There are thousands of different workouts you could do; how can you choose the right beginner weight training routine?

The first time I went to the gym, I nearly dropped a 45lb barbell on my face.

I had no idea how to warm-up, so I didn’t (I know better now, and a warm-up you can use is at the end of this guide).

I couldn’t even do one rep of bench press with the bar. I was terrified of the huge weights some other guys could move.

I’ve become a lot more comfortable in the gym since then, but at first I struggled with consistency. There are a lot of ways I’ve tackled the consistency problem, but the most important was this: I found an exercise program and stuck to it.

With a specific exercise program to follow, you’ll never be confused about what lifts you should do or what weight you should be using. You don’t have to worry as much about how you look in the gym or the exercises you’re doing. You can have confidence that what you’re doing will get results.

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How do you know if a workout is effective?

This one-page cheat sheet will show you the most effective type of exercises, the principle that leads to workout success, and the six crucial parts of a beginner weight training routine.

Send me the cheat sheet

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I’ve helped a lot of people start lifting, and they raise a lot of the same questions:

• “I wish this program had a warm-up. I don’t know what to do.”
• “I just want to get toned. I don’t want to be a meathead bodybuilder.”
• “I’m not ripped, so it feels like I don’t belong in the gym.”
• “I would just hurt myself if I tried lifting.”
• “I have no idea where to start.”

First of all, weight training won’t turn you into Arnold Schwarzenegger or Ronnie Coleman – that kind of size doesn’t happen by accident. You don’t need to train to get huge if you don’t want to.

In truth, if your goal is to get “toned,” you must do some kind of strength training. Muscle is what gives you the attractive, fit, toned look that you’re after.  

But there are million different ways to be overwhelmed when you’re choosing a beginner weight training program.

Should you lift 3 times a week, or 6? How often should you add weight, and how much? Are kettlebells really miracle workers? What on earth is a neutral-grip, half-kneeling dumbbell overhead press?

The truth is that most exercise programs, if you stick to them, will get you results – as long as they follow a few rules. The best fitness plan for you is the one that you can stick to while working towards your goals.

This guide helps you peel back the curtain and identify what makes a program effective. It does that by answering 3 questions:

1. What are the 5 factors that can help me stick to an exercise program?
2. What kinds of programs really get results?
3. What exercises should I be doing?

At the end, I’ll break down another important part of training and give you a simple warm-up you can do before most intro workout routines.

Q1) What are the 5 factors that help me stick to beginner weight training program?

The most important part of any exercise program is sticking to it – what you do in the gym doesn’t matter if you only do it once. That’s why this question comes first and is more important than anything else.

The structure of an exercise program has a major effect on whether you’ll keep doing it. A program that takes 2 hours a day is exhausting if you work 50 hour weeks. A program that has 12 exercises a day is confusing and hard to understand. A program that leaves you struggling to climb stairs the next day isn’t one you’ll be eager to repeat. 

There are 5 elements of a program that affect building an exercise habit:

• Time: How long does your program take?
• Complexity: How confusing is your program?
• Progression: Can you see yourself making progress?
• Punishment: How do you feel after a workout?
• Credibility: Do you believe that your program will get results?

Time

This one is almost a no-brainer: if your exercise program takes a long time, you’re less likely to stick to it.

If you value your free time, consider a 3-day program instead of 6-day one. If you don’t have a lot of time each day, try a program with 45-minute workouts instead of one that takes two hours. The bottom line: tailor your program to your schedule.

The emphasis on time is part of what made high intensity interval training (HIIT) popular. These workouts are hard and take a lot out of you (see: punishment), but they are also fast – you can probably finish one in 20 minutes.

I’m not a huge fan of these programs, but the small time commitment makes them the choice of many time-crunched professionals.

Takeaway: If you want to stick to a program, pick one with a modest time commitment.

Complexity

How many exercises does your program have? How many different pieces of equipment does it have you using? How many words are in the name of each exercise?

As those numbers go up, so does the complexity of your program. As complexity goes up, the chance that you complete the program goes down. It’s a lot easier to tell yourself to go to the gym and do 3 exercises than it is to make yourself do 12.

Having a complex program means that there’s more for you to learn. It adds a barrier to working out that can keep you from the results you’re chasing.

Don’t get me wrong – there are good reasons to use some complicated exercises. A half-kneeling neutral-grip dumbbell overhead press is a useful exercise to practice overhead pressing without arching your back (a common form mistake). However, it’s also intimidating and hard to remember. A simple “squat” is much more intuitive.

I recommend that beginners stay away from programs that involve a ton of different exercises, use a ton of equipment, or have fancy supersets. All of that stuff has its place – eventually. Once you have a strong exercise habit you can play with some fancier exercises.

Takeaway: Keep it simple! A program you understand and know how to do is the first step to success.

Progression

If you don’t see progress, you’ll get discouraged and be more likely to quit. A lot of people I’ve trained think that they are the exception to this rule – that they are in it for the long haul and will keep going no matter how long it takes. In my experience, those people usually give up after about 2 months.

Progress is a reward in itself, and rewards make you more likely to continue. It’s that simple.

However, there are a lot of ways to define progress, and that’s where most people get tripped up. After 1 month, even after 2 months, you might not see a ton of change in your body. Instead, focus on other parts of your program:

• Has your form improved on your exercises? A good program has you practice exercises as you go, so you should get noticeably better at them.
• Are you stronger than you used to be? A good program has you constantly progressing (more on this later), so you should lift more weight than before.
• Do you feel better? Getting stronger can improve your posture and make everyday activities easier. Have you noticed these small but noticeable life changes since starting your program?

Takeaway: A good program has built-in progression – it clearly defines progress and shows you how to advance.

Punishment

A little after New Years, I was in the gym and overheard the two women next to me during their workout. They were doing some kind of circuit training, constantly moving and definitely working hard. Actually, I had seen them in the gym every day for the first two weeks of January.

One woman counted push-up reps for the other, barking “that doesn’t count” whenever a rep wasn’t low enough. The third week of January, I didn’t see these women once, and I haven’t seen them since.

For whatever reason, exercise has become associated with intensity, and even pain. But the perception that exercise must be totally exhausting for it to be effective is false.

A good program should leave you a little tired, of course, but it shouldn’t leave you totally defeated. Any time you start a new program you’ll be a bit sore the next day, but that soreness fades with time and doesn’t come back if you’re consistent.

If you start lifting really heavy weights, you’ll experience days where you notice that it takes a bit more effort to walk up stairs, or that carrying your groceries is just slightly harder on your arms than usual. But you shouldn’t feel extreme soreness or pain.

More than just not being true, the idea that exercise needs to be painful is harmful: it’s a lot harder to motivate yourself to do something that’s going to suck. Why would you willingly put yourself through pain?

I suspected that the two women I saw at the gym would give up because their routine was punishing. They collapsed after each circuit. One was literally punishing the other for every bad rep. That isn’t a recipe for success.

A good program starts slow but builds quickly. You need to build an exercise habit before you can do things that are punishing and expect to stick with them. Starting light lets you get into the groove, avoid new program soreness, and build an exercise habit.

Takeaway: Avoid programs that punish you for exercising! You should actually feel pretty good after a workout. A well-designed program will take some adjustment, but will avoid total exhaustion.

Credibility

To take sage advice from ultimate frisbee coach Ben Wiggins: “the most important training regimen that you should do is the one that you are convinced works.”

If you don’t believe that your program will work, why even do it? Being convinced that your program gets results helps you stick with it.

So how can you convince yourself your program will work? First you need a program that actually gets results (more on how to find that later).

Then, look up the progress that other people have made using your program. Get specific with this – find progress pictures from people like you. If you are a 5’8” man that works 9-5 and has a little bit of a belly, find pictures of people in the same situation.

By convincing yourself that your program works, you prevent yourself from becoming discouraged. Even if you aren’t seeing results fast enough, you know that people just like you have had success. It’s a lot easier to keep going if you know you’ll eventually get somewhere.

Takeaway: Pick a credible program, and find examples of people like you who have had success with it.

Q1 Summary: What Makes a Workout Stick

A program you can stick to will have a modest time commitment, be easy to understand, clearly show when you make progress, not be totally exhausting, and have a lot of buy-in.

Put another way, time commitment and complexity are barriers to your workouts. Progress and punishment are kinds of reinforcement. Credibility is your belief that the program works.

Once you believe in your program (credibility), reduce barriers (time commitment/complexity), increase rewards (progress), and decrease punishment (punishment).

You can also use these ideas to generally be more consistent once you’ve picked a program.

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How do you know if a workout is good? You don’t want to waste time on bad workouts.

This one-page cheat sheet will show you the most effective type of exercises, the principle that leads to workout success, and the six crucial parts of a balanced exercise routine.

Send me the cheat sheet

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Q2) What Kinds of Programs Really Get Results?

There are many, many effective programs out there. The most important thing is showing up consistently.

However, there are 2 aspects of a program that are indispensable if you want results. After showing up, these are far and away the most important things to worry about – it is hard, if not impossible, to make progress without these 2 things.

1. A focus on compound exercises
2. Built-in progressive overload

A Focus on Compound Exercises

A compound exercise, also called a multi-joint exercise, is an exercise that activates multiple muscle groups and involves moving two joints at once.

A barbell curl, for example, is an isolation exercise that works the biceps by bending at the elbow. A chin-up, on the other hand, involves movement at both the elbow and the shoulder and activates a much wider range of muscles.

An effective program focuses on compound exercises. Compound exercises:

• Activate more muscles at once
• Put more load on those muscles (so that they adapt to get stronger) and
• Replicate movements that translate into functional strength in your everyday life

That doesn’t mean that isolation exercises are useless. But they should be used along with big lifts to correct weaknesses or focus on the aesthetics of a particular body part.

Put another way, in order to work your hamstrings, glutes, back, core, grip/forearms, and traps using isolation exercises, you’d have to do a ridiculous number of different exercises. You might do 3 sets each of hamstring curls, glute kickbacks, planks, grip trainers, and shrugs.

Or you could just deadlift. Which one seems more time effective?

Compound exercises can be intimidating to new gym-goers, but there is no better way to get the results you’re looking for.

Takeaway: Whatever beginner weight training routine you choose, spend about 80% of your time on compound exercises.

Progressive Overload

Progressive overload is an idea that shows up in every useful fitness blog on the internet. You cannot progress if you are not somehow increasing the difficulty or load of your workout routine. A weight training program for beginners needs progressive overload.

Going to the gym and doing the same exercises at the same weight week-in and week-out will do absolutely nothing.

If you are already strong, you may keep your strength. But you will not get stronger, you will not add muscle, and you will not become more toned. Your muscles respond to being challenged, and you have to give them new challenges if you want them to keep responding.

Technically, there are a lot of ways to introduce progressive overload into your routine. You could:

• Do each rep faster
• Increase the range of motion
• Switch to a more difficult exercise
• Decrease rest between sets
• Etc.

However, most methods of progressive overload are tricky to actually do. Increasing rep speed is great, but there’s a limit to how quickly a weight can move. Most of the methods are better when you’re stronger and more experienced in a variety of exercises.

The best method of overload is simple: add weight.

Adding weight is the best method for beginners because it is incredibly easy to track progress. This week you used 5lbs more than last week. Easy.

Plus, seeing a clear increase in your strength is incredibly rewarding. Like I said earlier, seeing yourself progress makes it more likely that you’ll stick to your program.

As a beginner, you’ll follow linear progression. Basically you’ll consistently add small amounts of weight. Eventually, of course, you’ll have to slow down or use other methods of overload. But when you start out there is no more effective method.

Takeaway: Make sure that your chosen program includes progressive overload by adding weight.

Q2 Summary: The Elements of a Good Weight Training Program

A focus on compound exercises and a clearly defined way to progress are absolutely critical to getting results.

Compound exercises activate more muscles and train functional movements. Progressive overload ensures that you keep advancing and pushing yourself to improve.

Q3) What Exercises Should I Be Doing?

I get so many question asking about specific exercises. How effective is a squat jump? Should I do front squats or back squats? Can I just do weighted push-ups if I don’t like benching? What about Zercher squats and Jefferson deadlifts? Which kind of bicep curl should I do?

All these questions miss the point. Your focus doesn’t need to be on individual exercises unless you’re training to be an Olympic lifter or powerlifter.

In a weight training program for beginners, focusing on a balanced set of compound exercises and progressing linearly is more important than some random exercise you might find.

How can you tell if your program has a balanced set of exercises? Check to see if it has exercises for each fundamental movement.

The 4 (Maybe 5) Fundamental Movements of a Good Workout Program

There are 4, maybe 5, fundamental movements that need to be included in a balanced beginner weight training routine.

They are:

• Hinge: Movements that involve bending the hip without much bending of the knees
• Squat: Movements that involve bending the hip and the knees
• Push: Movements that push things away from you or push you away from things
• Pull: Movements that pull things towards you or pull you towards things
• Core: Not really movements (hence the maybe), but exercises that train your abs and overall core

A beginner weight training routine with these categories in roughly equal amounts will be balanced. Some routines tweak those amounts (by having more pull than push, for example), but generally a good routine includes all 5.

By using these movements, you train all your major muscles:

• Hinge: Glutes, hamstrings, and back
• Squat: Quads, glutes, and back
• Push: Chest, triceps, and shoulders
• Pull: Back, biceps, and shoulders
• Core: Abs

There’s a range of exercises that fit these movements. Some are more effective or challenging than others, but a good weight training program for beginners will include at least one of each.

Here are some examples of common exercises in the 4 major movement categories (core examples come later):

• Hinge: Deadlifts, Romanian Deadlifts, Pull Throughs, Glute Bridges, Waiter’s Bows
• Squat: Front Squat, Back Squat, Goblet Squat, Lunge, Split Squat, Bulgarian Split Squat
• Push: Bench Press, Push-up, Overhead Press, Dips
• Pull: Pull-up, Barbell Row, One-arm Row, Inverted Row

Takeaway: A good program includes exercises in each category so that you don’t wind up with imbalances.

How do I get a six pack?

Core training is frequently misunderstood or misapplied. At one extreme, you have people whose training consists of nothing but core circuits – endless sit-ups, crunches, reverse crunches, side bends, Russian twists, and other bodyweight exercises. At the other, there are people that claim “all you need for your core is squats and deadlifts.” As with most subjects, the answer is between the extremes.

Ultimately, if you want to have a six pack you need to focus on your diet. The common adage “abs are made in the kitchen” is accurate.

However, core training is still important. If you don’t have any muscle, there won’t be much six pack to show once weight comes off. Naturally skinny guys know this problem well – even though they have low body fat, many don’t have abs to speak of.

Core training helps build your abs, but it also has other benefits. A strong core improves your posture and back health. It also makes you stronger on your lifts and prevents you from hurting yourself.

You’ll notice that I’m saying “core” instead of “abs.” Your abdominal muscles are one part of your core, but true core training addresses your entire midsection, including your back. That’s why I prefer the term “core” over “abs.”

The Best Ab Training

By now a lot of people know that sit-ups are a pretty useless exercise. They have minimal core activation, stress your hip flexors, and have the potential to damage your back from repeated bending of your spine.

The problem with sit-ups, and a lot of common exercises, is that they don’t train the core for its main purpose – stability. Your core is designed to keep your body upright and in good position, even under load. There is a place for exercises like hanging leg raises or reverse crunches. 

Most trainers divide core exercises into four categories:

• Anti-Extension: Exercises that train your front (six pack) to prevent arching your back
• Anti-Flexion: Exercises that train your back to prevent it from rounding
• Anti-Lateral Flexion: Exercises that train obliques to prevent you bending sideways
• Anti-Rotation: Exercises that train your core to resist rotation of your spine

If you train these four categories, you will have a strong core and likely improve your posture. You will also have something to show in the 6-pack department.

Some common exercises fit nicely into these categories: planks and side planks are anti-extension and anti-lateral flexion respectively. Other exercises don’t fit in as neatly, and you should consider replacing them. The Pallof Press, an anti-rotation exercise, is a good replacement.

Deadlifts and squats definitely work your core – they are intense anti-flexion exercises. If you are doing heavy compound exercises (like deadlifts and squats) you probably don’t need to add more anti-flexion exercises.

Compound exercises can also train your core in other categories. For example:

• One-arm rows trains your anti-rotational core as you resist turning with the weight
• Overhead press trains anti-extension as you resist arching your back
• One-arm farmer’s walks train anti-lateral flexion
• Deadlifts and squats train anti-flexion (as already mentioned)
• Push-ups train anti-extension – they are basically moving planks!

Takeaway: A lot of weight training programs for beginners don’t include any specific core work. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do them, but adding a core exercise to the end of your workout – and thinking about these categories – can have major benefits.

Q3 Summary: Exercises in a Good Beginner Weight Training Routine

An effective program should have exercises that address all of the major movement patterns. Hinge, squat, push, pull, and core are the movements that will get you results.

A lot of core training is iffy at best: if you want to train your core well, think about the different categories of core training.

Bonus 1: My (Slightly Controversial) Thoughts on Weight Training Programs

The information I’ve shared thus far is not incredibly controversial, but I want to share two more aspects of a program that I think are important.

These aren’t make or break in a weight training program for beginners – many effective programs don’t include them – but I believe they set you up for long term success.

They are:

1. Progressing up to squats and deadlifts (without jumping in right away)
2. Using single-arm and single-leg exercises

Easing Into Squats and Deadlifts

Because of the heavy influence of powerlifting on general fitness, a lot of people argue that you should jump right into doing squats/deadlifts and start adding weight.

I disagree. Many people can’t squat and deadlift properly when they begin lifting, and you risk injury by rushing in.

Movements like squats and deadlifts require balance, mobility, and coordination to perform safely.

Deadlift Progression

To deadlift safely, you need the hamstring flexibility to bend down to the bar without compromising your lower back position. You also need to be able to brace your core to prevent your back from rounding (anti-flexion!).

Frankly, most first-time gym-goers don’t have the hamstring flexibility to set up a safe deadlift.

Instead, I prefer a progression that lets you practice hip hinging without risking your back.

In my opinion, a better hinging progression is:

1. Pull-throughs
2. Sumo deadlifts
3. Regular deadlifts

This allows hip hinging practice (without risk of back injury) on pull-throughs, deadlifting from the floor with a reduced mobility requirement on sumo deadlifts, and progression to regular deadlifts. Eventually I also like adding Romanian Deadlifts (RDLs) to keep working on hamstring flexibility and back strength.

Squat Progression

Squats have a similar problem. To back squat, you need balance and a good amount of ankle mobility and knee stability.

Beginners often struggle to get low enough into their squat. They come up onto their toes to stop from falling over backwards or actually stumble to catch themselves as they do fall over.

I’ve seen lots of guys “squatting” 225lbs with their knees flying all over the place (despite not even getting low enough!) because they started adding weight before actually mastering the squat pattern.

I prefer this squatting progression:

1. Goblet squats
2. Front squats
3. Back squats

Having the weight in front of you in goblet and front squats lets you squat lower, building hip and ankle mobility while you build strength and learn to brace your core.

Once you master the squat movement pattern and have some strength, back squatting will be much safer.

Takeaway: Before you leap into major lifts, practice more basic versions of them.

Taking 4 weeks to work through basic exercises before you move to advanced ones will pay off in the long run. You can even use the basic exercises as part of your warm-up to keep practicing.

Before you squat and deadlift, do this for 4 weeks, 3 times per week:

	Deadlift Progression	Squat Progression
Week 1	Pull-through 2×10	Goblet Squat 2×10
Week 2	Pull-through 3×10	Goblet Squat 3×10
Week 3	Sumo Deadlift 1×5	Front Squat 2×6
Week 4	Sumo Deadlift 2×5	Front Squat 3×6

Note: You may have heard that deadlifting this much is bad for you. Once you start lifting heavier, that’s true. For right now, weight should be very low on the Sumo Deadlift – you are practicing the movement, so there’s no need to worry about the central nervous system (CNS) fatigue that you hear about with normal deadlifts.

Including Single-Arm and Single-Leg Exercises

Unless you are a competitive powerlifter training for the squat, bench, and deadlift, I think it’s worth your time to do some single-arm and -leg work.

Some would argue that even powerlifters should do unilateral exercises.

Single-leg and single-arm work helps you fix some of the imbalances you develop just through everyday life. Chances are one of your arms is stronger than the other, and it’s possible that the same is true of your legs.

There are a lot of physiological reasons to include these exercises (target specific muscles more easily, train your smaller “stabilizer” muscles, improve balance, etc.). Think about what happens in everyday life – you don’t usually have to drop into a squat and come out of it with something heavy on your back. But:

• You might have to carry a heavy suitcase up a flight of stairs
• You might have to balance on a chair to reach something on a high shelf
• You might slip on some ice and try to catch yourself before you fall

You can improve those things by using single-leg work to supplement other lifts. Plus, single-leg and single-arm work helps you add muscle, get stronger, and get closer to the body you want.

Takeaways: Look for a program that has some single-arm and single-leg work. A lot of weight training programs for beginners don’t focus on these, but down the line it’s something to keep an eye out for.  

Bonus 2: A Warm-up for Your Beginner Weight Training Routine

One of the most common complaints I hear about beginner programs is that they don’t have warm-ups.

A lot of programs tell you to warm up by using lighter weights on the exercises you’ll be doing. That’s a good idea, but you can do more.

A general warm-up before lifting has benefits:

• Increases your body temperature (duh)
• Improves your mobility
• Prepares and activates relevant muscle groups
• Strengthens small, weak areas of your body
• Helps you practice major movement patterns

Because most beginner weight training routines don’t give you a specific warm-up, I wrote a very fast, very short warm-up for you to use before your workouts. It gets you moving, doesn’t take long, and hits the major areas of your body that probably need work.

Here you go! It’s all yours (I also dug up videos of each exercise from around the internet):

Warm-up

2 Circuits of:

Side Lying Clam 10/side

Supine Bridge with Reach 6/side

Walking Spiderman 6/side

Back to Wall Shoulder Flexion 6

Running through this circuit twice gets your heart rate up and preps you for your main workout.

I know a lot of people like to understand why they are doing things, so here are shorts descriptions of each exercise:

• Side Lying Clam: This exercise strengthens the gluteus medius, a muscle that is weak in almost everyone (even dedicated gym-goers and athletes). The muscle controls your hip, can improve your movement and posture, and can help you squat safely. Note: you don’t need to use a band at first.
• Supine Bridge with Reach: This is a hinge exercise that focuses on your glutes. Glutes are also weak in a lot of people, and strengthening them helps your lower back and posture. The reach helps your upper back mobility.
• Walking Spiderman: A great catch-all exercise. You get an adductor stretch (inside of your thigh), a hip stretch (tight hips contribute to back pain and poor posture), a hamstring stretch, thoracic mobility (upper back, can improve shoulder strength), and open up your chest.
• Back to Wall Shoulder Flexion: This gently gets your arms over your head, letting you practice being in that position while keeping your back in a safe, neutral position (improves shoulder health and posture).

Putting Together Your Beginner Weight Training Routine

The million programs out there can make weight training intimidating.

I hope this guide can help you sift through the noise and find the program that works for you (for examples of programs to choose from, check out my breakdown of 5 of the most popular beginner programs).

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How do you know if a workout is good? You don’t want to waste time on bad workouts.

This one-page cheat sheet will show you the most effective type of exercises, the principle that leads to workout success, and the six crucial parts of a balanced exercise routine.

Send me the cheat sheet

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Remember, the best exercise program is the one you can stick to.

 

When new exercisers are struggling to develop a consistent gym routine, I often see them given a simple piece of advice, one that will be familiar to any Nike enthusiasts out there – Just Do It.

To an experienced lifter or otherwise fit person, “just do it” seems like a reasonable way to approach fitness. They already know how to work out consistency, have a specific program to follow, and are confidence that they are doing things correctly.

But for a beginner that’s tired after work, or feels like there’s always another project that needs attention, “just do it” is exhausting advice. It adds to the list of things that “should” be done without actually providing guidance on how to get them done. Just do it? How?

Step 1: Want a toned body

Step 2: Just do it

Step 3: ???

Step 4: Abs like Bruce Lee

To consistently go to the gym, you need to break down the “how” of just doing it. Willing yourself to success doesn’t work: you need a complete workout plan for the gym – one that keeps you on track even when life gets in the way. That’s what I want to help you with.

I wrote this guide because I used to feel like a failure. The first time I went to the gym I was terrified. Every time I skipped the gym or quit another exercise routine, I hated myself because it felt like I could never achieve my fitness goals.

It doesn’t have to be that way; you can overcome gym anxiety. I want to help you do better – and show you how to be consistent with exercise.

Beyond gym tactics or specific workouts and diets, workout consistency is easily the most important element of an exercise program.

Part 1 of this guide will teach you some of the tactics you can use to reduce your reliance on willpower. Part 2 will put those tactics together in a simple 5 step exercise.

At the end of these 5 steps – which should only take you about 30 minutes to complete – you will have a clearly defined plan that gives you the motivation to go to the gym, helps you set fitness goals, and shows you how to create a habit of working out that achieves those goals. 

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Don’t have time to do this right now? I put together a guide and worksheet based on this article (that includes a couple of bonus exercises). Just let me know where to send it.

Send me the guide

(You’ll also get the free eBook 51 Motivation Tips, for when you need an extra boost)

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Part 1: 4 Psychological Tactics to Stick with an Exercise Routine

Willpower is a pretty ineffective way of sticking to new exercise routine. Think about trying to force yourself to get out of bed, force yourself to pack your gym bag, force yourself to get out of your apartment, force yourself to go to the gym, and force yourself to actually work out.

It sounds exhausting. But it doesn’t have to be.

The problem with using willpower is that there are so many opportunities to turn back. At any point in the above process, you could decide that your bed is more comfortable, that the gym is far away, or that you’re tired and will just hop on the treadmill for a few minutes. Put another way, you need to “say yes” to the gym a dozen times every time you work out!

I like to think of it this way: if you need willpower to say yes, your default setting is no.

I would rather “say yes” once. Or, even better, have to force myself if I want to say no. The 4 tactics I’m about to describe are based on the psychology of habit formation, and are designed to make it easier for you to “say yes” and find the motivation to go to the gym.

It wouldn’t be fair to say that willpower is wholly unnecessary to creating a habit of working out, but your goal should be to minimize the use of willpower whenever possible.

As you build up your workout routine, there will be moments where you need to use willpower to keep yourself on track. We want to build a strong exercise habit to make sure that you have willpower reserves when you really need them.

Workout Consistency Tactic 1: Chaining

Most habits are cued by something. That is, something external triggers your body to complete a well-practiced routine.

Take brushing your teeth, a deeply ingrained habit that you probably execute regularly and think about executing almost never. For tooth-brushing, the cue is a time (morning) and a place (the bathroom).

One way to develop workout  consistency is to connect it to an event that you know will always happen at the same time or place. In college, for example, I liked to work out directly after afternoon classes. I would leave class at 4:05, get to my dorm room at 4:15, change my clothes, and be in the gym by 4:35.

Breaking down the chain of actions, it’s clear that cuing served a vital role in getting me to start working out and stick to it. The first action, leaving class, was guaranteed to happen. The second, returning to my dorm room, was an unrelated but strong habit that I had already established. Finally, I changed clothes and hit the gym.

The progression of these actions is important, because it can help us understand how to chain exercise onto events that already happen. All I did was tack exercise onto the end of an existing habit chain.

For me, the chain was a hugely effective tactic that started off my workout consistency habit. In fact, I found it much harder to work out on weekends, or days with cancelled class. The reason: there was no chain, and therefore nothing to cue going to the gym.

Keep the Chain Going

A crucial aspect of chaining is continuity. When I walked into my dorm room, I didn’t dump my stuff and flop down on my bed “for just 5 minutes,” because doing so would kill my momentum and make it way harder to get moving again.

Actually, I did face that problem at first, before I realized what was happening and cut it out. The moment of choosing not to flop down on my bed and watch Netflix or Reddit is one that legitimately uses willpower (although the coming tactics will provide ways to further reduce it), and if I had been particularly savvy I would have avoided my dorm altogether, preventing the temptation to laze around.

Nowadays I avoid going home after work, bringing my workout stuff with me to work so that I have no excuses. That brings me to the next tactic.

Workout Consistency Tactic 2: Precommitment

When do you decide to go to the gym? For a lot of people the decision is made in the moments immediately before going; that is, the decision to go is followed immediately by the act of going. This is a huge mistake.  

Imagine that you’ve just walked in the door from work, and are thinking about going to the gym. You could go, pack your gym bag, change, drive to the gym, and work out. Or you could lie on your bed and browse the internet. You could catch up with that show on Netflix. You could read the book that you’re in the middle of.

Making a decision in the moment requires a lot of willpower because there are a thousand things that distract you. If you are going to lift in the morning, you have to force yourself to get out of bed early, do your whole morning routine, and get your gym stuff together before you can exercise. It’s a lot easier to hit snooze.

When you make decisions in the moment you are at the whim of your mental state in that moment. Tiredness or stress are common states that make it much, much harder to say yes to exercise. How can you overcome them?

By using precommitments.

If your decisions in the moment are impacted by the things happening around you, all you need to do is separate the decision from the action. When you’re tired after work, it will be easier to tune out the many tasks clamoring for attention because you’ve already planned to work out.

A note: a verbal precommitment is not enough. You need to actually change your environment and take meaningful actions that remind you of the commitment you’ve made. That prove you have a real workout schedule. Let’s look at some examples.

Examples of Precommitments

One of the simplest examples of a precommitment is having a partner. Finding an exercise partner is tired advice by now – everyone says to do it – but it is also a good example of precommitment. Agreeing to meet your partner at a particular time and place makes it difficult to renege on going to the gym.

If you can get a partner, it’s the closest thing to a silver bullet for workout consistency.

Another simple example is preparing your gym bag in advance. I have a small, black drawstring back that has my lacrosse balls/softballs (for rolling myself out), a mini-band for my glute exercises, a band to stretch with, and my gym shoes. This bag is rarely unpacked, and I bring it and a change of clothes to work every day. When I leave work, I already have everything I need.

I even knew a guy that used to wear his gym clothes under his work clothes, and occasionally slept in when his workout schedule had morning workouts.

In my chaining example in the previous tactic, I could have reduced reliance on willpower even more by laying my gym clothes out on my bed before leaving for class. That would have made impossible for me to flop down on my bed without literally tossing aside my precommitment.

If you work out in the morning, putting your packed gym bag and ready-to-wear clothes right by your bed accomplishes something similar. You literally won’t be able to get up without stepping on them, and workout consistency will become a lot easier.

There are a lot of ways to use precommitments to your advantage. If you’re looking for ways to start working out and stick to it, this is a big one – the only limit is your creativity in applying the principle to your own life.

Workout Consistency Tactic 3: Reward Yourself

Everyone says to reward yourself for fitness, but few people use effective rewards. Few reward themselves in ways that actually contribute to lasting change. A reward can’t just be a random positive occurrence, and there are specific criteria that make some fitness rewards better than others.

To be effective as positive reinforcement, fitness rewards must be:

1. Associated with the stimulus (gym-going)
2. Occur shortly after the stimulus
3. Occur consistently or semi consistently

With some scrutiny, we can see that common advice on rewards doesn’t really do those things.

What are some of the common “tips” people are given when it comes to fitness rewards?

• Put aside a dollar every time you go to the gym, buy something nice once you hit $50
• Go out for a nice meal
• Have a dessert with dinner
• Take a nap, because you worked hard and deserve it
• Buy yourself a game, or some other fun gadget you’ve had your eye on

There are dozens of other examples plaguing the food and fitness blogs out there, but all of these examples suck. Why?

The rewards are too big

A single, big reward isn’t effective in getting you to maintain a regular habit. Going out to eat every time you go to the gym is pretty expensive, and could be difficult for a lot of people to maintain financially. Same goes for buying yourself a fun new toy.

The rewards are disconnected from gym going

You can have dessert or go out for a meal whenever you want, really. The actions aren’t in any way connected to going to the gym. When people rely on these rewards, they find themselves cheating, taking out rewards in advance of actual achievements.

The rewards happen too long after the gym

Naps are great, but you aren’t going to be taking that nap until you get home from the gym. Putting a dollar in a jar is consistent and small, but you don’t actually get the reward from the action until long after you’ve gone to the gym

My experience using rewards

One example, again from my college days, illustrates what it means to apply the three principles of effective rewards as you build up consistency in the gym.

During the winter months during college, I found it much easier to go to the gym at night, even though that meant giving up the chain I had established during the rest of the year. Why?

The act of gym going was directly related to a consistent, immediate reward: hanging out with my friends.

I would go to the gym at 8:30 to lift. When it closed at 10:00, I would go down to the fieldhouse (in the same building) and hang out at the women’s ultimate practice, an opportunity to throw around with other men’s team players and hang out with my friends on the women’s team.

Lifting was a way for me to hang out with my friends. I needed to go the athletic building to do that, so social time was one of my fitness rewards for a lift. I could not get the reward without going to the gym.

The last point is key. Rewarding yourself with food can work, but only if the food is somehow associated with the exercise routine – maybe you have a favorite coffee shop near your gym. Or else, there could be a used bookstore nearby that you check out. In each of these examples, you need to actually go to the gym to be able to reward yourself, since the reward is in the same place.

One super bare bones example of a reward is to keep a small (nonperishable) supply of candy in your gym bag. After your workout, while you are still at the gym, have one. A small candy will not significantly affect your diet, but it does create an association between the gym and the candy. The immediate and consistent nature of this reward is what makes it different from just having a dessert.

A note on workout punishment

I greatly prefer positive reinforcement to punishment for changing a habit. If you’re serious about developing an exercise habit, it should be something that you enjoy.

Workout punishment introduces negative emotions surrounding exercise, not a good stepping stone to success. In general, it’s easier to do stuff that doesn’t suck. Punishing yourself for not working out is a great way to ruin your workout consistency in the long term.

For that reason, I’m not a fan of programs that cost you money or other punishments for missing workouts. But it’s also important to recognize (and therefore be better able to overcome) the punishment inherent to going to the gym.

One of nature’s cruel tricks is that the first stages of an exercise routine are the most punishing. Before your body has adapted to exercise, it punishes you with extreme soreness. It’s a small wonder that so many people start and stop exercise habits so many times; every time they start, they almost immediately feel terrible!

Understanding that this process occurs is a great first step to overcoming it, but this is also why it’s incredibly important to start slow and build.

Leaping in and going hard on exercise is going to make you feel terrible, and that’s not a feeling you want to have when willpower is still a major part of the equation. A slow start will minimize early soreness; eventually you can ramp up without experiencing any punishing pain.

Workout Consistency Tactic 4: Reducing Barriers to Training

This section is something of a catch-all, incorporating parts of the other three workout consistency tactics and addressing the struggles that they can’t.

You want to make it as easy as possible to say yes to an exercise plan, and that’s what the other three tactics have been dealing with. Preparing your clothes in advance or connecting exercise to other activities are both ways of reducing barriers, just as rewards are ways of adding incentives.

Put another way, you want to both increase the chance of saying yes (rewards) and decrease the change of saying no (reducing barriers).

What are some reasons that people say no to fitness?

Some of these reasons can seem small, but are actually profoundly frustrating. For example, a common problem is coming home after work and the gym, and being too tired to cook dinner. Conventional advice is to “suck it up” or “just do it.” I’ve already aired out my beef with that idea.

A better solution is to prepare meals in advance. I like to cook up a load of chicken or chili on Sundays, giving me enough food in reserve to whip out if I’m too tired to cook during the week.

Failing that, I always keep ingredients for a simple meal on hand. I keep instant oatmeal and quesadilla material around all the time, just in case I need to make something fast without spending a lot of energy. Anticipating my future actions helps me eat better without wasting willpower. 

What about other challenges?

What if you feel self conscious in the gym? Going during off-peak hours, using positive self-talk, finding a secluded section to do your workout, or wearing concealing clothes are all ways to reduce the negative effects of gym anxiety.

What if you don’t know what you should be doing in the gym? As a beginner, the most important thing to do is pick an exercise program and stick with it. Having a specific workout program to follow keeps you on track and means that you’ll never have uncertainty.

What if you aren’t sure how to do the exercises, because they seem complicated or make you nervous? Watch form videos before you go to the gym. Being armed with that information will help you do everything correctly and reduce any gym-related anxiety.

Nearly every gym-going challenge can be aided by reducing barriers. Thinking critically about what your barriers are is the first step. Then, brainstorm ways to make those problems as small as possible.

Part 2: Building Your Roadmap to Fitness

I call this a “roadmap to fitness” because it provides a guide that tells you exactly how to be consistent with exercise at every stage of your fitness journey.

There are things that this roadmap doesn’t tell you. It doesn’t tell you how to pick the best gym routine, or what new exercises you should be doing. Those are important topics, but are outside the scope of this guide – here you learn how to find the motivation to go to the gym in the first place.

You should finish these 5 steps with a plan that is literally written down (or typed). It doesn’t need to pretty or have a fancy font/format, but it does need to exist outside of your brain in some capacity.

At the end of the 5 steps I’ll give you an actual roadmap so that you have an example of how everything fits together.

Step 1: Pick a Destination

Goal setting activities are constantly recommended by productivity moguls because they let you to measure success and fix failures. Even just the act of setting a goal makes you more likely to succeed.

The thing is, you probably are not trying to be the best at exercise. At least, not “exercise” as a general concept. Workout consistency is the best way to achieve goals, but you still need a goal to work towards.

To maximize your results, it’s worth taking a few minutes to make the right kind of goal. Here are 3 characteristics of goals that set you up for success.

Goal Specificity

Goals need to be specific. Creating a specific goal allows you to clearly define the activities that will make the goal happen. Lack of specificity leads to vague goals like “build muscle.”

A goal like build muscle is too vague because it offers no details about time frame, amount of muscle, location of muscle to be built, or process of gaining muscle. It’s similar to “just do it.”

Goals like “build muscle” are what lead people to activities like “lifting weights.” “Lifting weights” is also too vague: you won’t get muscle by doing the same isolation exercises at the same weight every day.

A goal like “build 10 pounds of muscle while getting bigger arms in the next three months” is much better. With a specific goal it’s easier to see if you are making progress.

You can set short term workout goals, then check in after a month and see if you’ve gained any muscle, or take before and after pictures to see if you’re adding arm bulk the way you want to. If you aren’t seeing progress, you can change your approach. More on this in Step 2.

Common, vague fitness goals include:

• Get toned
• Get ripped
• Have a six-pack
• Get stronger
• Stop being weak

Make your goals more specific to improve your workout consistency.

Realism in Goal Setting

It almost goes without saying that setting realistic fitness goals is important. Every piece of goal setting advice in existence talks about not getting your hopes too high and making sure your goals are realistic.

As it happens, I think setting realistic fitness goals is vastly overrated. 

If you’re starting a fitness journey, or any activity, for the first time, you probably don’t have a great sense of how realistic a goal is. It took me 4 years to build 40 pounds of muscle, but if you’d asked me when I started I would have:

1. Wanted to get there in a year or
2. Thought it impossible to get there at all

Of course you should be realistic in your goal setting. But don’t worry about it too much. A system of regular check-ins and feedback allows you to re-evaluate and adjust your goals if you aim too high.

Importance to You Personally

It sounds like a no-brainer: you are more likely to achieve your goal if you think that it’s important.

Well, yeah. Duh. The problem is that people think of things that are generically important. Everyone already knows that exercise is healthy, but for most people that information hasn’t helped them stick to a program.

Instead of thinking about the abstract importance of exercise, think about what success could mean for you. Again, everyone knows that exercise can make you healthier and better looking, but how would that meaningfully affect your life?

Be as specific as possible. For example:

• I will be able to wear t-shirts without being embarrassed about how skinny my arms are
• I will be confident when I take my shirt off at the beach
• People I like will be more attracted to me
• I won’t have to use the lightest bowling ball when I go bowling with my friends
• I’ll be able to run around and pick up my kid

To appreciate how important your goal is, you need to apply it to your own life.

Action Steps

As you wrap up this step, you should have a clearly defined goal to work with. In addition, write down 3 specific ways that achieving your goal will benefit your life.

Step 2: Define Checkpoints

Defining checkpoints is a method of keeping addressing the problems keeping you from success. If your goal is to be completed in 3 months, you need to check in earlier to make sure that your methods are working.

Checkpoint: a designated point to take stock of your successes and failures before the end of your time frame.

For example, the fitness goal “build 10 pounds of muscle while getting bigger arms in the next three months” could have a checkpoint at one month.

At a third of the way through the time frame, have you gained any weight? If not, it might be time to change your exercise routine or diet. Have you been consistent with exercise? If not, what aspects of your life can you change to make going to the gym easier?

Define success and failure in advance. Write exactly where you want to be by your checkpoint. When it comes time to check in, you will know exactly where you stand and what you need to change to succeed.

For the muscle building example, successes at the end of one month could be:

• Gained at least 3 pounds of muscle
• Bigger arms compared to a “before” picture
• Attended every scheduled lifting session

Failures could be:

• Missing more than 3 lifting days
• Using the same weight as when you started
• Staying the same weight, or losing weight

It’s important to remember that failure is ok – right now. It’s ok because you have a plan in place to deal with it. If you know that you’re on the way to failing at the end of a month, you just have to re-evaluate your strategies! There’s no need to panic; you can still achieve your goal, or revise it if you aimed too high.

Action Steps

At the end of Step 2, you have a list of specific failures and successes that you’ll check-in on at a specific time. You should also be secure in the knowledge that failure is okay at your checkpoints. Feedback and correction at this stage are what prevent one failure from turning into several – these mini-failures represent opportunities to self-correct and get back on track.

Step 3: Identify Roadblocks to Workout Consistency

It’s easy to be motivated before you set foot in the gym. But when you’re tired and hungry, or life gets in the way, exercise motivation disappears and you’ll realize that all you want to do is flop down on your bed and watch Netflix.

The lesson in Step 3 is to plan for when things go wrong. Then, even if you slip off the rails for a moment, you’ll know exactly what you need to do to get back on track.

Now, list out all of the reasons you might fail to create a habit of working out or miss a workout session. In the Step 4 we’ll deal with those challenges.

Again, be specific. Common roadblocks that won’t work:

• “I’m lazy”
• “I’m unmotivated”
• “I don’t have time”

These aren’t specific enough problems to address, and their phrasing prepares you for failure. “I’m unmotivated” suggests that your lack of motivation is an integral part of your character. If that were true, creating a workout habit would mean changing who you are as a person!

It’s not true, and I would discourage you from describing perceived flaws as a part of your identity. Building a workout habit can be challenging, but it isn’t as challenging as redefining yourself.

Better versions of the above roadblocks:

• “I’m tired when I finish with work and want to spend the evening relaxing”
• “I’m hungry by the time I get to the gym, so it’s hard for me to work out”
• “If I go to the gym after work I have to go to bed by the time I’m done cooking and eating dinner. I won’t have time for other things that are important to me”

Do you see how these describe the same problems in fundamentally different ways? You’re not “lazy,” you just want to relax in the evenings. It’s not that you don’t have time, it’s that there are other areas of your life that are important to you.

When phrased like this, your roadblocks are challenges that you can overcome.

Action Steps

The goal of Step 3 is to recognize the workout consistency challenges that you will encounter on the path to achieving your goal. Set a timer for 5 minutes and list all the challenges you can think of as specifically as possible.

Step 4: Plan for Roadblocks

This step is as simple as it can be difficult to execute. You have a list of problems: now all you have to do is solve them.

Brainstorm ways that you can get around the roadblocks that you’ve just listed. If you’ve defined your challenges clearly enough, you should be able to come up with some solid solutions.

Here’s the activity: take 10 minutes and your list of problems. Write down as many solutions as you can think of. Everything goes – you can cull bad ideas after the 10 minutes are up. Focus on capturing as many potential solutions as possible, even if they seem silly.

Here are some examples to get you thinking:

• If you get tired when you get home from work, figure out if you can work out in the morning, get more sleep, or have coffee before you get to the gym
• If hunger prevents you from working out, bring a snack to work for the end of the day, just enough to carry you through to dinner
• If you struggle to train in the morning, pack your workout bag in the evening and put your workout clothes by your bed so that you have to walk over them to get up (I even know a guy that slept in his gym clothes)

These specific examples may or may not apply to you – what’s important is that they address the specific problems identified. Plan ahead now. Then, when you do face challenges, you’ll be ready to overcome them.

Action Steps

Brainstorm potential solutions to the roadblocks you identified in Step 3. Take 10 minutes and list as many solutions as possible, then trim your list down to the best ideas.

Step 5: Build the Roadmap to Fitness

You have all the individual pieces. Now it’s time to put everything together into a single plan, your roadmap to fitness.

Step 5 is deciding the details of what you’ll do for your workout and adding the lists from Steps 1–4.

The format of your road map is not important. If you feel like having multiple colors or incorporating post-its, yarn, and silly putty, by all means do so. The important part is that your map exists in one, accessible piece that you can easily reference.

Here is an example of an actual road map that incorporates all 5 steps.

Wrapping Up: A Guide to Workout Consistency

You have a set of tactics that can help you go to the gym, and a detailed, 5 step system that organizes them into a concrete plan. If you haven’t been completing the steps as you read, I encourage you to do so right now. Just 30 minutes spent planning could give you a gym habit that lasts for years – and the body to go with it.

If you want the info in this article, plus the free eBook 51 Fitness Motivation Tips just let me know where to send it.

Send me the 5-step guide