New to the gym

It's great a couple girls are getting involved...
I agree with the other poster about DB bench over barbell, I suggested that earlier. I agree with following female lifters on YouTube.

However, to the quoted poster....

(I was going to hold off until Angry Cucumber had posted but)

Why should she not track calories?

(Unless you are asking her to weigh her food....?) then why?

To me, that makes little sense. She'll end up eating too little and stalling quickly... Or putting unnecessary fat on.

Sure, you can have cheat days etc but you have to track calories IMO. I don't understand the logic.

Hai guys. I need help.

Just recently i got a gym membership. And it's my first time ever stepping foot into the gym. I've finally decided to make a change and get off my lazy ass.

Except, the gym is huge and i don't know what to use or how to use the equipment. It's intimidating..

So I'm 5'4 and weigh 49kg. I was at 53kg before but i've lost weight these past few months due to depression, and having next to no apettite.

Ideally i'd want to put back on those pounds but not in the form of fat. I want some muscle on my body. Not like the big hulk. But instead of gaining fat i want to gain the right amount of muscle. My goal is to tone up. I want that sexy, athletic body. I want abs. I want that big booty. I want to be strong. I feel very unfit...

I hardly eat anymore (as i said i have next to no apettite) and going to the gym and working out would lead to death *cries* So i need to work on my diet. I think i eat about 1500 calories a day...hmmm. I have an appointment with the gp, but they will probably throw some pills my way which i don't want to take. So i'm slowly trying to force myself to eat with the aid of smoothies and nuts, etc. What should a healthy diet look like btw? Oh dear, i've no idea how this works.

Ok, my main question is what workouts should i be doing. For toning the body, abs, ass, etc. Should i be lifting weights? Can someone break it down to me?

And in terms of diet, what should it look like? How much protein, carbs should i be eating everyday. And how long should the workouts be? There's just so many machines and i just don't know what is going on...

Edit: yes, i am a girl ffs. When i say muscle i meant abs on my stomach. I don't want to gain any fat...

Training: In terms of workouts, do a combination of weight-training and cardio. Weights wont get you big so have no fear of getting too bulky, they'll instead tone your muscles and the more of them you have, the easier/faster it will be to lose fat. Do compound exercises like squats, deadlifts, push ups and dumbbell/barbell rows. Don't worry about the fear of neglecting all the fancy equipment in the gym; most of it is useless imo, stick mainly to free weights and bodyweight exercises. As for cardio, I'd recommend either running, rowing, squash or another sport you enjoy. To begin with aim for 3 full body workouts per week lasting about 45mins-1 hr. Aim to do 30-45mins of daily cardio.

Diet: To begin with just cut out the excess crap from your diet like sugars, fats etc and replace them with lean proteins, carbs and vegetables, for example, chicken, turkey, eggs, sweet potatoes, brown rice, spinach, broccoli, avocado, nuts, oatmeal etc.. Keep hydrated, thats a given. As for the total calories you should consume daily, for your build I'd say 1500-2000 but that really depends on your progress; you know your body best so for example if you're putting on excess fat if eating x amount of calories, cut down slightly to a smaller number and if that works then continue with that - if it doesn't keep experimenting, common sense really.

Finally be patient. Transformations don't happen overnight as most adverts/health magazines claim

I'm turning 19. What's the ideal weight for someone my age? I used to eat a lot more but eating has become more of a chore than anything now. I don't really keep track of the amount of calories, i just eat whatever my mum cooks so 1500 is a rough estimate. But i will keep track and try to eat 2000 calories.

So wait, all i'll be doing in the gym is lifting weights? I won't be using any of the machines or anything? Ok, i'm guessing that site is more useful with asking fitness questions, etc. Will do.
30 min would feel like i've done nothing but i guess i'm gonna have to start slow eh...

Okay disregard some of the info I told you previously, thought you were a girl sorry

You need to eat man! At least 2500-3000 calories per day of the foods I mentioned above. Focus on compound lifts at the gym and progressive overload, ie aiming to overload your muscles by adding more weight to your lifts whilst maintaining strict form to ensure you're targeting the right muscles. Add bench press, pull ups, dips and overhead presses to the exercises above and stick to the rep range 6-10, basically all compound lifts. As you seem to struggle to gain weight, cut down on cardio. Don't cut it completely (do say 30mins a day) but focus more on the weights and getting stronger/bigger, do too much cardio and you'll lose your gains. And finally don't listen to that bodybuilding bull**** site, some of the info is true granted but most is outdated broscience. Good luck

Would i not need a regime to follow or something. Do you know where i can find a begginers training programme?

I can't even do one pushup -_- Oh dear...

Very useful advice. Thanks

Hey OP
I'm a similar weight to you, I'm around 5ft 6/7, so your weight is pretty good
I would avoid cardio if you want to gain muscle mass, this means avoiding cross trainers and running machines
If you want to gain weight in the form of muscle first you have to be eating right, this doesnt mean shoving a load of chocolate bars down your throat haha, it means eating healthy foods, mostly protein, (this should make up about 40% if not more of your diet) So like fish, meat, eggs etc, you will start to gain weight if you go up to about 2000 cal a day instead of 1500, but if you do regular exercise this weight gain will go to muscle and tone soon
I would avoid doing dead lifts and any free weights towards the beginning as you dont know your own strength so you could injure yourself if you dont know what you're doing, just get comfortable with everything first before doing this, or you can go with someone else to spot you depending on what you're doing (so basically steer clear of the section with all the buff guys checking themselves out in the mirror)

Squats (weighted if theyre too easy) for ass, do donkey kicks (weighted if theyre too easy), also thrusts with a weight is a good one. There should be machines that also work out your bum. Once you're comfortable with those you can try out smith machines and one rep max's but be with someone else if you're doing those
Abs can vary from sit ups to plank, there are loads of exercises you can do, just do a lot of repetitions of those
Basically just experiment with what you have at the gym, try out a load of stuff and find out what works for you best)

Right.....
She's female people.

Who cares about 'ideal' weight...

Get 'myfitnesspal' then set it with a goal weight higher than your own say by 7 pounds and bulk by 250 calories above maintenance a day. So the app will automatically put your goal daily calories at 250 above if you put "gain half a pound per week"
Track all exercise and food. It is pretty useful and will sort most of this for you

Listen to advice from Maths astrology re lifting.

Squat, deadlift, bench. (I use DBs for bench as easier if on own)

Honestly, people are nice in the gym.

You could do rows as he suggested or the lat pull down machine.
Pull ups etc are probably best but idk if you could do them just yet (not trying to be patronising here).

Basically avoid isolation exercise which will do **** all.
Those aforementioned exercises will build muscle on ass, legs etc. Build core strength so abs would develop (not like a mans but definition would show etc)

You can chuck in some abdominal work if you so wish but it's largely insignificant, focus on core strength through compound exercises.
You could use the leg press machine (only real machine I'd recommend) but no need if you are deadlifting and squating.

Mass gain will be slow with only half a pound a week. After 12-16 weeks (maybe more) you will look much better. Go on a brief cut of say 500 kcal a day for a couple weeks and you'll strip the fat away (won't be much anyway) and you're good to bulk again. Rinse repeat and you'll look good. I make it sound easy but if you stick at it and keep progressing you will improve. Expect progress to be slow but I'm 9 months on and it feels like just something I do whereas, it felt like a chore at times initially.

Any further questions, feel to ask. You're getting good advice above.

Good luck

Yay. A girl

I have just been told my weight is underweight? *confused*

Oh, so i should avoid the free weights at first. And free weights are what? Dumbells? And i should experiment with the other stuff and see what's comfortable. And do those exercises you recommended. And avoid the cardio. Got it

Yeah ffs it is all different for a woman looool. RIP. Oh well... some applied

Well I've got some years experience in training weights and boxing. If you want to achieve the lean & toned look like this:


Then the training has to be 50% cardiovascular like jogging, swimming or skipping rope. and the other 50% is what gives you the tight-skin definition, this is where resistance training (ie. machines or free weights) come in to play.

I'll try my best to indict you to resistance training in this paragraph, it's not really that complicated. First of all, the whole point of this training is to get your muscles tired, there are two ways to do this: 1) Rip the muscle fibres by lifting large weights in 5-8 repetitions (reps) or option 2) exhaust the muscle and ligament by lifting a lighter weight for 15-25 reps. The difference between the two is that option 1 results in more muscle mass and size, which is how males generally train. However option 2 will result in your muscles becoming more dense and compact, thus giving you a toned physique. Now if your going for option 2 then you should aim for 3 "sets" per exercise and 6-9 exercises per workout, you should take no more than a 30 second break in between sets,(your gym will likely have clocks on every wall to make this easy) so your muscles don't lose their blood flow and your heart rate stays up... Also, over-training is a clear and present danger that hinder your progress, your workout should ideally be 45 minutes long... at the most it should be an hour because any more time than that and you actually lose progress.

Now for how to actually do the exercises: There are actually hundreds of different exercises you can make up with free weights, so long as it takes effort it will strengthen your muscles but generally; they fall under five categories:

-Curling, a motion where you contract a hinge joint, meaning you bend your elbow or knee to bring your hand/foot closer to your body. Curling your arms will train your bicep and curling your legs will train your hamstring (rear-thigh) as a girl, you'd probably be more keen on leg curls, which can only be done comfortably on a machine (usually labelled 'leg curl'

-Rowing, a motion where you pull something towards your chest.. this can be done while standing up (upright row) or bent over, the most common type is in a seated position where you pull on a cable that is suspended at a similar height as your shoulders, this is the exercise that I reckon the girl in the above picture ^^ uses frequently to achieve that lean back.muscle (proper name: Latissimus dorsi)

-Pressing, a motion where you push something away from your chest, this will mainly train your pectorals which always makes a girls chest look better and healthier. Another muscle it slightly trains is the triceps which is the back of your arm, a key area for women as this usually contains large amounts of fatty tissue, women who neglect training their arms can suffer from hideous amounts of flab in later life so I highly recommend it, but not with weights, your better off simply doing press-ups (aka push-ups)

-Squatting, this one is pretty well known and obvious as to what it trains: mainly Glutes and Quadraceps, with the help of the calves, lower back and core for stability, this exercise is a cocktail of desirable muscles for females and definitely the most common one I see women doing at the gym. Be sure to practice this with no weight first, then using bar with no weights attached and working your way up in small increments as this exercise is probably the most accident-prone I've seen

-Extending, this is just like curling, but the opposite. So you can do this with your arms and legs, however the extending motion will train the "evil-twin" muscles that you train when curling, these are known as "antagonistic muscles" because they do the exact opposite of each other. Anyway, the muscle you train in arm extensions is the tricep, again a key muscle for women. and Leg Extensions train the quadriceps, which are a grey area for women. I really like a girl with big quads but a lot of guys don't , at the end of the day it's up to you.



So now you know how to do it, but what equipment do you use?

firstly, there are 3 methods of resistance training, all with their pros and cons:

-Rubber Bands, (no joke, they're rubber and called 'resistance bands'
-Free Weights
-Machines

as your a beginner, I recommend you stay away from free weights for at least two months because the last thing you want is to have an injury. The machines are pretty straight-forwards, most of them will be labelled with instructions and a picture that shows which part of your body it trains (usually in red). All you have to do is find the part that can be pushed/pulled on and follow the instruction label... or just sit around watching people do it and copy them be sure to adjust the seat height if it's possible as your 5'4 that might require you raising the seat on many occasions.

hope this helps... also it's really important that you keep your diet clean and consistent... try to have breakfast at the same time everyday and always have a clean meal 30 minutes to an hour after the end of your workout

Yeah just until you know your strengths and weaknesses
Definitely have someone with you if you're doing one rep max's (eg trying to squat as much as you physically can once) because you can drop the bar and if no ones spotting you you can really hurt yourself

Cardio will make you lose any fat you have but wont convert it to muscle, so you're end up losing weight so I wouldnt advice that
The machines are very easy to use once you get the hang of them, start off at a really light weight until you it becomes mildly difficult and focus on that one and do however many repetitions you think is necessary.
Once you know your way around the gym then try out the main section (free weight etc), I'm only saying that because you wont know what to do and what goes where so observe everyone there and what they do etc to know how to use all the free weights and seats etc in the main section before trying it out yourself rather than bowling in and messing up haha
I think your weight is absolutely fine, so I dont think you need to focus on gaining loads of weight, but of course try to if you want more muscle mass etc
Very few womenly advice on here to do with gym I've noticed haha

Oh no, i don't want to look like that girl. That would be a nightmare. If i didn't see her hair i would have thought it was a man from the back 0.o


You have broken it all down for me and made everything sooo very simple.

Thanks!

You are most welcome.

Get the app (it's free) and then you don't have to aim for a number etc and just guess. It will give you (as accurate as it can be) an aim for you calorie wise and then it makes it easy. Literally 3 mins per day and know how near to target I am.

Give it a few weeks and weight yourself just to see. (Weight yourself a few times, ie a few days in a row to get an idea) and if you are say 2 lbs up after 4 weeks then your spot on.

Cut = losing weight (namely fat, trying to keep muscle as far as possible)

Bulk= increase weight (namely muscle but small increases in fat will occur. Doesn't look bad as the increased muscle makes it look ok. V easy to cut away. Dw haha)

No, no. You'd notice results quickly. Say 4 weeks? (Maybe less) Ie better ass, better stomach, more defined arms, better curves etc.

But proper beach body.... Then longer.

I'm sorry but I'm not female so can't say but what I can say is I used to be over a stone lighter (at same fat levels ie slim) 8/9 months ago. My point is I look much, much better.

So you will be better in 2-4 weeks, but in several months after bulking and then cutting (once you feel you have a slight bit of stomach fat) you'll look really much better.

Once you nail what you are doing it's just rinse repeat

You getting some contradictory advice....

Personally, do cardio if you want. Not essential (just means you have to eat more...) maybe do some but i personally wouldn't do loads.

Make sure you rest. Don't go more than 4 times a week.

Hopefully one of the really experienced people on here link to a beginner programme but this is my advice:

Read the FAQ at the top of the fitness section. This will answer lots and lots of your questions.
After reading come back and ask away

Please read it. Will help a LOT

At the top of the fitness section it will say "sub forums"
Click on that. It'll have 'fitness blogs' as an option...
Create a blog. People will jump in and help you. There are some women but a lot of guys will give you great advice.

Read FAQ at top (I wish I'd said this earlier... Would have saved you a lot of confusion. V knowledgeable people compiled it...)

Hey! You've gotten some great advice already - I just wanted to add that you may want to start with dumbbell chest press before going onto the bench press. It allows you to start on a lower weight if you need to and I find it makes you have a more stable form. Every exercise has a tutorial for good form somewhere on youtube so check that out if you're ever unsure. Starting with your compound exercises (squats, deadlifts, etc.) is a good place to start.

Depending on your gym, you may be able to have staff come over to help you with learning new exercises or writing a programme. I go to quite a small, friendly gym so I know everyone that works there and often ask them for advice, help with any problems I have or just for a spot if I need one. There's no harm in asking for help It can also be helpful to go with more experienced friends as they can do the same.

Also just as a side note, I often get inspiration for new exercises from fitness youtubers. If you're looking for females then I'd recommend Jazmine Garcia, ChelseaLifts, Josia Mai (she's also great for diet) and MegSquats.

Good luck!

It's great a couple girls are getting involved...
I agree with the other poster about DB bench over barbell, I suggested that earlier. I agree with following female lifters on YouTube.

However, to the quoted poster....

(I was going to hold off until Angry Cucumber had posted but)

Why should she not track calories?

(Unless you are asking her to weigh her food....?) then why?

To me, that makes little sense. She'll end up eating too little and stalling quickly... Or putting unnecessary fat on.

Sure, you can have cheat days etc but you have to track calories IMO. I don't understand the logic.

Free weights are a must, dumbbells come on the side. Machines are to be avoided for the most part

This whole stay away from free weights things as you're a girl is so so so daft. Only way you can build muscle and true strength is with a barbell. Yeah some people use dumbbells and machines mostly but for 99% of people the most effective way is with a barbell. The whole injury thing is over blown.

They're ok fitness channels, but I think female lifting is still in it's infancy on YT. Too much product placement and oooh look at what x company sent me vs actual content

Where are you getting this information from? Every form of resistance training can build muscle if you use the right form. don't blast out with naive information because some of your advise is just made up in your head, it's bs!

I don't think that you can pin product placement onto just female lifters - it's just as common on all fitness channels and every other type of videos on youtube. I personally don't have a problem with it - if I don't want Quest bars or a Gymshark discount code then I don't have to take note.

I agree with you that the female lifting community still has room to grow, and if product placement bothers you then that's fair enough. However I still value it as a resource for exercise ideas and I find it really motivating to see girls lifting more than me as it gives me something to aspire to

Free weights are a must, dumbbells come on the side. Machines are to be avoided for the most part

Only way you can build muscle and true strength is with a barbell. Yeah some people use dumbbells and machines mostly but for 99% of people the most effective way is with a barbell. The whole injury thing is over blown.

It's great a couple girls are getting involved...
I agree with the other poster about DB bench over barbell, I suggested that earlier. I agree with following female lifters on YouTube.

However, to the quoted poster....

(I was going to hold off until Angry Cucumber had posted but)

Why should she not track calories?

(Unless you are asking her to weigh her food....?) then why?

To me, that makes little sense. She'll end up eating too little and stalling quickly... Or putting unnecessary fat on.

Sure, you can have cheat days etc but you have to track calories IMO. I don't understand the logic.