Often the keenest of all among gym converts and newly-christened fitness enthusiasts are young men wishing to lift their way to greater strength and muscle mass.

It is this type of male that inhabits the majority of gym space the world over, and it is definitely from this particular group of participants that I receive the most free-weights and gym-related queries in my inbox.

I once firmly fitted into this profile myself, which makes it very easy for me to relate to. Up to the age of 21, I was obsessed with the gym and wanted nothing more than excessive amounts of muscular size and strength. Sadly, my efforts were often hopelessly misguided, but nevertheless, I lifted on.

I recently jokingly remarked that had I known how to train properly back then, I probably would have bulked up to a pudgy 120 kilos or so. In a way, it’s a good thing I didn’t. Like many beginners, I spent several years chasing my tail, with too much enthusiasm and too little patience.

Sometimes, the restlessness itself can be our own worst enemy as we bounce around from one programme to another, from one training philosophy to the next, always hoping to stumble across that secret system that delivers extreme results in impossibly short periods of time.

I was asked what the most effective way to train is for those young gym enthusiasts just starting out. It’s a topic near and dear to me, simply because I can remember so clearly how I felt the first time I ever picked up a weight.

I was instantly hooked, passionate, perhaps too much. Even if some of the many mentors I crossed paths with could have shown me the right way, I prob-ably wouldn’t have listened anyway, allowing their messages to become diluted or corrupted by the mass of other conflicting opinions I would so fervently seek.

I keep this in mind when offering advice nowadays, and don’t take it to heart if such advice isn’t implemented precisely as given.

Nevertheless, I always catch myself with a hint of a smile, nostalgic, thinking back to those first exciting steps I took into a commercial gym on my 16th birthday. So what would I have done differently?

Perhaps the best assistance I could give to those beginners seeking advice without appearing like Mr know-it-all is to simply explain how I would have done it differently back then, knowing what I know now.

Beginners should remember that muscle and strength are built outside the gym, while resting and eating

The first major change is to do away with what we call ‘split routines’. In our boundless enthusiasm, we tend to rush out and attempt to train just as the professionals do. Elite bodybuilders and fitness models split their routines up by muscle group, performing multiple exercises per muscle group on different days.

This works for them at a particular stage of their career. However, perhaps the most valuable lesson a beginner could learn is that, whatever stage we find ourselves at, we have to train appropriately to that stage. So in other words, what works for a professional will not necessarily work for a beginner.

If I could do it all over again, I would stop wasting time learning more exercises for each body part and instead work on learning the primary exercises properly: those exercises that will give you more bang for your buck. And while we’re on that subject, the silliest thing I ever did was neglect training the legs, or more precisely, the squat. No other single exercise gives you more, and here is the hardest part for beginners to accept. Even when it comes to upper-body development, nothing beats the squat.

If there was actually a secret to tell, this would be it. Stick with the squats long enough to find out for yourself. Perfecting squat or bench press techniques to the point where the exercises can be performed heavily and effectively delivers far more returns than performing the same exercises poorly, while attempting to compensate with other fancy but essentially unimportant exercises.

Performing a simple selection of exercises, such as squats, bench presses, weighted pull-ups, shrugs and an array of core exercises with good technique and in the same ‘full-body routine’ all on the same day, would have delivered results far quicker and more dramatically than all the other complicated routines I enthusiastically yet frustratingly employed.

Employing the principle of progressive overload gradually over time while allowing enough time between sessions to recover is the key. Twice a week would have given me far more results than the four and sometimes five sessions per week I attempted to follow.

Something else I would certainly have changed would be nutrition. And when I say nutrition, I don’t mean rushing out and buying the latest and greatest pricey nutritional supplements or trying to find out what the next big wonder pill or potion might be, but rather to invest that time actually eating generous servings of good, nutritious food to support the big gym sessions and subsequent recovery periods.

Beginners should remember that muscle and strength are built outside the gym, while resting and eating. What we do in the gym itself is merely the stimulus.

It kickstarts a process, one by which our bodies transform from those of normal men to those of beasts capable of squatting, pushing and pulling extreme amounts of weight.

matthew.muscat.inglott@mcast.edu.mt