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Recent Notes

Working out

6 min read

Prelude

I often get asked how to get started with the gym, weightlifting, or gaining muscle mass. I’ve been at it since I was 22. I’ve never had formal coaching, and I’m not a trainer — this is just what’s worked for me. That said, I think anyone who commits to a consistent process will see results. This text is opinionated. It will not be comprehensive or cover all needs, just what I’ve personally gone through.

Why I work out

The main reason why I work out is for my mental health. Lifting heavy weights requires putting all my mental energy into it. At that moment, everything else fades — the overthinking, the stress, the noise. I walk out with more energy and a better mood.

If I didn’t get a single physical benefit, I’d still go just to stay sane. Of course, looking good in the mirror is a great bonus.

Motivation

Now that I discussed my motivation, it’s time for you to decide why you want to lift weights. Is it for mental health purposes, for bigger muscles, to get a six-pack, or to get over unrequited love? It’s important to nail this down because it allows you to figure out if your motivation is intrinsic or extrinsic. It can also be a combination of the two. If you’re able to find an intrinsic source of motivation, by appreciating the workout in and of itself and enjoying the process, I can guarantee you’ll have an easier time to get to where you’re going. This isn’t to say that extrinsic motivation on its own can’t be enough.

The Nonnegotiables

Below are the nonnegotiable pillars to avoid injury and improve on your journey:

  • Sleep: 8 hrs or more. You absolutely need sleep in order to recover. Without it, your body won’t be able to recover, and you’ll be more prone to injury.
  • Healthy dieting: enough protein, and staying away from alcohol. Alcohol ruins your recovery by disturbing your sleep, storing energy as fat, and deprioritizing muscle recovery.
  • Progressive overload: weightlifting should never feel easy. If it does, it means it’s time to increase the weights.
  • Rest: aside from sleep, you require rest days in which you don’t train your muscles to allow them to rebuild. Without these, you open yourself up to rhabdomyolysis
    • You’re not special. In fact, most well-trained athletes prioritize their rest days.

Beginner’s journey

Beginner: 0–2 months, you recently decided you want to go to the gym and are in an exploratory phase.

Just go and have fun

At this stage, all I did was go to the gym and try out different machines and exercises to tire me out. I didn’t care about anything other than to tire myself out and let out a bit of stress and anxiety.

This is a pivotal moment. You’re trying to adopt a new routine. It’s not a habit yet, but you need to make it one. Anything that slows down this process should be deprioritized. Ok—it doesn’t have to be that absolute. What I mean is this is the first big hurdle you’ll be facing, and where a lot of people (esp. extrinsically motivated, who never tried it before) tend to give up. If you’re already familiar with the process of habit formation, then you know that consistency is everything.

The importance of tracking

  • For each exercise, you need to track your sets, repetitions (reps) and weight used
    • Repetition—the smallest unit of exercise. Curling your arm to do a bicep curl and bring it back down is considered one rep. No rest time is taken between reps.
    • A set is made of many repetitions
      • Each set is spaced by rest time
  • By measuring progress you know if you’re on the right track or need to change something in your routine
  • For hypertrophy: track volume
  • You can use a phone application, your notes app, or plain pencil and paper

Novice

At this point, you should feel that going to the gym is starting to feel like a habit. It’s been 3+months since you got your gym membership. Even on days when you don’t feel completely motivated, you manage to go and get a workout going. You have your workout routine set up, your next goal is to start optimizing your workouts.

Muscle groups

The major muscle groups that you have are:

  • Chest / pectorals
  • Quadriceps
  • Glutes + hamstrings
  • Arms:
    • Biceps, triceps,
  • Core: abdominal muscles (abs)

Splits

Splits is how you distribute your weekly workout routine, and what exercises you do on what days.

  • You want to match muscles that work with each other. For example: exercises that activate the pectorals, also tend to activate the bicep muscles, so coupling chest and biceps workouts makes sense since you’ll maximize targeting those areas.

Full body

You try to target every muscle in your body. These are a good split to get started with, if you’re only going to the gym 1–2 times a week, because you won’t have any muscle imbalance. However, they’re not as efficient in terms of tiring your muscles and making you stronger. Once things get more serious, and gym going frequency goes up to 3-4x a week, other splits are more preferable.

As a side note, this is the split I personally started with, just because it felt simple enough for me to do.

Upper/Lower

Upper/Lower is personally my favourite split and the one that has carried me throughout the years. It’s as straightforward as it sounds: upper body days + lower body days. For example:

  • Monday — you train your whole upper body with maybe an emphasis on chest
  • Tuesday — you train your legs
  • Wednesday is rest day
  • Thursday — upper body with an emphasis on back
  • Friday — legs again

The upper body days can vary a bit between each other, but you should be hitting all of your muscle groups in general. There is no “chest day” or “arms day”. Those are bro splits, which are considered suboptimal.

I like this split because it limits my outings to the gym to 4 times a week for weightlifting purposes, and you have 3 rest days. It gives you some flexibility into deciding which days you want to go to the gym, in case you miss one due to other commitments. This is a good split for most people with a job.

PPL

…To Be Continued…

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