Strength training series for beginner lifters

Picture of a man performing a deadlift.
Blog

4 day split phul workout program for beginners

Today, we’ll be checking out our 4-day split PHUL workout program for novices.

It’s an incredible simple program, while simultaneously being easily adjustable. It’s no big deal if you miss a training session since you can simply perform it on another day.

Even if you decide to skip that session entirely, then it’s still not such a big deal since you will be training those muscle groups in another workout that same week regardless.

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Picture of a power rack setup in a home gym with dumbbells in the back.
Mass training

Why you should build a home gym

A lot of people are looking for alternative ways to perform their exercises. And while a body weight workout can be used as a substitute for heavy weightlifting, it’s not desirable for everyone.

Those folks will most likely be interested in how to build a home gym for cheap, while still reaping most of the rewards of a professional athletic facility. This way, they can still get their usual weight and cardio based training sessions in conveniently.

The biggest benefits are:

— Budget friendly

— Always open

— Equipment is always available

— Privacy

— Time efficient

If you’re interested, this is how to build a home gym for cheap.

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Picture of a man performing a deadlift.
Mass training

4 day phul workout for beginners

Today, I’ll be sharing a 4-day power, hypertrophy, upper, lower (PHUL) workout for novices. It is a great training program for those looking to increase strength and muscle mass.

Simply put, this means that the PHUL routine will have you perform 2 power days and 2 mass building days each week. Hypertrophy based training is a form of resistance training with the specific goal of increasing muscle mass.

In short, the training program is distributed as followed:

Monday: upper body strength.
Tuesday: lower body strength.
Thursday: upper body hypertrophy.
Friday: lower body hypertrophy.

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Running knee pain.
Mass training

Which factors influence injury prevention

There are a lot of different factors that influence injury prevention.

Unfortunately, life doesn’t always work out the way we want it to. It’s the same regarding accidents. Every person, especially passionate athletes who exercise regularly, will experience unfortunate injuries at some point in their lives.

While we can’t control everything and guarantee ourselves to be harm free our whole life, there are a number of things we can do to reduce the risk of harming ourselves..

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Table showing the amount of repetitions to target depending on the training goal.
Mass training

The best rep ranges, sets, and rest time for weightlifting explained

There are a lot of subtle differences in the weightlifting world regarding rep ranges, how many sets to perform and how long the rest time between sets should be.

A lot of this depends on whether your main goal is increasing strength, gaining muscle mass, or getting leaner.

These are the best rep ranges for weightlifting and endurance according to science.

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Picture of a man lying on a bench and bench pressing.
Mass training

How and why you should bench press

Few weightlifting exercises develop the pectoral muscles as much and effectively as the bench press does.

The bench press, also called the chest press, is one of the most effective and well known exercises to develop the chest muscles. Various different grips can be used when bench pressing to target different parts of the chest.

A lot of weight can be moved with the chest press because it’s a compound exercise. This has a lot of benefits with regard to building strength and muscle mass. However, since large amounts of weight can be moved, it’s important to lift with proper technique to prevent injuries.

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Image of a man performing a back squat with a barbell.
Mass training

Intermediate strength training program

This strength training program is designed specifically for intermediate lifters.

I would recommend starting this program when linear progression on this strength training program for beginners or any strength training program that’s geared towards beginners is no longer possible.

Not being a novice lifter any more means that it’s no longer possible to add weight every workout anymore, even after you tried to deload to break through this strength plateau. Thus, you must switch to a more advanced strength training program with more advanced programming.

This will eventually happen to all of us if we lift long and heavy enough. With this intermediate strength training program, you will still be performing full body workouts. It will however learn you valuable and more complex skills like programming, deloading, non-linear progression and most importantly, varying training intensity in order to recover adequately. These skills are all vital for making progression as an intermediate lifter.

The biggest difference in this intermediate strength training program compared to my beginner strength training program is the non-linear form of periodization. This means that the amount of sets, reps, and weight being added is not constant and will vary from workout to workout. Instead of adding weight to the bar every workout to get stronger, we’ll try to hit a new 5 rep max each Friday. Our volume days on Mondays and recovery days on Wednesday are calculated based on our hopefully new weekly 5 rep max.

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Image of a man performing a back squat with a barbell.
Mass training

Why and how everyone should squat

Squatting is a great functional compound exercise. Why, you might ask? Because we often need to pick up stuff from the ground during our daily lives.

It mimics the proper technique which we should use to pick up things from the ground, particularly if those things happen to be heavy. Because picking things up with a straight back places the least amount of possible stress on our back, thus reducing the chance for potential injuries.

Let me explain why and how everyone should squat.

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Illustration of the push phase, and lowering phase of bench pressing.
Mass training

Strength training program for beginners

The workouts of this strength training program for beginners only consists out of compound exercises to maximize strength gains. As compound exercises use multiple muscle groups at once as opposed to isolation exercises, which only trains one specific muscle at a time.

Remember, it’s a strength training program for beginners. So I wouldn’t suggest this training program if you are looking for a pure bodybuilding, hypertrophy based workout program or if you are an advanced lifter. But don’t worry, you will gain some size following this strength training program if you eat and sleep well.

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