While lifting once per week is certainly an improvement over not exercising at all, beginners will experience significantly faster progress, with less soreness, if they lift at least twice a week rather than just once. Intermediate and advanced lifters will often see better results lifting more than 3 days a week, but for beginners lifting 2-3 days a week will give great results, and the additional benefits of lifting more will be small if any. Additionally beginners who jump straight into 4+ days of lifting are significantly more likely to experience burnout and quit after a few weeks or months. If you find yourself still wanting to lift more often after a few months feel free to add another day to your program.

At Stone and Steel Gym, we feel that resistance training, moving the body through a range of motion against resistance, is an indispensable part of good physical fitness. Resistance training improves strength, builds muscle, increases bone density, improves insulin resistance, and can be a cure for many common aches and pains like back pain. You can achieve this either through use of any form of free weights, machines, body weight exercises, or any combination. In the beginning, I recommend trying a few different variations to give you a chance to find what you enjoy. Once you've found exercises you like and that feel challenging but not painful, stick with them for a few weeks to build mastery with that movement. Once you find you're no longer making good progress with a lift consider switching to a new variation.

Doing compound exercises is very effective and time efficient, but it can also be very fatiguing. Trying to do 7+ compound exercises, with 2-4 sets each, means that you'll likely be very tired by the time you get to the last few exercises and likely won't be able to perform them well enough to get significant results for your effort. Go home, eat well, sleep well, and come back another day instead. If you've been in the gym and working hard for much more than an hour each additional 15 minutes is going to be less productive than the last.

These categories of exercises have been chosen to stimulate the greatest number of muscles in the body for the shortest time investment. These exercises also closely mimic the movement patterns that we go through every day, meaning your effort in the gym will noticeably improve your day to day life. We squat when we stand up or sit down and when climbing stairs. We overhead press when lifting groceries into the cupboard and taking items off shelves. We hinge when picking up heavy objects off the ground. We pull when picking up our kids or while carrying heavy objects. Having a balance of both pulling and pushing movements can also be key for shoulder health.

Full range of motion means that the joints involved in a lift are being moved as far their their range of motion as possible without form breakdown. For example a squat should be performed as deep as possible without rounding of the back or lifting of the heels. During a bench press the bar should touch your chest at the bottom, rather than stopping at some indeterminate point in the air.

There's three primary reasons for this. 

1.  If you want to be strong in a position, you have to exercise in that position. No number of heavy quarter depth squats are going to help you stand up off the floor. 

2. Muscles would grow fastest when stressed in their lengthened position, that stretched feeling at the bottom of a rep. One full depth squat will grow muscle more quickly than two half depth squats at the same weight.

3. Consistency. Lifts are learned skills that you'll improve at over time. Performing them consistently will improve your skill at a given lift. That consistency is also crucial for tracking your progress over time.

An ideal gym session should rarely include significantly less than 10 heavy sets, or significantly more than 20, combined across all exercises. With less than 8-10 heavy sets, you're probably leaving more results on the table. More than 20-25 and you're likely very tired at the end and probably not getting much result for your effort. Additionally you'll get better results doing at least two heavy sets of each exercise rather than just one. When doing 3-6 exercises in a session, that makes 2-4 sets each a good rule of thumb.

We recommend 8-15 reps per set for a few reasons. Research shows that anywhere between 5-30 reps per set gives the same results in terms of muscle building. While 5 reps may be enough for this reason, beginners will benefit from more practice with the movements, and more reps means more practice. Low rep sets may also carry a higher injury risk as they involve heavier weights, and beginners may not be able to carry out movements as smoothly and with good technique with heavier weights compared to with lighter weights. Very high rep sets of 20 reps or more can be very taxing on the cardiovascular system, and may result in ending the set due to cardiovascular fatigue rather than muscular fatigue. High rep sets will also result in more burn, a buildup of metabolic products in the muscle tissue, that can be very uncomfortable and may cause people not used to it to end a set early.  Sets of 8-10 on lower body exercises and 8-15 on upper body exercises are light enough for beginners to be able to maintain good technique for a set, but heavy enough to reach muscular fatigue without gassing out.

The weight you use will be dictated by finding a weight that will make it challenging to achieve your targeted number of reps. For example you will be able to squat a much heavier weight for 5 reps than you could squat for 20 reps. If you don't know how much weight to use, start light, then count how many reps you're able to complete before the individual reps begin to slow down. For example, the first press in your set may only take 1 second to complete, but as the set progresses you will fatigue and the last press may take 2 -3 seconds. Gradually increase the weight until you've found a weight that makes your targeting rep range challenging. Write this weight down. Most seasoned lifters use a notebook or app for this purpose. For your next session either keep the weight the same and try to add a rep to each set, or increase the weight and try to get the same number of reps.

Rest long enough for your breathing to return to a normal pace, and long enough where the next set will end in your target rep range because of muscular fatigue rather than because of cardiovascular fatigue. For beginners this will typically be in the range of 30 seconds to 2 minutes for upper body sets, and 1-3 minutes for lower body sets which are typically heavier. If you find yourself needing much more than 2-3 minutes rest in between sets, it may be time to add some cardio work to your routine.

Warmups can be an important part of resistance training, and are especially important as a lifter ages. A general warmup like biking or walking is a good idea if you're literally cold, but otherwise not generally necessary. The best way to warm up for an exercise is to do that same exercise at a significantly reduced weight. That will allow you to practice the movement before using heavy weights, and helps improve blood flow and joint health in the targeted areas before lifting with heavy weights. An example of a reasonable warm up before a working set of  8-10 reps of 225 lbs squats might look like 10 reps with an empty bar (45 lbs), 8 reps at 135 lbs, and 5 reps at 185 lbs.

If you've been lifting for several months and feel ready to advance, start by increasing your gym sessions to 3 - 5 a week. This increased frequency allows trainees to switch from "full body every day" programs to other training splits like upper/lower, push pull legs, and countless others. Training less body parts in a single session means trainees can do more exercises per body part and can start adding in isolation exercises. Trainees may focus on individual body parts like shoulders or legs for aesthetics or may add in sport specific training for athletic performance. In the future we'll also make free intermediate training programs available.