Help - I don't know what I'm doing in the gym

If you're anything like me before I started my fitness and health journey, your mindset goes a little something like this when even remotely thinking about exercising;

Where the hell do I start?

Let me look online.

What if the gym is 'ram out'? (too busy)

What if people stare?

I don't know what i'm doing, what machines do I go on when I get there?

What if I do an exercise wrong and make a fool out of myself?

Oh, I think i'll just do cardio, so if it's too busy so I can keep my head down.

If that resonates with you, then I have some information to help!

When considering exercising to 'look toned' (like most of us women want!), the best option out of both cardio and weight training, is in fact weight training. Yes. cardio is great for internal health, but weight training (resistance training) is far more inferior and i'll tell you why.....

Ever looked at a marathon runners body next to a weight lifters body? (Now you have, see the photo!)

The difference? The marathon runner does masses of cardio, the downsides to this is, TOO MUCH cardio can actually be detrimental for your muscle mass, as you can see, loose skin and lack of muscle. Whereas the weight lifter has more skin elasticity and more muscle mass (and doesn't look like a man ;) I know some of you may think this will happen if you touch weights, this is physically impossible, as us women simply don't have enough testosterone in our bodies for this to ever happen! Phew!)

The recommended amount is to exercise at least 3-4 times a week.

The best way to get started in the gym in regards to weight training is, split your weekly training into muscle groups, if you go into a gym and do multiple muscle groups in a one hour session, you simply will not work any muscles sufficiently enough to see great progress.

If you plan on working out 3 times per week, I tend to split it as follows for my clients; upper body, lower body, all over body workout. This regime is great for beginners. However, I prefer 4-5 times per week training to train my muscles more sufficiently for example; chest and shoulders (1st session), quads and calves (2nd session), back (3rd session), glutes and hams (4th session) and arms (5th session).

The next part would then be to look up exercises and their 'form' (how to perform an exercise correctly) to ensure you're working your muscles sufficiently and safely to prevent injury.

I normally advise my clients to use youtube from the exercise plan I give them. However, to find the exercises for the muscles you want to work; bodybuilding.com is brilliant. They have a page where you can see a woman and a man's body, you click on the muscle you want to train and it will give you exercises and their names. Then write out your exercise plan you intend on completing, and before you decide to head to the gym, double check the form of each on youtube. This way, you know you're completing exercises correctly when your there! The trick after this is, finding that 'mind muscle connection'.

What do I mean?

Its all and well KNOWING 'this exercise should be working my back' well, what if you can't actually feel it in that muscle? Then you're having issues finding that mind muscle connection.

What this means is, you need to connect your mind with which muscle you are aiming to work on each and every exercise. I find this comes in TIME. However, a method which I have found over the years helps SOME people (not everybody!) to assist with the connection, the 'tapping method'. This is where having someone training with you comes in handy.

A couple of years ago, I had issues getting that connection completely in my left Lat (one of my back muscles), I was fortunate enough to have my best friend training with me regularly at the time, so I advised her to start tapping her two fingers on my Lat while I was exercising. What this did for me was triggered the sensors in my head and eventually I started to feel that specific muscle working properly, it took a couple of sessions for that muscle to fire 100%, but it worked for me and has worked for a lot of my clients too.

The last point I want to touch on is; working your muscles til 'Failure'.

What do I mean?

Failure is where you cannot physically complete another repetition of a certain exercise with the correct form. When you exercise; blood is pumped to the exercising muscle to deliver additional oxygen, however, without enough oxygen, lactic acid will form instead. When this happens you will feel a burning sensation in that specific muscle, this is completely normal. You work past this, and go til 'failure' (as explained above).

The more time a muscle has under tension, the more it is forced to grow. The general consensus is that increasing 'time under tension' will maximise hypertrophy (muscle growth), and the more muscle mass we have, the more calories our bodies burn at resting rate. Win win!!

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