Some women feel like they aren’t strong enough to lift with the bros. Others worry that they will commit some sort of strength-training faux paus. (And of course if we’re being honest it’s not all in our heads. There are plenty of gyms or parts of gyms where women, gender non-conforming folks, people of size, and plenty of other people, don’t feel welcome because, well, people in the gym are making them feel unwelcome.) But if your trepidation has to do with feeling like you don’t know what to do when it comes to strength training, the solution is always simple: know more.
Understanding exactly what you’re heading into before you walk in the door is the easiest, most efficient way to not only curb anxiety and make your whole workout experience a lot more enjoyable, but also ensure that you’re getting the most out of the time you put into your workouts.
That said, this weight training guide covers everything—I mean everything—you could ever need or want to know about strength training programing, and how to design a strength workout plan that will help you hit your goals.
Your Weight Training Guide: How to Design a Workout Plan
OK, so you’ve resolved to start a strength training plan. Now what? Follow this weight training guide, and you’ll feel strong in no time.
1. Determine your goals, how often you’ll lift, and how long your workouts will be.
When it comes to strength training plans, this is the step that most people miss—which sucks because every other thing you do in the gym should be based on what you decide here. Don’t worry, though. It’s not difficult. Just answer the following questions for yourself:
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What’s your goal? This could be anything from performing your first pull-up to building muscle to increasing how much you can deadlift by X amount. The answer will influence not only the exercises you perform, but also how you perform them (think: reps, sets, weight used, rest periods, etc.), explains Lou Centeno, C.P.T., owner of Fit Results in Chicago. Also, keep in mind that your goals should include rehabbing or working around any prior injuries or cranky joints; keeping injuries in mind will really matter when it comes to exercise selection. (If you’re ever unsure how to accommodate a past injury, it’s a good idea to talk with a physical therapist.
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How often will you lift per week? It’s good to have goals here, but also be realistic. After all, if you create a strength training plan that works different body parts each day, but you end up rarely hitting the weight room more than two days per week, half of your body is going to get left out of the equation. It’s always better to add a strength day than it is to miss muscle groups throughout the week. You can find some helpful resources for figuring out how often to lift here, and of course, if you can consult a personal trainer, that’s a great resource. (Is it safe to work out twice per day?)
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How much time will you devote to your workouts? It’s hard to give a one-size-fits-all suggestion for how long a lifting session should be, because it really depends on the reps/sets you’re doing (more on how to choose that later), how long you rest in between, how intense an exercise is, and how long each move takes to complete. Generally, most trainers say that 45 to 60 minutes is sufficient for a strength training session. But it’s important to be realistic about how much time you do have to devote to training. Pick a time limit that feels doable with your schedule and see how many exercises you can fit into that window (allowing yourself time to perform all reps and sets with proper form and adding in time for rest, too). If you have to cut sessions short sometimes, that’s fine too. It’s OK to be flexible.
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2. Familiarize yourself with different movements.
Your body has roughly seven basic movement patterns. (The exact divide depends on the trainer you ask, but I like seven). They are: squat, lunge, hinge, push, pull, rotate, anti-rotate.
Everything you will ever do in the strength training area of the gym will be based on these movement patterns, and an ideal strength training plan should hit all of these areas. You might hit several movement patterns in a single workout, or you might zero in on one for an entire lifting session. That largely depends on the number of training sessions you have per week. After all, if you lift five days per week, doing a total-body workout every single day wouldn’t give each muscle ample time to recover.
In the end, your goal is to work your entire body through the course of the week without letting more than three to five days go by between working a given body part. So if you are doing two lifting workouts per week, you’ll probably want to make each of them total-body.
“Total-body training is usually best for general fitness improvements and fat loss, while the split routine is commonly used for [specific] muscle-building goals,” Maietta says. “However, it really depends on the amount of time you have to get to the gym each week. If you can make it to the gym four-plus times on a consistent basis, give splits a try. Any less than that, opt for total-body routines.”
Here are some examples of how different srength training exercises will cover your movement-pattern bases, along with the most commonly used equipment for those exercises—and which muscles you can expect to work.
Squat
exercises: goblet squat, rack squat, zercher squat, front squat, back squat (pictured below), overhead squat, pistol squat
equipment used: dumbbells, barbells, kettlebells, medicine balls, sand bags
primary muscles worked: quads, glutes, hamstrings
Lunge
exercises: forward lunge, reverse lunge (pictured below), side lunge, walking lunge, step-up
equipment used: dumbbells, barbells, kettlebells, medicine balls, sand bags
primary muscles worked: quads, glutes, hamstrings
Hinge
exercises: deadlift (pictured below), hip thrust, glute bridge, heel-elevated hip thrust, single-leg deadlift, single-leg hip thrust, kettlebell swing, clean
equipment used: dumbbells, barbells, kettlebells
primary muscles worked: glutes, hamstrings
Pull
exercises: bent-over row, chest-support row (pictured below), single-arm row, lat pull-over
equipment used: dumbbells, barbells, kettlebells
primary muscles worked: back, shoulders, biceps
Push
exercises: bench press, squeeze press (pictured below), shoulder press, incline press, chest fly
equipment used: dumbbells, barbells, kettlebells
primary muscles worked: chest, shoulders, triceps
Rotate
exercises: woodchop (pictured below), medicine ball rotational slam, Russian twist, reverse lunge with twist (pictured above)
equipment used: dumbbell, medicine ball
primary muscles worked: core
Anti-rotate
exercises: suitcase carry, waiter carry, Pallof press, offset loaded (weight in on hand) exercises
equipment used: dumbbells, kettlebells
primary muscles worked: core
Once you choose the exercises you will do each week and workout, it’s time to learn proper form so that you can perform those moves both safely and effectively in the weight room. “Proper form helps prevent injury and ensures training success for years to come,” says Mauro S. Maietta, C.P.T., district fitness manager at Crunch in New York City. “Moving improperly can cause injury along with muscular and movement imbalances that can lead to postural issues down the road.”
To learn proper form, you have a lot of options. You can take advantage of a trial personal training session that most fitness clubs offer, hire an online personal trainer, or watch YouTube videos from a certified personal trainer or strength coach, says women’s strength coach Allison Tenney, C.S.C.S. While the mirrors in the weight room can be helpful for assessing your form, it’s important to not crank up your neck or throw off your form just so that you can see yourself in the mirrors. Instead, consider setting your phone to video yourself from the side, front, back, and all angles, she says.
Focus on learning each of the seven foundational movement patterns before increasing weight or performing complicated exercise variations, Centeno says. It might not be flashy at first, but performing simple squat, hinge, lunge, push, pull, rotation, and anti-rotation exercises is a tried and true formula for results.
3. Determine exercise order.
Once you know what exercises you want to perform and how you’re going to split them up through the week, it’s time to decide how you’re going to order exercises during each workout. Because, yes, exercise order matters.
Generally, during strength workouts (after a warm-up, of course), you should perform explosive power exercises first, then your heaviest, most compound exercises, then finish up with any isolation moves that target one specific muscle. This will ensure that you have sufficient energy and your muscles aren’t gassed out when performing more complicated exercises that require a lot of work, coordination, or strength, Tenney says.
For example, you could perform power cleans or sled pushes (power) at the beginning of a workout, then move onto squats and bench presses (compound), and cap things off with triceps extensions and calf raises (isolation).
It’s also a good idea to organize exercises so that you cycle through muscle groups worked during a given workout. That way, each muscle group gets a little bit of rest while you work another one. Depending on if you are performing total-body workouts, upper-body/lower-body workouts, or split routines, you can alternate between upper- and lower-body exercises or opposing movement patterns, like pushing and pulling.
Lastly, you can order exercises as straight reps and sets, performing all sets of one exercise before moving onto another, or you can set up your exercises as circuits, doing one set of all exercises, taking a break, and then cycling through again for the total number of sets. Another option is to perform supersets, performing sets of two or more exercises that work opposing muscle groups back-to-back. For instance, performing 10 chest presses, 10 bent-over rows, resting, and then doing it over again. Less common are compound sets in which you perform sets of two exercises that target the same muscle group (but with different movement patterns) back-to-back. For instance, completing 10 shoulder presses and then 10 reverse flyes. Compound sets are designed to promote intense muscle fatigue.
4. Pick your weights.
When it comes to lifting, the question of “How much weight should I use?” tops most exercisers’ list of questions. But before you can answer that, you need to decide how many reps and sets you’re going to try to do of a given exercise.
So how many reps should you try to perform? It depends on your goal.
Strength: 6 or fewer reps, 2-6 sets
Developing maximal strength requires lifting heavy, generally for 6 reps or fewer. To increase overall work while completing 6 or fewer reps per set, you can perform up to roughly 6 sets of the exercise. To ensure that your body (and mind) can give its all during each set, you should rest for 2 or more minutes between sets.
Muscle Gain: 8-12 reps, 3-6 sets
Achieving this goal is predicated on increasing overall work volume (pounds x reps x sets) while minimizing rest. To do so, 3-6 sets of 8-12 reps with 30-90 seconds of rest between sets is a tried-and-true format. Circuits and supersets are another way to minimize rest and keep your heart rate elevated.
Endurance: 12 or more reps, 2-3 sets
Muscular endurance is all about performing low-intensity work for longer periods of time. For that reason, when lifting weights as part of marathon or triathlon training, performing 2-3 sets of 12 or more reps, resting for 30 seconds or less between sets, is ideal. Circuits, supersets, and compound sets can also be used to increase how long a given muscle or the entire body has to work and, thus, its endurance.
Once you determine how many reps you should perform per set, your next step is to figure out how much weight you can lift for that many reps.
With strength training, everything is based off your RM, which stands for rep max. Your 1RM is the maximum amount of weight you can lift in a certain exercise for just one rep. A second rep, the body no can do. Many times, loads used are represented as percentages of 1RMs. For example, 85 percent of your 1RM roughly equates to your 6RM, or the maximum amount of weight you could use to perform six reps of that exercise.
To reap the benefits of strength training, you want to lift pretty close to your RM. “The last one to two reps should be a struggle,” says Maietta. Important note: Struggle means it’s challenging but you can still do it with proper form. If you can’t lift a weight and maintain form, it’s too heavy.
Since it’s not advised that you perform 1RM testing without the supervision of a trainer (and sometimes, not even then), it’s often more useful to think about things like your 6RM, 8RM, and 12RM, or the max amount of weight you can lift for 6, 8, or 12 reps. That means it’ll take some trial and error. If you can’t make it through your last reps, you obviously need less weight next time. But if you’re able to crank everything out, and still have more left to give, then you need to gradually increase weights until your final rep of your final set is a doozy.
Maximizing Your Weight-Room Experience
Congrats! You’ve created your perfect strength training plan! Now, it’s time to implement it. Follow these pointers for the best experience:
Prioritize form over everything. When vying for PRs, or worrying what other gym-goers think, it can be tempting to “ego-lift,” or lift more weight than you really can with proper form. Similarly, many beginners get excited to try out advanced exercises they see on social media because they look cool. But it’s important to remember that years of practice with simple exercises are behind each of those posts. Focus on nailing your form first and foremost. Over time, the weight and snazzy variations will come, Centeno says.
Be considerate of your fellow lifters. Weight-room etiquette matters. Don’t hoard weights, use an extra bench as your desk or water bottle holder, and don’t work out right in front of the stack of dumbbells, Maietta says. Disinfect and wipe off mats and benches after use. If you are using a particular piece of equipment for an extended amount of time, allow others to “work in,” meaning they lift when you’re resting between sets. Perhaps most importantly: Re-rack your weights!
Own your space. Be polite, but don’t be a pushover. You belong there as much as anyone else, Tenney says. If someone has been in the squat rack for 30 minutes, go ahead and ask if you can work in. Feel free to move around benches or other equipment as needed.
Balance consistency and variety. To improve at anything, you need to work at it—that’s why you have a training plan of regular weekly workouts. However, if you don’t continue to challenge yourself, at a certain point, you’ll plateau. In addition to increasing the amount of weight you lift over time, you should also progress/alter a few of your exercise variations and/or tweak your rep and set schemes every four to six weeks, Centeno says.
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