Got a newbie friend

K

Karky

2
A friend of mine (female) is gonna start lifting. I took her to the gym today and showed her cable row, db military press, DB bench press, negetive pullups, RDLs and squats. (i will probobly teach her some more stuff later, bendt over rows etc.

First four were ok, last two, as expected were a bit worse. If anyone has good videos on hand please post so i can forward them to her.

As for making a program out of something like this. 3 days a week, fullbody.
She needs to work her PC and upper back more than the front, she has some posture issues.

M:
Squats
Bench
RDL
Row

W:
Squat
Military press
RDL
negative pullups (do some pulldowns instead, or both?)

F:
Squat
Bench
RDL
Row

Should i have her to RDL right after squats instead of putting the bench inbetween?
is it too much for a beginner to do squats and RDLs 3 days a week? at first she will only use the bar for the RDLs, so they wont really be that tough until she gets her form down, but after that?

she will also probobly add some planks and stuff to the end of her workouts.

any comments appritiated.
 
You will need to asess exactly what she wants to achieve. She sounds like a pretty hard out chick if shes doing some of those exercises. As a new lifter she might need a condtioning phase as well so just keep that in mind. The best way that I find to teach clients movements is to talk them through it whilst doing it yourself. That way she will think of the same things that you do. As an experienced lifter yourself you will probably be able to show her no trouble once she gets used to the whole gym idea.
 
NBS 4life said:
You will need to asess exactly what she wants to achieve. She sounds like a pretty hard out chick if shes doing some of those exercises. As a new lifter she might need a condtioning phase as well so just keep that in mind. The best way that I find to teach clients movements is to talk them through it whilst doing it yourself. That way she will think of the same things that you do. As an experienced lifter yourself you will probably be able to show her no trouble once she gets used to the whole gym idea.
Click to expand...

yeah, she wants to gain some muscle and loose some fat. I have to talk to her about what she wants to do first, though, since she is a beginner, she can probobly do both for a little while. I was thinking 3x10 for all exersices, exept the bench press, where i was thinking 2x10 so she gets more back work than chest work.

Also, for the negative pullups, they are hard, how many sets should you do? reps?

And as for conditioning, the first weeks will be with minimal weight, spechally for squats and RDLs, since those are the most "dangeoraus" exersices.
 
NBS 4life said:
You will need to asess exactly what she wants to achieve. She sounds like a pretty hard out chick if shes doing some of those exercises. As a new lifter she might need a condtioning phase as well so just keep that in mind. The best way that I find to teach clients movements is to talk them through it whilst doing it yourself. That way she will think of the same things that you do. As an experienced lifter yourself you will probably be able to show her no trouble once she gets used to the whole gym idea.
Click to expand...

yeah, she wants to gain some muscle and loose some fat. I have to talk to her about what she wants to do first, though, since she is a beginner, she can probobly do both for a little while. I was thinking 3x10 for all exersices, exept the bench press, where i was thinking 2x10 so she gets more back work than chest work.

Also, for the negative pullups, they are hard, how many sets should you do? reps?

And as for conditioning, the first weeks will be with minimal weight, spechally for squats and RDLs, since those are the most "dangeoraus" exersices.
 
If she wants to gain muscle and lose fat she should probably work in the higher end of the hypertrophy rep range so around 12. This way she gets a small ammount of muscular enduance training as well. As for the negative pull ups are we talking eccentric loading? If you are I doubt that they will be of huge benifit especially for a beginner. Have her doing normal assisted chinups with a slower eccentric pahse before you use eccentric loading. Reps should stay the same. Make sure she is doing plenty of cardio so that she dosnt get discouraged by the scale reading.
 
she cant do regular pullups, our gym doesnt have an assisted machine. Just jump up and grap and lower yourself slowly, thats what i taught her to build some strenght there. just with her BW
 
I would do the pulldowns instead of pullups or negative pullups. It's a lot easier to get the form down and comfortably pull some weight, especially for a beginner.

If she is really a beginner, having not done any or most of these before, squats and rdl's 3 times a week might be too much to start out with.

Best examples are on here imo



click on the quad area, you'll find rdls and squats.

When I've trained females before (beginners too) they've learned best (with squats) starting with bodyweight and having something (for their butt) to touch like a bench or pile of bumper plate weights when they squat. Once they got the form down, usually took a few times, then went to them holding light db's on their shoulders, could try at their sides too. The bar is difficult to get used to for a lot of people - at first.
 
I've found a lot of females like fast paced type stuff like what you'd see on cross-fit and The Bear.

Also, find that posture article by Eric Cressey at if you're concerned about her posture. Neandrathal No More.
 
yeah, i tried having her squat down to a bench, improved her form at once!

And she was pretty sore today, the day after the first day at the gym. Could i have her do only one set of each exersice as sort of a conditioning so she can ease into it?

And how many times do you think she should do RDLs compared to squats? RDLs work the PC, which she really needs.
 
You could prob. get by with 1 set of each exercise depending on intensity level for the first couple weeks, and then you'd want to bump it up by 1-2 sets. Depending on how sore she is tomorrow, you might have her do some light PC stuff, stuff like cable pullthroughs, back extensions, reverse hypers, RDLs, etc. If she's extremely sore, I might just do some cable pullthroughs for high reps to get blood flowin' back around and promote more recovery.

There's no reason why you can't just add RDLs after squatting each time or do something like A)squat B1)bench B2)RDL or you could have the RDL as the main movement twice a week and follow it up with another squat variation.

Does teh gym have a reverse hyper machine or a glute-ham raise machine? If they have a back extension machine, you should be able to use it as a GHR. Don't forget single leg variations also.

You could get by one something like
M-front squat
RDL

W-RDL
bulg squat

F-back squat
cable pullthroughs
back extensions

....just an example
 
we have something like this:

but not so much support down for the heel, i dont think you could do glute-ham raises on theone we got.

and what about rows in you're example?

and i doubt she could do many bulgarian squats. If she can only do a few, should i go with it, or wait until she is stronger?
 
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