Every year I get handed a new list of FIRST TIME LIFTERS aka FRESHMEN and every year I get to witness a handful of them excel while a group just fades away and/or spends the next 4 years making very little progress due to lack of consistency, dedication, and hunger. Below are my 3 TOP tips for any new lifter as they begin their lifting career.
NUMBER ONE
BASICS
Young lifters need to establish a base and foundation before chasing down any fancy movements they've seen online. Many of the techniques they are interested in are ones that we use often with our lifters but are just unnecessary and ineffective with new lifters. Things like Chains, Bands, Deficits, Blocks, and more are just too advanced for a first-time lifter. your first 3-6 months should be about throwing a barbell around, learning the movements, and gaining the confidence needed to someday dominate the weight room. SLOW DOWN and just focus on the basics. The next 3 months will be the fastest you will ever grow in the gym.
NUMBER TWO
FORM
This is the least fun aspect of training but one of the most important ones to learn. Each movement will have its own unique form that all lifters need to learn. Added to this, each body type will have its own take on how the form should be. A tall lifter won't lift like a shorter lifter just like wide hips and narrow hips or long arms and short arms will not move in the same way. So, not only do you need to learn the basics of FORM but you also need to learn the form needed for your body type. Without learning this, you are going to be prone to injury and will fail to ever fully hit a solid lift in the weight room.
NUMBER THREE
CONSISTENCY
Stick to your program. If the results aren't blowing up in 2-3 weeks, it is because of 1 thing and 1 thing only: ITS ONLY BEEN 2-3 WEEKS! So many young lifters jump around too much chasing results that they fail to ever do anything to achieve those results. The number of times a lifter has decided a program isn't working just because they haven't hit a PR in a few weeks is crazy. Don't get stuck thinking you should be seeing a PR on bench every 3 weeks just because your first few weeks were filled with new PR's, Months 1 and 2 tend to do that simply because you are new to lifting. Solid Programs take weeks/months to really start to show progress. Typically, we run on a 13 week program with week 13 being MAXOUT WEEK. During this time our athletes will get stronger and may break their previous PR's before week 13 but the goal is to train HARD for 12 weeks and then get something BIG on the books. If your bench hasn't gone up in 3 weeks, switching to a whole new style of lifting isn't going to change that. Usually, it'll hurt your chances of getting the numbers you want.
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