General Lifting Advice for Beginners

Sup errbody. It's been a long time since my last post, mainly because I couldn't really think of anything useful to write about. I guess that beats writing a crappy post on a daily basis.

I've still been training hard, currently preparing for a meet on March 10th. Training has been going well so far, I've hit a few rep PRs recently:

Press 75kg 2 x 3 (form could have been better)



Bench 100kg x 5



Deadlift 215kg 2 x 4



I feel like I should be able to make good progress on the bench press this year. Anyway thats enough about me.

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I've made some observations of beginner lifters at the gym I've trained at, and the following are some tips which I believe beginners will find useful. Just to clarify, you're a beginner if you're on linear progression.

Mental Preparation

Don't do a set until you feel mentally ready. A cheesier way of describing mental preparation is 'getting into the zone'. Your body as well as your mind need to both be ready to lift the weights. Chances are, once the weights get heavy enough you will naturally find you need to psyche yourself up before the set, due to not wanting to fail the set.

How to mentally prepare is something you will have to figure out for yourself, but once you do, it will become a ritual that you perform before each PR.

Also, don't waste your rest periods. Use that time to think about your next set. Chances are if you are constantly on your phone during your rests then you aren't very focused. Get that sorted out.

Fighting Through Tough Reps

I've seen some beginners who give up too easily during a set. As soon as a rep gets hard, they give up without even putting up a fight. I've seen other cases where the beginner initially gives up on the squat for example, where they drop by about an inch then decide to keep pushing and end up getting the rep. I think the word I've used the most for beginners during their sets is "push". I tell them to keep pushing, and not to stop.

If you don't learn to push yourself your results will be suboptimal. Training is not meant to be a walk in the park. You don't go to the gym to go through the motions. Go to the gym to crush the weights.

Find The Sweet Spot For Your Bodyweight

You'll know you've hit it when progress hasn't been that great, but once you reach a certain bodyweight your lifts shoot up. This doesn't go on forever of course. Don't interprete this as the maximum bodyweight you should be at, it's more like the minimum bodyweight that lets you be strong for your height.

For example in my case, there is no way I could possibly be strong weighing 50kg. When my bodyweight was in the 70kg range, I was making steady gains on the squat and deadlift but my bench and overhead press were miserable. Once I hit the 80kg mark thats when I started making much better progress for my upper body lifts. Don't feel the need to rush to get to whatever this bodyweight may be for you, try to gain weight whilst keeping the bodyfat levels relatively constant for best results.

Remember if you don't eat, you won't grow which means you're wasting your time if putting on muscle is your goal.


This will probably be my last post for beginners unless I can think of something else to write about in the future. I have ideas for new posts which will be more targeted towards intermediate lifters, such as how to modify the Texas Method, so stay tuned!