will perform a full-body circuit
Complete 2 circuits per workout
Complete 3 workouts per week, with at least 1 day of rest between each workout (i.e. AXAXAXX, where ‘A’ is a workout day and ‘X’ is a rest day)
For microcycle 3, you will perform an upper–lower split. This means that you will train all of your upper body in one workout (Workout A) and all of your lower body in another workout (Workout B). Also, instead of circuit training, you will perform set training, which means that you will complete all of the sets for one exercise before moving on to the sets of the following exercise
The recommended workout schedules are ABXABXX or ABX
For microcycle 4, you will perform a 3-day split in which you will train your back, biceps, and core in Workout A; your chest, shoulders, triceps, and core in Workout B; and your legs and core in Workout C
The recommended workout schedules are ABCXABX (and then start from C the next week) or ABCX (i.e. three days on, one day off)