Ask Jtrain: Newbie Lifting for Women and Avoiding Injury

"Jtrain! I've been on my best behavior! Green smoothies are my new best friend but I think I'm ready to change my game. I want to start weight lifting. Do you have a newbie blog post about how to start without hurting oneself? I'd love to start but I'm terrified of not doing it right and doing some serious damage. Preferably a newbie post for women? Maybe?"

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Hey there! Thank you so much for your question! It's been a long time since my last "Ask Jtrain" post. TOO long in my opinion. I'm glad that I get to do another one of these!

Hmm, a newbie weightlifting routine for women. This might be a tricky one for me. Mainly because I've never really focused or gone too in-depth with the needs and techniques that facilitate the most optimal results for women. And I think that distinction is important. You may disagree, but I believe that sexual dimorphism is something to take into account when developing a workout routine. Why? Because I heavily believe that the aesthetic qualities that look good on men and women are totally different. For example, I think that most people would agree that the male aesthetic is most optimal and geared towards an overbearing, intimidating, and powerful look, while the female aesthetic is most optimal and geared towards a delicate, "streamlined" aesthetic with subtleties in definition. and accentuation of only a few body parts. That's obviously just my opinion though, so don't be quick to blast me on whichever medium you're reading this from. Many different body types can be absolutely beautiful. But I'm just making it clear as to what perspective I'm viewing this on. 

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I'm going to give this my best shot. My guess is that, like most women I've talked to in the gym, you're interested in gaining strength but not necessarily size, and want to bring out subtle definition with a lean frame.

But before I start, here are two things I want to drill into your head and MAKE SURE you understand before you get started as a woman working out in the weight room:

• You will never naturally gain the kind of size a male puts on because you do not naturally produce enough testosterone to do so. Unless you're supplementing with steroids or other performance / aesthetic enhancers you do not have to be afraid of looking super masculine. You still need to train with intensity and stimulate your muscles just as much as anyone else to see results.

• There is no such thing as toning. I don't want to hear how you're using useless amounts of weight that offer no stimulation for some outrageous amount of repetitions to "tone" the muscle. You can read more about my views on toning here. 

With those things in mind, let's try developing a routine for you. It wasn't clear to me what body parts you wanted to bring out and define, so I might just go over each one. You can pick and choose from which ones you think are important. A lot of the concepts I use in my routines will also be used here, so this beginner / novice routine might not look all that different from what I would recommend to anyone else. As a beginner, I recommend starting out with a 3 day a week workout schedule with three exercises for 3 sets of each exercise. Working out for only a few days a week helps ease you into working out, not overwhelming you with the responsibility you just put on yourself. If you want to spread this across more days though that's fine too so long as you don't think you'll burn yourself out too soon into the game.

But keeping your gender and experience in the gym in mind, while also giving you advice on injury prevention, here is what I'd recommend:

Workout Routine:

DAY 1

Triceps:

Dips (bodyweight): As many as you can do until failure x 3 sets

Tricep Pushdowns: Use a rope, v-bar, or small straight bar x 3 sets

Tricep Kickbacks: Use a dumbbell x 3 sets

Biceps:

Barbell Curls: Use a barbell with weight where you fail between 8-15 reps x 3 sets

Dumbbell Curls: Use a weight where you fail between 8-15 reps x 3 sets

Inside Grip Pull-Ups (bodyweight): As many as you can do until failure x 3 sets

Abs:

Crunches: As many as you can do until failure x 3 sets

Cardio:

Find a piece of cardio equipment / a place that gives you a good cardio workout for 10-30 mins

DAY 2

Back:

Lat Pulldown: Use two handle clips to pull weight down and pull handles across chest x 3 sets

Dumbbell Row: Fairly heavy weight brought from the ground up to your back x 3 sets

Outside Grip Pull-Ups: As many as you can do until failure x 5 sets (try it! These are good for you)

Shoulders:

Shoulder Press: Arms at 90 degree angles. Push straight up, and come completely down x 3 sets

Lateral Raises: Isolate your shoulders and bring your arms straight out at sides x 3 sets

Rear Delt Flys: Do on a machine. Arms straight and go until rear shoulders flex x 3 sets

Abs:

Crunches: As many as you can do until failure x 3 sets

Cardio:

Find a piece of cardio equipment / a place that gives you a good cardio workout for 10-30 mins

DAY 3

Chest:

Dumbbell Press: Bring weight from shoulders and turn them in towards each other x 3 sets

Fly Machine: Keep arms completely straight as you touch your fists / clap your hands x 3 sets

Pushups: As many as you can do x 5 sets

Legs:

Lunges: This are incredibly good for your legs. Do 4-5 sets of these with dumbbells at your sides

Hamstring Curls: Use the machine for these. Perform these like a bicep curl for legs x 3 sets

Calf Raises: Use any apparatus you need to to stimulate the calves fulling flexing x 3 sets

Abs:

Crunches: As many as you can do until failure x 3 sets

Cardio:

Find a piece of cardio equipment / a place that gives you a good cardio workout for 10-30 mins


And that's a pretty solid full body emphasis. Again, you can change the days you do these, the amount of days, and which exercises you choose to do. Make sure you ALWAYS push your lifting until you can't lift the weight anymore (failure) if you want to see any kind of growth. Be sure to practice good form as well with controlled movements.


Preventing Injury:

I kind of went on a tangent there, but I assumed you also wanted a good starting workout for which to base your workout plans around. Your main question was about preventing injury, and I'm very happy to discuss that. In fact, my real-world big boy job involves researching ways to prevent injury!

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 This is a very important topic that very few people like to focus on, and I have some tips and pointers that you can use to ensure that you're getting the gains you desire, while not putting yourself in harm's way.

Choose the Right Amount of Weight:

When lifting weight, you have to make sure that the weight you are lifting is the ideal weight for you. What's the ideal weight for you? To me it's any weight that you can lift with controlled form that also makes you fail between 8-15 reps or so. You need to find out what that weight is because that's the weight that you can 1) control, and 2) give yourself proper muscle stimulation to facilitate growth. These two factors are important for gains and injury prevention. Lifting too heavy can cause you to not control the weight properly and could possibly lead to injury.

 

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 Practice Good Form:

This is always important. If you are not sure as to how an exercise should be performed, MAKE SURE you do your research on it. And don't be afraid to ask people more experienced with working out. "Good form" means doing an exercise that both isolates / stimulates your target muscle while also not putting unnecessary and detrimental stress on other parts (or I guess the same parts) of your body. In fact, before you start putting on weight that properly stresses you (which I recommend), try doing the exercises with lighter weight to get used to how the exercise feels and how it's making your body move.

Control the Weight:

Super important. Do NOT try to throw the weight around to the point where the weight is controlling you. Don't do jerking motions that will cause you to blow out a joint. Don't go so fast that you end up moving your body into an awkward position that facilitates or increases the odds of injuring a body part. Focus on slow controlled movements with the proper equipment if necessary, and / or a spotter to help support body parts if applicable. If you cannot control the weight in a slow enough fashion, it's too much weight for you.

Get Proper Rest and Listen to Your Body:

If there's one supplement that doesn't get enough love, it's sleep and rest. Funny, because it's also probably the most important supplement around.......if biological rythms were supplements.

But when you rest and sleep, your body starts to grow and repair itself. You can understand why this would be important to prevent injury. When you workout, to some degree you ARE injuring yourself by creating microtears in your muscles and other biological structures. Your body heals this damage by doing such things as repair the torn structures, and does this while you sleep. The less sleep you get the less time your body will have to repair itself and keep you at 100%....not to mention will leave you more vulnerable to sickness, which could also keep you out of the gym.

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 Also, you need to listen to your body. It's great to be all gung-ho about working out all the time and never taking a day off, in terms of your attitude, but sometimes your body is trying to tell you something. For example, if you're dealing with shoulder pain, and it hurts in a way that would lead you to believe you were pretty close to injury, don't be afraid to rest that body part for a week or so. That doesn't mean rest your other muscle groups that you can still work out though. But if a certain bodypart hurts at the joint level, or feels like something serious, rest it and hold it back for a bit, and introduce weight back in slowly. Not being able to get a full workout sucks, but having an injury that causes you to miss weeks or even months of gym time is much, much worse.

Eat Right:

If you're not getting in the proper materials to build the fortress that is your body, how do you expect to be fully prepared for preventing injury should one arise? 

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 Getting in the proper amount of protein to help repair muscle and body structures is massively important if you start weightlifting. Drinking water for proper hydration and flexibility is also important. Making sure you get the proper amount of fiber, vitamins, carbs, and fats are also great for a well-balanced diet to help your body stay at peak performance.

Warm Up:

I actually don't warm up with my weightlifting exercises. But I can see how it's beneficial. Before you workout, your muscles aren't stimulated and thus don't have blood pumping to the muscles to prepare them for the stress they're about to endure. Since my left knee has tendonitis in it, I actually DO warm it up with light weight on my leg days. It became apparent to me while doing this how diving into heavy weight with this knee could potentially cause a lot of harm. So it's something you might want to try.

To warm up, start with light weight. You're not focused on stimulating muscle growth here, just waking your muscles up and getting them prepared for the war you're about to wage on them. Still focus on the controlled motions with good form, and go until you feel your muscles have been primed for lifting. After you feel that they are, begin your normal lifts.

Stretch:

I'm not going to recommend stretching before a weightlifting routine because I've never done that. I've also heard people say that stretching before a weightlifting routine is suboptimal. This is not the case for things like cardio though. You might want to do your research on it, as I am no expert. 

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I feel that stretching AFTER a workout is beneficial though. Mostly because I feel that my muscles are most tense after I've worked them out. It makes sense to me to help stretch them out of being so tense and making sure that the tension is not constantly pulling on other body parts that could lead to injury. That could be complete bro-science, but I feel it has worked for me over the years.



And there you have it. I hope I answered your questions. Try that workout split and let me know what you think, and be sure to keep all of those tips for preventing injury in mind as you start working towards building a new you!


-Jtrain


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