Beginners often assume getting in shape must be complicated, time consuming, and confusing but this is completely false.
In this blog post, I’ll provide a simple, easy to follow guide to getting in shape complete with a free program and diet calculator.
Diet:
The first and most important aspect of getting in shape is your diet.
You can have the best training program in the world but, if your diet is not on point, your progress will be subpar.
To make this extremely easy for everyone, I have dropped a link to my diet calculator below. Just download the Excel document and follow the instructions in the workbook.
The basic principles of macronutrient allocation are as follows:
Bodyweight*15 = Calories to maintain current weight
Protein = 1-1.5*Lean Body Mass
Fat = 20-40% of total calories
Carbohydrates = Whatever is left over
As you can see in the snip above, these allocations will change depending on your goal and current body composition.
When using the calculator, pay special attention to the cells along the top titled “Weight”, “BF%”, and “Cal Desired”. These will be the only cells you will enter and the rest will calculate automatically.
After you enter your current weight and approximate body fat %, it will spit out your LBM, calories necessary to maintain, minimum calories you should intake for a cut (maintenance – 500), and maximum calories you should intake for a bulk (maintenance + 500).
From here, I recommend entering the “Cal Maintain” value in the “Cal Desired” cell so you’ll be starting out at maintenance calories. Most people have no idea how much they are eating/snacking so even eating correctly at maintenance can make a huge difference.
After a 1-2 weeks of maintenance, review your progress according to your goals using the mirror first, then the scale. If necessary, increase or decrease the “Cal Desired” cell by increments of 100 calories up to a max/min of 500 calories.
Using this stairstep approach will keep you from getting overly fat on a bulk or becoming skinny fat on a cut from trying to lose weight too fast.
Training:
Next, we need to determine a training plan. For this example, we will assume a 3-day/week full body split. I chose this split for the beginner for a couple of reasons; 3 days per week is easily achievable even for busy people and novice trainees respond well to full body programming.
We’ll create two training sessions, one for squats/horizontal pressing and one for hip hinge/vertical pressing. Each day will also have 2-3 assistance exercises to attack your specific weak spots.
We can designate each session as “A” and “B” respectively and they will be alternated every session. Since we are training 3x per week, your first week will look like A-B-A, the second week will look like B-A-B, the third like A-B-A again, and so on.
Simply download the training program, pick your desired exercises from the drop-down menus, and perform the prescribed sets/reps until progress halts on any given exercise. At this point, you can choose another exercise from the dropdown menu and run it out in the same fashion.
Program Modification:
After a few weeks or months when you become more experienced and in tune with your own strengths and weaknesses, you may find it beneficial to adjust the programing to fit your specific needs. The program is written as relatively balanced throughout the muscles of the body but, as you train longer, you’ll find that your body probably isn’t growing in a balanced manner.
For example, in the picture of Session A below, you can see that we have Leg Extensions programmed as an accessory exercise for the squat. If, over time, you find that you are quad dominant and your hips/glutes/hamstrings are lacking, you may want to sub out the extensions for a leg curl or hip extension exercise to target the weak body part.
This can be repeated indefinitely if general physical fitness is the only goal, or it can be replaced with a more advanced program if further results are desired.
Of course, this is a simplified model but that’s why I like it for beginners. It’ll get you in and out of the gym in less than an hour per session, costing you only ~3 hours per week, and the diet calculator gives you exact macronutrient amounts to target so there’s no guess work. It’s about as easy as it gets, you just must put in the work.
Conclusion:
Thanks for reading this far, I hope ya’ll got something out of it.
If you’re someone that would prefer in-depth guidance and coaching instead of going it alone, you can hit the link below and we’ll get a meeting set up.
https://bebetterbarbell.com/book-a-personal-training-consultation/