5 Rules For Successful Gym Training

1. Set and know your specific goal

Setting a specific goal when going to the gym is crucial for several reasons. First, it provides direction and purpose to your workouts. Without a clear goal, it's easy to drift through sessions without making significant progress. A specific target helps you focus your efforts on activities that align with your desired outcomes.

Secondly, specific goals enhance motivation. When you have a tangible objective, it becomes easier to measure progress and celebrate small achievements along the way. This sense of accomplishment can spur you on, helping to maintain consistency and dedication over time.

Additionally, setting specific goals allows for better planning of your workouts. By knowing what you're aiming for—be it building strength, losing weight, or improving endurance—you can tailor your exercises, nutrition, and recovery strategies accordingly. This level of customization increases the effectiveness of your fitness regimen.

Finally, specific goals can help prevent injury by encouraging you to approach your training with a clear understanding of your limits. This awareness promotes smarter decisions regarding the intensity and type of exercises you choose, reducing the risk of overexertion or improper technique.

In summary, establishing a specific goal in the gym leads to greater direction, improved motivation, better workout planning, and a safer exercise experience.

2. Choose compound exercises to get the best bang for buck return on your time invested
Compound exercises should be a primary focus when working out in the gym for several compelling reasons.

1. Efficiency: Compound exercises engage multiple muscle groups simultaneously, allowing you to work more muscles in less time. For example, a squat targets the quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes, and core, delivering a full-body workout with fewer exercises.
   

2. Increased Muscle Activation: These exercises require a higher level of muscle coordination and recruitment. This not only enhances overall strength but also promotes better muscle growth due to the higher intensity and volume of work being performed.
   

3. Functional Strength: Compound movements mimic real-life activities and improve functional strength, which is essential for daily tasks. Exercises like deadlifts and presses reflect movements used in everyday lifting and carrying, making them practical for real-world applications.
   

4. Caloric Burn: By engaging multiple muscle groups, compound exercises elevate your heart rate, leading to a higher caloric expenditure during and after workouts. This can be beneficial for those looking to lose fat or maintain a healthy weight.
   

5. Hormonal Response: Compound movements stimulate the release of hormones such as testosterone and growth hormone, which are critical for muscle growth and recovery. This hormonal boost can lead to enhanced muscle gains and overall physical fitness.
   

6. Versatility: They can be easily modified to fit different fitness levels and goals, making them a staple for beginners and advanced lifters alike. Whether using free weights or machines, compound exercises can adapt to your training style and preferences.
   

7. Improved Joint Stability: Many compound exercises promote better joint stability by engaging multiple stabilizing muscles. This can lead to improved balance and coordination, reducing the risk of injuries.
   

   Incorporating compound exercises into your gym routine can lead to more effective workouts, achieving better results in strength, muscle gain, and overall fitness.

3. Progressive overload
Progressive overload is a fundamental principle in weightlifting that involves gradually increasing the demands placed on the musculoskeletal system to encourage growth, strength, and endurance. This concept is crucial for several reasons:

1. Muscle Growth: To stimulate muscle hypertrophy, muscles must be exposed to greater levels of stress than they are accustomed to. By progressively increasing weight, volume, or intensity, the muscles adapt and grow stronger over time.
   

2. Preventing Plateaus: Sticking to the same weight or workout routine can lead to plateaus, where progress stalls. Progressive overload ensures continuous improvement by challenging the body, preventing stagnation.
   

3. Enhancing Strength: To build functional strength, it’s important to progressively increase the load on your muscles. This incremental increase teaches the body to lift heavier weights effectively, which translates to better performance in daily activities and sports.
   

4. Improving Endurance: In addition to building muscle and strength, progressive overload can also improve muscular endurance. By gradually increasing repetitions or intensity, the muscles can adapt to sustain longer durations of physical effort.
   

5. Reducing Injury Risk: When properly applied, progressive overload allows for gradual adaptation to stress, reducing the likelihood of injuries. Sudden increases in weight or intensity can shock the body, potentially leading to strains or other injuries.
   

6. Psychological Motivation: Tracking progress through incremental increases can enhance motivation. Setting clear and measurable goals related to progressive overload helps individuals stay focused and engaged in their training routines.
   

1. Incorporating progressive overload requires careful monitoring of lifting techniques and a clear understanding of one’s own limits and capabilities. It is important to balance increases with adequate recovery, ensuring that the body can adapt safely to the new demands placed upon it.
   

4. Set a time limit and eliminate distractions (No Social Media!)
An exercise session for an average person should typically take not more than an hour and attending the gym three times per week is plenty to reap the majority of the benefits. Only when training gets more specific does more time potentially need to be spent.

In today’s smartphone, smartwatch, app heavy existence its very, very easy to get distracted when exercising. Coupled with the draw of social media and other apps that are literally designed to addict you to them, it's very difficult to resist these urges that subvert our very free will by tapping into our subconscious.

After trying many strategies, the most successful method I have found is to resort to ‘old school’ and write your training programme down in a paper diary and use a basic timer like a stop watch or Casio to track your rest periods.

If your sets are interspersed with checking in on Instagram or swiping on Tinder, you are probably wasting time in the gym. Get in, do your work and get out again. If you are a stickler for tracking the numbers you are lifting in electronic format, transfer them later to an app or spreadsheet after you have finished training.

5. Schedule it in your diary
Scheduling your gym session into your diary is important for several reasons:

1. Accountability: By allocating specific time slots for your workouts, you create a commitment to yourself. This accountability can motivate you to follow through, reducing the likelihood of skipping workouts or losing focus on your fitness goals.
   

2. Time Management: With a busy lifestyle, it's easy for fitness to take a back seat. Scheduling your gym sessions helps you prioritize your health and integrates them into your daily routine, ensuring that you're able to fit workouts into your day without conflicts.
   

3. Consistency: Regularly scheduled workouts establish a routine, making it easier to cultivate the habit of exercising. Consistency is key to seeing progress and achieving long-term fitness goals.
   

4. Stress Reduction: Knowing when you will be working out can help reduce stress. It provides a clear plan for your day, allowing you to mentally prepare and look forward to your sessions as a time to unwind and focus on yourself.
   

5. Goal Tracking: By marking your workouts on a calendar, you can track your progress over time. This visual representation of your efforts can be motivating and help you stay aligned with your fitness objectives.
   

6. Prioritization of Self-Care: Scheduling gym sessions reinforces the idea that taking care of your physical health is essential. It sends a message to yourself that your well-being is a priority, which can positively impact other areas of your life.
   

   Incorporating gym sessions into your diary is a practical approach to maintaining a balanced and healthy lifestyle. It fosters discipline and encourages regular exercise, ultimately contributing to your overall health and fitness journey.
   

Are You Sabotaging Your Results In The Gym?

“Spending time doing bicep curls and tricep extensions without concentrating first getting as strong as hell on compound movements is like try to do algebra without first mastering the basics of arithmetic & multiplication”

I can step into any commercial gym and observe the amount of people who are actually training effectively is a very small minority. 

It takes focus and a bloody persistence to get under a heavy barbell week after week and squat it to a good depth for repetitions. It’s far easier to jump on a leg extension and get a deep burn in your thighs bro.

Doing weighted chin-ups, feeling like your shoulders are going to rip out of their sockets as the extra kettlebell you’ve attached around your waist fights to pull you to the floor is a lot more gruelling than doing some bicep curls. Though the weighted chin-ups much more likely to add size to your arms.

Pulling a heavy barbell off of the floor whist remaining disciplined enough to keep a good back position is far less pleasant than sitting on a machine to do some leg curls.

Doing a Turkish getup where every part of your body is straining to keep in position is going to add much more of a cap on your shoulders than doing some lateral raises with a weight that’s less than the average large handbag. If you are a Jiu Jitsu person this will also carry over much better to your sport.

Life is busy, people work 40-60 hours per week, have family commitments so realistically will only be able to get to the gym on average of 3 times per week for 45-75 minutes per session.

You must ensure that your limited time is well spent if you really want to maximise your results.

To hell with the latest fitness magazines “Grow Huge Arms with This 6-Move Superset Workout”. These publications are shit and are notorious for recycling the same bullshit articles month after month, often contradicting themselves every other print. 

Common Excuses For Avoiding Compound Movements

Excuse 1

“Oh but I don’t know how to do these lifts safely”

Bad Squats

This is a common cop out.

Listen, if you want to learn to drive effectively you’d invest in driving lessons with a good instructor, the same applies to exercise.

It’s not a good given gift that every guy instinctively knows how to lift weights properly, although some would like to think the contrary.

If the gym is something you are going to seriously invest 3-5 hours per week it makes sense to hire a good coach to teach you the proper fundamentals.

Excuse 2

“I don’t have the flexibility or I’m too old to do these lifts”

This granny thinks your excuse is full of shit, click on the picture to go to an article about her..

The beauty of doing exercises with a full range of motion is over time this will actually help you build flexibility in these ranges of motion. Its a loaded stretch!

Its also possible that due to the nature of your desk bound job that you’ll need to invest some extra time daily in a stretching routine to help counteract the 8-12 hours sat slumped over a desk. 15-20 minutes daily can make a world of difference!

I understand that we all potentially have some structural limitations. Height, past history of injuries etc should be taken into consideration when designing an exercise programme.

There are also certainly variations of exercises that can suit a persons proportions better than others. For example a taller lifter with long femurs may get more out of a Front Squat when compared to a Back Squat.

There are few injuries I’ve come across in my 16 years as a trainer that’s stopped someone from being able to perform some version of compound exercises. I’ve worked people with history of back, shoulder and knee problems.

As with above it makes sense if you are concerned what variations are best for you to invest in a coach to help you design the most effective exercise programme for you.

A Credit To CrossFit (yeah, really)

Credit where its due

People know i’m not a big fan of Crossfit. Their kipping antics are embarrassing and use of olympic lifts for multiple repetitions to the point of fatigue and form breaking down is a damn liability. On the plus side it certainly keeps plenty of physios in business though…

However I give prop’s where its due and one of the best Crossfit gym’s in London focuses primarily on getting people very strong first using good form over pure WOD performance and their results in competition are excellent because of this. 

Crossfit in general has helped get the trend back to using big compound movements and this is why many a CrossFit enthusiast will be sporting quite a muscled physique (drugs aside). I also do like the community spirit they have been able to build, having a peer group to help push you do work harder than you would alone can certainly be a valuable tool (provided they encourage you to use good form).

Back To Basics, Back To Big Lifts

When I first started training I bought a copy of The Encyclopaedia of Modern Bodybuilding by Arnold Schwarzenegger. This was before the big expansion of information the internet, the cringe days of dial up modems.

What this book laid out well for me was the importance of building a foundation using compound exercises. Arnold cautioned about moving to too complex a workout regime before first building this foundation (yes he was a steroid taking adulterer, but he certainly knew a thing or two about building muscle).

This was further reinforced by my own personal training qualifications from WABBA.

Most average people have both limited time and no aspirations of becoming a competitive bodybuilder on stage, thus negating the need to overly specialise their exercise programme. Monday should not be national chest and biceps day.

If you really want to make some progress in the gym drop those puny 5 kilo dumbbells and get ready to lift something heavy. 

A Caveat On Loading

Now when I say heavy it needs to be scaled to your current level of strength. It's not use trying to load the bar with a weight you have no chance in hell of controlling with good form, attempting this is EGO lifting. If you struggle to squat to a good depth with with 60 kg’s then you probably will need to begin at say 40-50 kilo’s and build from there.

If you are unable to do even one single chin-up where you start from a dead hang with your arms fully extended and then pull yourself up until your chest touches the bar (none of this half rep shit where you don’t unbend your arms fully) then your journey to a chin up might need to start with just doing negative repetitions (the lowering phase of the movement).

A Sample Programme

Below I outline a programme that’ll sticks to the principles of basic and big. It should suit most people and gives you the ideas of the principles I’m talking about.

If you work hard by progressively adding weight to the bar I guarantee that you’ll add some muscle and strength by using this.

If you are training to add some size then make sure you are eating enough, you must have a slight surplus of calories in order to give your body the raw materials to grow. Don’t worry about taking some magic weight gainer shake, save your money and just eat more real food.

Videos are linked into the exercise names

Monday - Programme A

A1 Barbell Squat- 4 Sets of 6 to 8 repetitions, 3010 tempo, rest 120 seconds between sets

A2 Medium Supinated Grip Chin Up- 4 Sets of 6 to 8 repetitions, 3011 tempo, rest 120 seconds between sets

B1 Barbell Forward Lunges Alternating 3 sets of 16 to 20 reps total, 2010 tempo, rest 90 seconds between sets

B2 Single Arm Dumbbell Row  3 sets of 8 to 10 reps per arm, 3011 tempo, rest 90 seconds between sets, 15 seconds between arms

C Side Plank on Elbow 2 sets of maximum time per side, 90 seconds rest

Wednesday - Programme B

A1 Barbell Deadlift 4 Sets of 6 to 8 repetitions, 2010 tempo, rest 120 seconds between sets

A2 Close grip Barbell Press 4 Sets of 6 to 8 repetitions, 3010 tempo, rest 120 seconds between sets

B1 Barbell Good Morning 3 sets of 8 to 10 reps, 3010 tempo, rest 90 seconds between sets

B2 High Incline Dumbbell Press 3 sets of 8 to 10 reps, 3010 tempo, rest 90 seconds between sets, 15 seconds between arms

C Bent Knee Hanging Leg Raises 2 sets of maximum repetitions, 90 seconds between sets

Friday - Repeat Programme A

Following Monday- Repeat Programme B

Following Wednesday- Repeat Programme A

Keep rolling the days over between the two programmes.

notes

*The tempo outlines the speed of each exercise. Every exercise has 4 phases to it: the lowering, time between lowering and lifting, lifting and time between lifting and lowering. If we use the example of a Incline press at a 4010 tempo, in this case you lower the bar to your chest for 4 seconds and lift the weight for 1 second. If we look at another example in this case a seated cable row at a 3011 tempo, in this instance you release the cable from your chest towards the machine for 3 seconds, immediately pull the handle back to your chest for 1 second, then finally pause with the handle on your chest for 1 second. What you need to remember with the tempo of each movement is that you should be lowering the weight at a slower speed than you lift it.

*A note on Pairings. A1 - A2 denotes you do these exercise together. Programme A as an example you complete 1 set of the Barbell Squat; rest for 120 seconds; then you complete 1 set of Chin-up. You again rest 120 seconds and start the Barbell Squat again. In this example, as there are 3 sets you complete this rotation 3 times.

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How To Have A Good Workout- 4 Tips

Going to the gym is an time investment in improving your body, make sure you get the best return from your investment. Here are 4 simple tips on optimising your gym sessions-

1, Progressive Overload

If you want to change how your body looks you have to give it a reason to. Adaptions to training are simply a response by your body to being exposed to a ‘stress’ and then adjusting structurally (muscles, tendons, ligaments, bones), neurologically and chemically (energy systems) to better be able to handle this stress the next time.

Over time it’s essential to gradually push forwards to get stronger. If you are lifting the same weights that you did 3 years ago you’ll likely look the same.

On this theme it’s also important to stick to a particular set of exercises for some time in order to give yourself time to improve. Changing your programme too frequently doesn’t allow this to happen.

Generally I’d recommend to stick to a particular programme for at least 6-8 weeks. For more advanced lifters with several years of lifting experience sticking to the same exercises but adjusting the sets, reps & tempo after 2- 4 weeks can be sometimes be a strategy to promote continued progress. 

2, Good form, good form Dammit!

What good is a gym programme if you find yourself injured several times a year? Progress takes time and injuries can set you back weeks and even months. Unfortunately we loose gains we make in the gym faser than we create them.

Exercises have been created in mind to work a muscle through a full range of motion in order to maximise the adaptive response. For the majority of people using a full range of motion is your best strategy for safe & effective training. 

Using a partial range of motion can be useful for certain specific situations such as in Powerlifting & Strongman or if your sport has a particular demand to be strong in a narrow range of motion. Specialisation training to help get through sticking points.

However for most of the gym population its doing nothing more than stoking your ego and possibly increasing your risk of injury.

An additional benefit to using a full range of motion is the exercise is in itself a ‘loaded stretch’ so over time using a full range of motion can help to ‘unstick’ some areas that might otherwise feel tight. 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23629583/

3, Emphasise Compound Movements First

Exercises such as the Squats, Deadlifts, Lunges, Chin/Pull-Up’s, Dips, Presses and Rows should be your bread & butter movements you spend the most time on when exercising. These types of exercises active the maximal amount of muscles.

Focusing your energy progressing from shoulder pressing overhead 30KG’s to 50KG’s is going to do much more for your shoulder development then performing 3 sets each of a front raises, side raises and rear deltoid raises with a 4kg’s weight. 

Similarly improving on being able to perform 3 Chin-up’s & Dips to being able to do 9 is going to do way more for your arm development than performing 8 different exercises for your biceps and triceps.

No don’t get me wrong there’s nothing wrong with adding some supplementary direct arm, shoulder or glute work but only after doing the basics compound lifts first.

4, Set A Time Limit

Following on the previous recommendation you should set a time limit to the amount of time you spend on any given training session.

45-60 minutes maximum per session 3-4 x per week is optimal for most people. Whilst gym sessions can be longer some some spots specific purposes, I.E. when training some involving a lot technique like olympic lifting or requiring longer rest periods for maximum strength training & powerlifting this isn’t appropriate for most people.

I recommend to set strict rest intervals between your exercises and use either something like an old digital Casio watch or a dedicated timer so that you avoid the temptation of getting distracted by your phone. I am of the belief that Tinder has done much to ruin peoples gains over the years!

Get in, primarily focus on progressing on the big compound movements first and then leave. It’s a spiral diminishing returns to spend any more time than this.

Ultimately the gym should be a tool to help enhance your experience of life outside of the gym and should not be the sole focus of your spare time.