If you need a simple bodyweight exercise that gets your heart rate up and also builds strength in your entire body, meet the mountain climber.
It’s a classic exercise you’ve probably done before, and fitness pros love it because it will strengthen your core while simultaneously working on your cardio and muscular endurance. This move is a great addition to any ab workout, especially if you’ve already mastered beginner ab moves like crunches and planks. And it’s a great addition to any HIIT workout because it’ll have you out of breath in no time. Mountain climbers also make a great warmup exercise, especially when paired with some other mobility drills.
Curious how to do them, exactly? Keep reading to better understand the benefits of mountain climbers, which muscles are worked by mountain climbers, some variations on mountain climbers, and how to do mountain climbers with correct form so you can get the most out of this exercise.
Benefits of Mountain Climbers
Mountain climbers are a great compound movement, Cristina Chan, certified trainer at F45 Training, says. Compound moves are ones that work multiple large muscle groups, which translates to strengthening more muscles at once, as well as increasing the demand you’re putting on your body.
Mountain climbers, specifically, “help with strengthening big muscle groups like your hamstrings, quads, back, shoulders, and glutes, as well as your core,” she says. Yep, with all those muscles worked by mountain climbers, they’re basically a full-body exercise.
Think about it this way: mountain climbers are essentially a plank variation, so you can expect to strengthen the same muscles as during that exercise (i.e., your shoulders, upper back, and core). Since you’re essentially running in place while in a stable plank position, this exercise also builds leg strength. And, as a cardio move, mountain climbers also get your heart rate up and increase your cardiovascular endurance – these things come with a laundry list of their own benefits, such as a boosted mood and better heart health, according to the Cleveland Clinic.
How to Do Mountain Climbers
Chan has plenty of tips to help you make sure you’re doing mountain climbers with proper form. First of all, “make sure you stay in a plank position, and keep your hips at shoulder height throughout the entire exercise set,” she says. Also, “keep distance between you and the ground by pushing up through your shoulder blades and engaging your core. As you bring one knee in, make sure your opposite leg is extended straight while you engage through your glute and leg muscles.” And finally, if it’s cardio you’re after, “keep a faster tempo if you want more of a cardio burn,” she says. Ready?
Here’s how to do mountain climbers, step by step.
Start in a plank with your shoulders directly over your wrists. Keep your back flat and your hips down, maintaining a neutral spine.
Engage your core, and lift your right leg, drawing your knee in toward your chest. Return the right foot to the starting position as you simultaneously drive your left knee toward your chest. Return to the starting position.
Continue alternating sides. To increase the intensity, pick up the pace until it feels like you’re “running” in place in a plank position.
If you are new to mountain climbers or exercise in general, are rebuilding your skills after a hiatus from the gym, or just want to make mountain climbers a little less intense, try slow-motion mountain climbers. By dialing down the pace, you’ll reduce the cardiovascular demands of the move but really hone in on the core work you’re doing. Here’s how.
Start in a plank with your shoulders directly over your wrists. Keep your back flat and your hips down, maintaining a neutral spine.
Engage your core, and lift your right leg, drawing your knee in toward your chest. Hold this position for one second, then return the right foot to the starting position.
Repeat with the left leg, driving your left knee toward your chest, holding for one second, and then returning to the starting position.
Continue alternating sides without speeding up the pace.
Add a literal twist to your mountain climbers with this variation (shown above). By rotating your hips slightly, you’ll place more of a demand on your obliques, the muscles that run along the sides of your core. These muscles are responsible for twisting your torso, bending it to the side, and also giving it stability.
Start in a plank with your shoulders directly over your wrists. Keep your back flat and your hips down, maintaining a neutral spine.
Engage your core, and lift your right leg, drawing your knee in toward your chest and over to your left elbow. Return the right foot to the starting position.
Repeat with the left leg, driving your left knee toward your chest and over to the right elbow, and then return to the starting position.
Continue alternating sides. Speed up the pace if you’d like, taking care to move with control.
Not to be confused with the Spider-Man push-up (a mountain climber/push-up hybrid), the spider mountain climber is a more intense mountain climber that also happens to be a great hip mobility exercise. Make sure you do a thorough warm up before tackling this one.
Start in a plank with your shoulders directly over your wrists. Keep your back flat and your hips down, maintaining a neutral spine. Step your right foot up and outside of your right hand so it’s planted on the ground. Keep your hips low and in plank position.
Jump to switch sides, hopping your right foot back to plank position and your left foot forward outside of your left hand.
Continue alternating sides. Speed up the pace if you’d like, taking care to move with control.
Mountain Climber Variation: Plank With Bunny Hop
This mountain climber variation is not for the faint of heart. You’ll engage your entire core, plus your arms, shoulders, back, quads, and glutes, helping to strengthen the muscles in virtually your entire body. And the jumping motion acts as a plyo workout, getting your heart rate up so you can enjoy some cardio benefits too. Give it a try, but if it’s too hard to complete a full set, pat yourself on the back for trying – this is an advanced move. Finish out the rest of the set with a regular plank or a body saw instead, and keep trying to work your way up to a full set instead.
Begin in a plank position with the feet together.
Pulling your abs in, jump your feet to the right, bringing your knees toward your right elbow. Your torso will twist to the right.
Jump your feet back to plank to complete one rep.
Repeat on the other side, and continue alternating sides for 20 reps total.
– Additional reporting by Jenny Sugar and Mirel Zaman
Lauren Mazzo was the senior fitness editor at POPSUGAR. She is a certified personal trainer and fitness nutrition specialist through the American Council on Exercise. Prior to joining POPSUGAR, she worked for six years as a writer and editor for Shape Magazine covering health, fitness, nutrition, mental health, sex and relationships, beauty, and astrology.
Jenny Sugar was a staff fitness writer at POPSUGAR. She loves eating plant-based, CrossFit, and yoga.
I realize doing those three things is much easier said than done – I struggled with progress for a decade and know exactly what you’re going through if you’re feeling unsure.
You probably don’t have years to make the mistakes that I did, and you just want to start getting results today.
In addition to the free resources below, we provide a free bodyweight routine, and a comprehensive gym training routine to get you started with strength training in our free guide, Strength Training 101: Everything You Need to Know. Grab your guide when you sign up in the box below:
Download our comprehensive guide
Everything you need to know about getting strong.
Workout routines for bodyweight AND weight training.
How to find the right gym and train properly in one.
But enough of that, let’s get into the nitty-gritty of how to get started with strength training!
If you are going to build muscle, you’re going to need to lift heavy things.
But what the heck does ‘heavy’ mean in this context? I’m so glad you asked!
Muscle-building is optimized when we perform exercises (bodyweight or weighted) within 1 to 3 reps of failure while maintaining good technique. (i.e. You could do 1 or 2 or 3 more repetitions of the exercise using a specific weight, but not more.) Usually, you’ll repeat this effort for multiple sets targeting multiple muscles in a workout.
That’s what we mean by ‘heavy’ – that you picked the right amount of weight to challenge yourself for the desired number of reps. (We’ll get into exact sets and reps in a bit.) This is the sweet spot where you’re muscles will want to rebuild bigger and stronger than before!
You can target your muscles with a wide variety of exercises. Free weights, machines, and bodyweight exercises are ALL good options as long as you can adhere to the guidelines we laid out above. [4]
While you can grow muscle using any type of strength-training exercise, having access to a gym with free weights and weight machines makes leveling up your muscle-building game all the easier. Increasing or decreasing the weight used in an exercise is probably the easiest way to get the exact right amount of stimulus your muscles need to grow. (Don’t have access to a gym? Take heart – our bodyweight workout will get you started on the right path.)
Some useful pieces of equipment to look out for:
Squat rack
Bench
Barbells
Dumbbells
Assortment of weight machines (like a cable pulldown machine)
A spot to do pull-ups or chin-ups (assisted or unassisted)
A spot to do dips (assisted or unassisted)
(Want even more ideas on how to find the right gym? Check out our Beginner’s Guide to the Gym for everything you need to know.)
Even having access to a few of these pieces of equipment will help us target an efficient and effective full-body routine to maximize your results.
We’ll show you exactly how to put together a full-body routine with compound exercises that train multiple muscle groups at once. They’re efficient, they create solid growth and stimulation, and they will keep you safe.[5]
To create our full-body routine, each workout will start with one leg exercise, push exercise, pull exercise, and a core exercise:
When should I add in isolation exercises like bicep curls, tricep extensions, calf raises, etc.?
You can add these in whenever you want to, though we recommend starting with the workout we laid out above FIRST and getting consistent with that. Muscle-building isn’t just about picking the right exercises and the right weights, it’s about building the habit of working out! If you try to do ALL THE THINGS at the very beginning, you’re increasing the risk that we won’t be able to make the habit stick. So start with compound exercises that give you the biggest bang for your buck, THEN sprinkle in isolation exercises that target your specific areas of need once you’ve got your rhythm. [6]
What about machines versus free weights? I’ve heard free weights are better…
Not true! (And this is something that we’ve changed our stance on over the years.) If a machine exercise feels safer, is more easily accessible to you, and targets the same muscles – go for it! [7]
Learn these few exercises, get really good at them, and your entire body will get stronger and bigger. Focus each week on adding more weight to each exercise.[8]
For example, from one week to the next you could do:
Week 1 Barbell Squat: 3 sets of 5 at 150 lbs.
Week 2 Barbell Squat: 3 sets of 5 at 155 lbs.
If you do that, you’ve gotten stronger. Then, repeat next week. Eat right, and you’ll get bigger too.
Bottom line: if you want to get bigger muscles, you need to challenge them regularly with exercises that bring the muscle close to failure (1 to 3 reps). To start, we recommend picking big, compound movements that work multiple muscles at a time.
Each day has a leg exercise, push exercise, pull exercise, and some core work.
Besides having rest and recovery days in between MWF, adequate rest intervals have been established in the workout itself!
By following the leg exercise, push exercise, pull exercise, and core exercise routine you will maximize rest in-between each exercise, therefore, limiting muscular fatigue and allowing you to perform each strength training exercise to its fullest extent.[9]
I know what you’re thinking: that Steve is very clever.
While it’s possible to build out the perfect routine on your own, many of our Rebels end up spending hours and hours building something custom – only to realize it isn’t what they need (or isn’t effective) weeks and months later for their goals.
For people who want to avoid that altogether, we built the solution – our uber-popular 1-on-1 coaching program pairs you with your own Nerd Fitness Coach who will get to know you, your goals, and your lifestyle, and handcraft a workout plan that’s specific to not only your body, but also to your schedule and life.
Click on the image below to schedule a call with our team to see if we’re a good fit for each other!
For beginners, we recommend starting in the 5 – 15 reps range to increase both size and strength. (If you want to focus on more strength than size, stick to the lower end of that range.)
As you get more advanced, you may find that it’s beneficial to do up to 30 reps of an exercise. (Though 90% of your work will still be in that 5 – 15 rep range.) The biggest drawback to higher rep ranges like this is it can be hard to target specifically that “1 to 3 reps before failure” when the rep count is so high. [10][11]
If you get bored, want to change things up, or you’re looking to bust through a plateau, you can do the following:
This week, I might do 3 sets of 12 reps for each exercise (other than the core exercises), adding enough weight to each exercise so that it’s incredibly taxing.
Next week, I’ll do four sets for each exercise, adding weight each time and doing less reps.
For example, I’ll do an overhead press in the following sequence:
100 pounds: 12 reps
105 pounds: 10 reps
110 pounds: 8 reps
115 pounds: 6 reps
The good news is that no matter which path you take (pure strength, size, or a mix of both), as long as you are adding weight each week – and eating enough – you WILL be getting stronger.[12]
ANY path will work, provided you are progressively overloading your muscles with an increased challenge!
Progressive overload involves exerting slightly more effort than last time (lift a heavier weight or do 1 more rep) consistently.
Your muscles will have to adapt and rebuild themselves to get stronger. So in order to see improvements, your training must gradually and constantly increase.
We just have to make sure we get the right pace!
According to Mike Rebold from Hiram College:
Keep in mind that if the overload increases too quickly, poor technique and injury may result. And if the overload progresses too slowly, improvements will be minimal or non-existent.
Slowly but gradually increasing your challenge could look like:
If you do 5 sets of 5 squats at 140 pounds this week, aim for 5 sets of 5 of 145 pounds next week.
Or if you’re doing 3 sets of 10 at 100 pounds, then next week try for 3 sets of 10 at 105 pounds.
Get stronger, which is 20% of the puzzle. The other 80% is nutrition (which I cover later)!
#1) Warm-up before exercising – don’t walk into a gym, slap 45-pound plates on the bar, and then start your routine.
Get your heart rate up and muscles warm first by doing a dynamic warm-up of jumping jacks, lunges, bodyweight squats, hip raises, push-ups, leg swings, jumps, etc.
After that, always start with doing a set or two of lifting JUST THE BAR.[13] Only then should you start adding weight for some warm-up sets before moving into your work sets.
However, if you do a barbell squat incorrectly with 405 pounds on your shoulders, you could do some serious damage. If you’re just starting out, check your ego at the door: start with a VERY light weight and make sure you are doing the exercise properly.
There is NO SHAME in starting with just the bar. You can always add more weight next week if this week is too easy.
#3) Stimulate, don’t annihilate – I try to always have one more rep left when I finish a set.
Some trainers will preach working your muscles to annihilation, but I think that’s just asking for an injury, poor form, and beyond-sore muscles.
Your muscles get built while resting, not in the gym, so don’t worry about destroying them completely each day you step in the gym – it’s not worth it.[14]
#4) Change up the time between sets – if you’re doing 3 sets of 5 reps of a really heavy weight, it’s okay to wait 3-5 minutes between sets – you’re focusing on pure strength here.
If you’re doing sets in the 8-12 range, try to keep the time between sets around a minute or so. This will affect your muscles in different ways. The most important thing is to rest long enough that you can give the same level of effort as you did in the previous set.
Just be consistent between sets and when doing the same workout between weeks to track your progress.[15]
#5) Don’t overdo it – More does not mean better in weightlifting. You don’t need to spend two hours in the gym, you don’t need to do 15 different kinds of chest exercises.
My routines last no longer than 45 minutes, I only do three or four sets (after warm-up sets) for each exercise, and it’s enough to stimulate muscle growth. I only need to add more if my growth plateaus or stops, and before I do that I make sure my intensity, diet, and recovery are dialed in FIRST. [16]
Three workouts a week is a great place for most to start – we’ve had clients build muscle on anywhere from 2 days a week to 4 days a week using a full-body routine like this! You need to give your muscles time to regrow bigger – remember muscles are made in the kitchen![17]
Less is often more – just make your routines really intense and exhausting.[18]
#6) Write down everything – Keep a training journal, and write down exactly how many sets and reps you did for every exercise.
That way, you can compare how you did this time with how you did last time. You’ll know how much more you need to lift this week to make sure you’re stronger than last week.
#7) Follow a routine, have a plan. The best thing you can do is have a plan to follow and stick with it![19]
HOw Many Calories Should I Eat To Gain Muscle (and Which Supplements)
If you’ve been lifting weights for a while “but can’t seem to gain weight,” then you are not eating enough – it’s that simple.[20]
I thought I was one of those people who just could never gain weight…and then I learned it was all diet, started eating 4,000 calories a day, and I put on 18 pounds in 30 days.
Yeah, I wanted to throw up from always eating along with three Muscle Milk shakes a day, but it worked.
Looking back I would have done things differently, but after 6 years of exercising without putting on any weight, it was great to see so much progress in such a short period of time.
4,000 calories sounds freaking insane, right? I know.
It makes eating a full-time job.
You’ll always either cooking, eating, or cleaning up after yourself.
But if you really want to get bigger and you’re struggling to do so, then all of your effort is going to have to go into eating more, eating healthier, and eating ALL THE TIME.
PART #1: Eat More – To gain weight, you’re going to need to seek a calorie surplus (i.e., hypercaloric diet). This can be achieved by consuming an additional 250-500 kcal/day or 10-20% above your typical diet.
You can get an estimate of how much you need to eat to just MAINTAIN your weight in our free calculator here.
When I first realized I wasn’t eating enough, I did it the hard way and just started adding in anything I could.
Pasta
Rice
Pizza
Milk
Hamburgers
Chicken
Protein shakes
Whatever.
This is how I went from 162-180 pounds in 30 days. I’m not proud of how I ate, but it produced results and I remained healthy and strong.[21]
PART #2: Eat enough protein – With all the hard training you’re doing, you want to not only gain weight but make sure your body has the resources to turn as much of that weight as possible into muscle.
That’s why we put together this handy protein calculator for you – so you can maximize your gains! For most people, targeting between 0.7-1.0g/lb of bodyweight gets you in the optimal muscle-building range.
If you’re not used to eating a lot of protein, that can be a struggle! Never fear we have more resources for you. In our Protein 101 Guide, we talk about sources of protein and simple ways to include more in your diet. Protein shakes can be another way to quickly and easily boost your protein intake.
“Which Supplements Should I Take to Build Muscle Quickly?”
As we lay out in our Nerd Fitness Supplement Guide, most supplements are a waste of money and completely unnecessary for building muscle.
However, there are two supplements that CAN BE helpful in building muscle quickly:
Protein Shakes: If you are struggling to hit your protein and calorie intake goals for the day, adding in a high-calorie protein shake can be a game-changer.[23]
Creatine Supplements: Creatine helps your muscles retain water and can improve your performance, allowing you to push harder, for longer, in the gym.[24]
I get this question all the time in emails, usually from guys who are 6 feet tall and 130 pounds.
Don’t worry, if you can’t gain weight now, putting on extra weight is going to be great for you.
Yes, you will put on SOME fat along with the muscle you’re building if you’re running a calorie surplus.
This is why picking the right amount of calories per day is important:
If you can build muscle at 3,000 calories, but you’re eating 4,000 calories, you’ll put on a pound or two of fat per week along with your muscle.
However, if you need to eat 4,000 calories to build muscle and you’re only eating 3,000, you won’t see any changes.
Everybody is different, so you need to experiment and find out what works best for you.[27]
Once you get to your desired weight (actually, aim for about 10-15 pounds heavier than your goal weight), you can scale back the calories, add in some extra sprints to the end of your workout, and keep lifting heavy – the muscle will remain, the fat will disappear, and you’ll be left with the body you want.
Now, this only works if you have plenty of fat stores to pull from. Once you start to lean out a little, you’ll likely have to increase your calories to start putting on more muscle.
As Coach Jim mentions in the video above, if you’re skinny and trying to bulk up and build muscle, avoid cardio like the plague (also avoid the plague).
Why?
Take a look at the best marathon runners in the world, and compare their physique to somebody like Usain Bolt, the best sprinter in the world – tons of muscle, power, and a body to envy.
There’s nothing wrong with EITHER body – we’re all awesome and are special and blah blah blah.
But you’re reading an article about how to build muscle fast, right? So focus all of your effort on building muscle![29]
You want all the calories you’re consuming to go towards “building muscle,” and not “fuel my run.”
I will admit that I’m biased against chronic cardio, but mostly because it bores me!
You can be far more effective when you focused on getting stronger and only do ‘cardio’ on things you enjoy – after all, your success will largely depend on your nutrition, NOT your cardio!
Personally, I spend three days a week in the gym, with each workout clocking in at 45 minutes.
I go for long walks on my off days along with a day of sprints to stay active, but I know that my muscles get built while I’m resting, not when I’m working out.
I really focus in on my workouts to make them as exhausting as possible, and then I give my body ample time to recover (while eating enough calories to produce a surplus).
If you’re lifting heavy, and eating enough, make sure you’re also getting enough sleep! 5-6 hours a night isn’t going to cut it – you need to get at least 8-9 hours of sleep per night for optimal muscle-building. Take naps too if you have the opportunity.
Sleep needs to become a priority, because while we’re asleep, growth hormone, a hormone responsible for regulating muscle growth is released.[30]
If you’re a big guy/girl trying to slim down, a little extra cardio might speed up your fat loss but if you’re not eating correctly, it might result in losing some of the muscle you already have.
Don’t worry about going for 10 mile runs on your off days – do 20-30 minutes of intervals or go run hill sprints in your park. The weight will come off more slowly, but you’ll only be losing fat, not fat AND muscle.
Once you hit your goal weight and the target amount of muscle mass, I’d recommend adding back in some cardio for your overall conditioning, but keep it varied (sprints and intervals). The focus is to keep building explosive muscle and not long, slow, boring muscle.
If you love going for long runs and aren’t going to give that up, I’m not gonna stop you. Just know that the long hours of cardio will severely inhibit your progress on building strength and size.[31]
Get Started Building Muscle Today
This is a basic overview to get ya started. It really boils down to a few major things:
Lift heavy
Eat lots of good food
Rest
Simple to understand, tough to implement.
Trust me, I know – I’ve been battling this for the past decade.
If you made it this far, and you want more specific instruction, here’s how Nerd Fitness can help!
You’ll work with our certified NF instructors who will get to know you better than you know yourself, check your form, and program your workouts and nutrition for you.
-Steve
PS: Be sure to check out the rest of our Strength Training 101 series:
Hannah Frye is the Assistant Beauty Editor at mindbodygreen. She has a B.S. in journalism and a minor in women’s, gender, and queer studies from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Hannah has written across lifestyle sections including health, wellness, sustainability, personal development, and more.
Walking into the gym for the first time can be intimidating, not just because you want to fit in amongst a sea of regular gym goers. There may be machines you’ve never heard of that you want to try, and even choosing the right free weights can seem daunting if you’ve never lifted before. That’s where this gym workout plan for beginners comes into play. Created with Holly Roser, an NASM-certified personal trainer and owner of Holly Roser Fitness in San Matteo, CA, this gym plan for beginners provides a week’s worth of newbie gym workouts to get you started, and you can build on this routine to keep challenging yourself and get stronger over time.
This gym workout routine is not only great for people who are heading to the gym for the first time, but also for those who haven’t worked out in a while. The gym workout plan contains two strength circuits, three days of cardio, and two days of active recovery. “For the first two weeks, your new program should have two strength training days that are three days apart, with cardio days in between,” Roser tells POPSUGAR. As you build your endurance, move up to three cardio days and three strength training days. For the latter, you can use a mix of moves from the circuits in this plan, or check out other strength training workouts such as this basic dumbbell workout or this full-body circuit workout. (You can probably take that step about three weeks after getting comfortable with this routine, Holly says.) Make sure to switch up your forms of cardio, rotating between exercises like running, swimming, dance cardio, and indoor cycling to hit different muscle groups and keep from getting bored.
Ready to move? Follow this gym workout plan for beginners, and you’re sure to feel like a pro in no time.
– Additional reporting by Lauren Mazzo and Alexis Jones
“Strong” is our word for 2024. And building strength is about so much more than spending time at the weight rack (though that’s important too!) Follow along with mindbodygreen this month as we explore how to cultivate strong nutrition, strong relationships, and a strong sense of self in the new year.
After a few days off, it’s natural to crave a full-speed, full-power workout once you return to normalcy. But, no matter what exercise regimen you follow, be it strength training, running, Pilates, and so on, one thing is true: You must soft launch your body back to your regular routine. Otherwise, you’ll risk injury that could set you back much more than that time off did.
POPSUGAR Photography / Maria del Rio / FOTOGRAFIA INC.
Fitness goals often vary from person to person; a newfound cardio enthusiast may have their sights set on running a 10k, while a beginner weightlifter might dream of deadlifting 100 pounds. But no matter the workout passion, one exercise seems to be at the top of every newbie’s ambition list: the pull-up.
So how do you get there? Follow this expert-approved guide to the pull-up exercise, which includes tips on how to do pull-up a pull up, details on the main pull-up benefits, ideas for pull-up variations, and answers to the question, “What muscles do pull-ups work?”
What Do Pull-Ups Work?
Pull-ups will put your upper-body muscles through the wringer. Specifically, the move calls upon the lats (aka latissimus dorsi, which drive the movement), biceps (which help with bending the elbow), traps (which support the movement of the shoulder blades), and forearm muscles (which support your grip), says Anne Reuss, a NASM-certified personal trainer and inclusive training expert. Your rhomboids and rotator cuff muscles are also involved, adds Laura Su, CSCS, a certified strength and conditioning specialist in Seattle.
When performed correctly, pull-ups also work your core, specifically your abdominals and obliques, which provide stability, says Reuss. “From a distance, it appears straightforward, almost effortless,” she explains. “But when you take inventory of all the muscles engaged and the sheer demands, it’s an extraordinary feat – and it’s a challenge representing strength, coordination, and determination!”
Pull-Up Benefits
1. They Improve Posture
Keeping your upper back and core muscles strong is essential to maintaining good posture and preventing pain in other parts of your body, says Su. “A lot of us spend a lot of time sitting down at desks, so those back muscles tend to get weak,” she explains. “If the upper back starts to get bent over, it becomes harder on your low back and your hip flexors.” However, training those muscles, such as by performing pull-ups, can help counteract the postural impacts of your desk job. Plus, pull-ups enhance shoulder mobility and improve scapular range of motion, which play an important role in healthy posture, she adds.
2. They Support Daily Functioning
Your lats are a huge muscle – they extend from your humerus (your upper arm bone) all the way down your back, so they’re involved in many of your everyday movements, says Su. In turn, practicing lat-building pull-ups can make actions like pulling open a heavy door or lifting a box brimming with holiday decorations off the floor less taxing.
In addition to strength, pull-ups improve shoulder stability, which plays a key role in injury prevention when you’re maneuvering heavy objects overhead (e.g., when you’re grabbing your luggage out of an airplane’s overhead compartment), says Su.
3. They Challenge You Mentally
“Pull-ups aren’t just an exercise, they are a declaration of your strength and defiance against gravity!” says Reuss. “When you grip that bar and hoist yourself up, you’ve got those wings. You recognize a relentless spirit in yourself, even if you’re starting or in [the] middle of your pull-up journey. It’s mental as much as physical.”
Essentially, successfully performing a pull-up is no easy feat, so when you finally nail the movement, expect to feel like a million bucks. “I think people just feel really badass and very accomplished doing pull-ups – that’s a big [benefit],” says Su.
How to Do a Pull-Up
Before you give the exercise a try, follow this step-by-step guide on how to do a pull-up for beginners with perfect form.
Place both of your hands on a pull-up bar slightly wider than shoulder-width apart. Your palms should be facing forward.
Engage your core by bracing your stomach as if someone is about to punch you in the gut. Then, hang your body from the bar with your arms fully straightened and legs extended. Squeeze your legs together as if you’re hugging someone with your legs. If you need a tactile cue, try crossing your legs or putting a towel between your thighs. Allow your feet to hang slightly in front of your body.
Keep tension throughout your body. Then, on an exhale, pull your shoulder blades down and bend your elbows to pull your chest up to the bar. Keep your elbows tucked in by imagining yourself pulling your elbows down and back toward you (think: you’re elbowing a friend behind you).
Continue pulling until your chin is hovering above the bar. Try not to swing your body or stretch your neck over the bar.
Pause at the top. Then on an inhale, slowly extend your elbows to fully straighten your arms and lower your body back to the starting position.
Pull-Up Form Tips and Common Mistakes
One of the biggest technique mistakes Su sees is when people pull their bodies up to the bar with just their biceps. “While they are able to do the motion, they aren’t necessarily recruiting muscle groups or strengthening the right muscle groups,” she says.
Instead, initiate the movement by engaging your scapula (shoulder blades), dropping them down your back, then pulling through the arms, Su advises. Try imagining that your hands are hooks and focus on driving your elbows down toward your hips. “That [cue] helps a lot of people drop the shoulders down away from their ears and create space so their traps and biceps don’t get too involved and they’re able to pull with their lats a little bit better,” she explains. As you pull up, avoid flaring your elbows out to the sides, which will put unnecessary stress on the shoulders, adds Reuss.
Also key: Perform your reps slowly and with full-body tension, and utilize the full range of motion that’s available to you, according to the experts. “Turning off” muscles throughout your body will reduce stability and decrease the efficiency of the pull-up path, says Reuss. Su encourages her clients to extend their elbows fully at the bottom of the movement and to relax their muscles a bit to stretch the lat muscles. “You essentially want, at the bottom, to be in a full overhead position, with your arms straight above your head,” she adds. “And then you’re pulling yourself up until at least your chin is over the bar.”
Kipping – a pull-up technique that involves swinging your body and slightly lifting your feet up toward the bar – is popular among CrossFit athletes, but Su recommends avoiding the practice until you’re a pro. This type of pull-up is advanced and performed at a quick speed, so you need a high level of shoulder strength and stability and the ability to control your body well, she explains. “If you’re not strong, that’s when you’re going to get shoulder injuries and hurt yourself,” Su says.
“Overall, mishaps affect the efficiency (which slows down progress) and can cause stress on the neck, shoulders, or elbows,” says Reuss. “And that leads to frustration – it’ll definitely affect the mental game!”
Pull-Up Variations to Try
Quality is way more important than quantity when it comes to pull-ups, so don’t be afraid to tweak the exercise as you need. For a modified pull-up variation, try feet-assisted pull-ups; place the pull-up bar about mid-height, high enough that you’re still able to complete the full pulling motion but low enough that your feet can gently rest on the ground throughout the movement. “Your feet can assist you, but stay mindful of pulling with your shoulder blades and back muscles rather than cheating by depending on your feet,” says Reuss.
Reuss also suggests eccentric pull-ups (skipping the “pulling up” motion and instead just slowly lowering yourself from the top of the bar) and quarter or mini pull-ups (performing just the first quarter of the rep).
Band-assisted pull-ups are another common variation for the challenging exercise; the movement is the same as a classic pull-up, but you’ll have the support of a resistance band that’s attached to the bar and wrapped around your feet, Su says.
That said, there are some drawbacks. While banded pull-ups can help you understand and feel what a complete, start to finish pull-up feels like, they can also encourage poor form.
“Banded pull-ups should look like twinsies to a regular, band-free pull-up. If you start to rely on them, you will rely on them until you break out of the habit, so let’s not make it into a habit,” Reuss says.
Once you’ve mastered a traditional pull-up, consider amping up the difficulty by adding weight (such as by wearing a weight belt or holding a dumbbell in between your feet) or switching up your tempo (think: pulling up at a normal speed, then lowering slowly), suggests Su. You can also routinely test how many pull-ups you can do in a row to see how you’re progressing, she adds.
How to Add Pull-Ups to Your Routine
You may not nail a pull-up on your very first try, and that’s okay. Instead of feeling defeated, set the exercise as a goal and work on building strength with other movements.
Consider prioritizing rows and lat pull-downs in your resistance training routine to strengthen your lat muscles. You’ll also want to practice bodyweight pulling motions, such as inverted rows with a TRX system or racked barbell, Su suggests.
Core exercises such as dead bugs and hollow-body holds also support your progress toward a pull-up, Reuss adds. “Dead bugs train the torso, spine, and hips to stay stable like a ‘core canister’ or a ‘tree trunk,’” she explains. “Hollow holds also strengthen core stability, helping the body move as one during a pull-up. I call it ‘dead bug on steroids.’” Perform this intentional pull-up work two to three times a week, Reuss advises.
As you improve your strength and pulling technique, progress to scapular pull-ups, which teach you how to properly call upon your shoulder blades and avoid overusing your arms and traps, says Reuss. Then, try various pull-up holds to build your grip strength: dead hangs (hold the bar with straight arms), pull-ups with a hollow-body hold, and isometric pull-up holds (hold the top of the pull-up with your chin over the bar for three to five seconds, slowly building up your endurance), Reuss suggests. There are a ton of variations that you can use to help you strengthen your body to graduate to doing an actual pull-up, says Su.
Whether you choose a modified variation, a classic pull-up, or an advanced option, Su suggests placing pull-ups at the beginning of your workout, when your muscles aren’t fatigued and you’re able to perform your reps with good form. During your reps, work at an 8 out of 10 RPE (rating of perceived exertion), adds Reuss; that might mean you perform three sets of eight to 12 inverted rows but only three sets of one to three reps of full-range pull-ups.
Lastly, and one of the most important aspects of accomplishing a push-up is your attitude. No matter where you’re at in your journey, don’t be afraid to attempt the exercise and start reaping those pull-up benefits. “As I like to tell my clients, strength is available to you, a choice waiting for you to seize it,” says Reuss. “The potential is already there. Reach out, grab, and pull with all your might – and it’s a power move to ask for a little bit of professional help, too!”
In one TikTok video, footage of a thin woman in a one-piece bathing suit transitions to a video of the same woman, now proudly displaying her buns of steel in a thongkini: “POV: you traded Pilates for real weight training,” the voiceover and on-screen caption says. Implied here, of course, is that this creator “transformed” her body by switching up her workouts.
Videos with hashtags that pit Pilates against weightlifting, specifically, have millions of views of TikTok, with members of both camps debating not just the pros and cons of these exercises, but the bodies they “got” from doing them. But this comparison isn’t a solution to finding the perfect workout for your perfect body: it’s a trap. When you start comparing your wellness journey, body type, workout schedule, or diet to that of others, you’re never going to feel like you’re winning – despite all the hard work you’ve put in.
Luckily, for as many of these videos as there are on TikTok, an equal number of creators are sharing the truth: which is that you don’t need to choose between the two modalities and that comparing them and their “results” can be harmful for both your physical and mental health.
Where Did the Gym Body vs. Pilates Body Debate Start?
Pilates has been around since the 1920s, but it’s seen a resurgence in popularity in recent years, thanks in large part to social media, says certified Pilates instructor Ashlea McKee.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many people swapped their rigorous, high-intensity sweat sessions for a gentler, more mindful approach to exercise, saysGrace Taylor, DPT. People were looking for workouts that easily translated to a home-gym setting (read: a mat in the corner of your bedroom) and offered a break from intense workouts during a time of high stress. Endorsements from celebs like Kylie Jenner and Kerry Washington, who swear by Pilates – “Pilates has allowed me to be focused on my appearance and my health in ways that are not abusive or critical,” Washington told Women’s Health – further fueled the movement, and soon the “Pilates princess” aesthetic was filling social feeds with snaps of exercisers posing on fancy reformer machines in pastel matching sets.
Meanwhile, over on GymTok, the weightlifting or gym aesthetic embodies the opposite vibe. Rather than pastels and bohemian bare feet, the gym content has a decidedly more heavy metal vibe: literally – it’s filled with sweat, steel, and iron.
Wherever there is talk of workouts, there is inevitably talk of bodies. Here, too, the stereotypes associated with Pilates and weightlifting appear at odds: many Pilates studios and instructors promise their clients that the modality will cultivate a “long, lean body,” while weightlifters are assumed to be ripped, bulky bodybuilders.
Neither of these tropes reflect reality. And therefore, pitting these body types against each other not only perpetuates unrealistic stereotypes, it reinforces the false idea that there’s any right way to have a body.
Why Pilates Body vs. Gym Body Is a Harmful Mindset
This entire debate is based on a false premise: that any particular workout can make your body look a particular way. Different people need different workouts to best suit their individual needs and goals, McKee says, and everyone’s body will respond differently to those routines.
This entire debate is based on a false premise: that any particular workout can make your body look a particular way.
What’s more, while there’s nothing wrong with wanting to feel stronger or leaner, focusing exclusively on appearances can foster an unhealthy relationship with exercise and your body, says Laura Cohen, creator of The No Weigh Way and lead family mentor at Equip, a virtual service for eating disorder treatment.
“I’m a very strong advocate of joyful movement, which means decoupling exercise and movement from what physical changes may – or may not – occur, and choosing movement based on what feels good to you, both physically and mentally,” says Cohen. “Most important is finding what type of movement brings you joy.”
Finding and creating an exercise routine that you love is also one of the best ways to stick with it and reap all the benefits of exercise.
“Any body will benefit from movement, and especially movement that makes them feel their best, inside and out. Because when you find something that makes you feel your best, you will look forward to it, stay consistent, and implement it seamlessly into your life,” McKee says.
Zooming out, the Pilates vs. weightlifting debate is harmful beyond your personal exercise routine. At its core, this is a conversation about how women’s bodies should look, which reinforces the premise – put forth by diet culture – that one body type is “better” than another.
Why You Have Room For Both Workout Types in Your Routine
Pitting Pilates bodies against gym bodies “creates a binary of right or wrong, good or bad, and that’s not the way that exercise works,” says movement educator and author Trina Altman.
Pitting Pilates bodies against gym bodies “creates a binary of right or wrong, good or bad, and that’s not the way that exercise works.”
In fact, Pilates and strength training complement each other, Altman says. “Pilates can improve your mobility and body awareness, which can make it easier to perform strength exercises with better technique. Alternatively, strength training can make more advanced Pilates exercises feel easier.”
The two complement each other because each practice works a different type of muscle. You have both stabilizing muscles and moving muscles in your body. “Moving muscles are what they sound like: get you from point A to point B and allow you to do things like open a door, lift a backpack, get dressed, and play outside with your kids,” says Altman. “Your stability muscles work on a smaller scale, and work to keep you upright with proper alignment.” More traditional strength training focuses on those moving muscles, while Pilates is all about the stabilizing muscles – since you need both to function well, dedicating your time to only one of these practices is doing you a disservice.
“Incorporating both into your routine gives you complementary strength and balance to safely participate in a wide range of activities,” Taylor says.
In general, sticking to only one type of activity, whether it’s Pilates, weight training, or something else, can really limit you, Taylor adds. Having a variety of exercise types in your routine helps to minimize plateaus, prevents boredom, supports different goals (such as balance, flexibility, strength, endurance, etc.), and affords you some flexibility when an injury or busy schedule gets in the way of the gym. When you diversify your fitness rather than sticking to just one thing, it’s better for both your body and mind.
“There’s no moral value of practicing one or both of these activities,” says Cohen. Stereotypes about what you’re supposed to want, how you’re supposed to look, or the idea that a certain exercise can make your body look a certain way are only noise that’s going to prevent you from truly listening to your body’s own exercise needs.
If you want to build muscle and gain strength, muscle soreness is inevitable. Yet everywhere you look, someone is promoting the latest and greatest hack for relieving sore muscles quickly. We reached out to exercise physiologists to get the scoop on which of these tools and techniques are actually effective—and which ones are overhyped with little science to back them up.
A twinge or pain in the knees after doing lunges may be a sign that you’re doing the exercise incorrectly. And it’s always important to listen to your body when it comes to movement. Pain during or after lunges may be a sign that the exercise isn’t right for you.
Ahead, we speak to medical experts and a trainer to find out if lunges are bad for your knees and to get tips on doing a proper, pain-free lunge. Fortunately, there are a good amount of lunge alternatives to help build up strength and avoid putting unnecessary stress on your joints.
Are Lunges Bad For Your Knees?
According to Matthew Harb, MD, an orthopedic surgeon at the Centers For Advanced Orthopaedics, lunges are an excellent way of preventing knee pain and injury. Even if you’re dealing with severe knee conditions such as osteoarthritis, lunges offer some solid benefits. “I typically recommend lunges because this simple exercise works all of the important muscle groups around the knee,” Dr. Harb tells POPSUGAR. “We know that building strength and endurance, as well as preserving range of motion in the knee, are paramount to long-term knee health.”
Although this is definitely great news to hear, Alyssa Kuhn, DPT, founder of Utah-based practice Keep the Adventure Alive, says lunges can offer some risks. While she acknowledges that lunges are a “powerful exercise for you knees,” it’s really dependent on your knee strength. “Not everyone’s knees are always ready for lunges,” Dr. Kuhn tells POPSUGAR. “They can be a painful exercise to some, especially those dealing with knee pain. If you have significant levels of pain when doing lunges, your knees may be telling you they aren’t ready for the exercise right now.”
What Happens When You Do Lunges Incorrectly?
If you don’t pay close attention to your form when doing lunges, you could seriously hurt yourself. Jessica Mazzucco, a New York-based certified fitness trainer for The Glute Recruit, tells POPSUGAR some signs to watch out for if you’re doing lunges incorrectly.
“Lunges at extreme angles can put added stress on the joints, and cause pain in the knees,” Mazzucco says. “If you are leaning too far forward, your knee can’t bend properly to a 90-degree angle, which can lead to knee injury and make balancing hard. Also, if your hips are weak, your knee may push out past your toes because your hip muscles don’t keep the knee in line. This puts added pressure on the knee, resulting in pain and/or injury.”
What Is the Correct Way to Do a Lunge?
To help prevent knee injury or pain, Dr. Harb offers these step-by-step instructions on doing a lunge correctly:
Stand with feet shoulder width apart.
Take a big step forward with your right leg.
Lower your body until your right thigh is parallel with the floor and your left knee is very close to the floor.
Hold the lunge at the bottom for 15-30 seconds and then return to the starting position.
Repeat the same motion with the left leg.
Perform this exercise 5-10 times on each leg.
What Modifications Can I Do to Avoid Hurting My Knees?
Mazzucco suggests doing lunge variations to avoid knee injury. Some of these include a modified lunge where you bend halfway instead of all the way, or lunging backward to help prevent your knee from moving too far forward. She also recommends trying static lunges, an exercise in which your feet don’t move, but you still go down in lunge position, pause, and come back up.
“Make sure your right shin is vertical to the ground to prevent your knee from pushing over the right foot,” Mazzucco says. “Static lunges are better for avoiding knee pain than walking forward lunges because walking lunges require momentum, making it hard to stop your movements, which can add pressure to the knee.”
In addition to these alternative lunge exercises, Dr. Kuhn also suggests elevating your front foot on a small stair or box when doing lunges. Having some form of support nearby – whether it’s a pole or kitchen sink – can also help relieve any knee pressure as well. If you suffer from knee conditions such as osteoarthritis, you can take the bend out altogether.
What Should I Do If My Knees Hurt After Lunges?
If none of the aforementioned suggestions and lunge modifications alleviated knee pain after lunges, it’s highly recommended that you take this exercise out of your workout. “There’s a difference between a little burn that goes away versus a sharp pain in your knees,” Mazzucco says. “Good pain affects positive change in the body, while painful twinging can indicate you are putting yourself at risk for injury.”
Dr. Harb agrees and even suggests scheduling an appointment with your doctor to see if there are any possible underlying conditions that are causing your knees to hurt during and after lunges. It’s also advised that you talk to your doctor before starting any type of new exercise program or if you are experiencing persistent pain that won’t go away. Lunges should be a quick and efficient workout that you feel all over your leg – not a painful experience for your joints.
As a marathon runner, my movement practice used to center fully around cardio—so I was shocked by the impact strength training could have on my physical, mental, and emotional well-being. Of course, I was even more shocked to find that lifting weights in my running sneakers was a major no-no, according to podiatrists.
Upgrading to proper weightlifting shoes has seriously transformed my workouts. My form is better, my lifts are heavier, and I feel so much stronger, especially when I’m wearing these Reebok Legacy Lifters.
The only downside? Weightlifting shoes run on the higher end of the spectrum price-wise, so the brand’s current $70 markdown is reason enough to try these lifters out for yourself.
But like any measurement, this is only one part of the equation when it comes to full body composition, and therefore overall health. This equation shouldn’t be used to diagnose any kind of health condition, but rather serve as an estimate of body fat percentage for those who want to know and don’t have access to something like a DEXA scan.
It’s also worth noting here that you should avoid taking waist measurements during times like postpartum months, bloating or digestion troubles, and so on. You want to aim for a natural, typical measurement to get your most accurate results.
As for lean muscle mass, Lyon notes recommends tracking how many push-ups or squats you can do. It’s far from a perfect science (and there’s not a set range to reference), but it may be helpful to gauge your improvement. Let’s remember: Your muscles need to feel “fatigued” in order to grow. If your muscles take longer and longer to feel that fatigue, it’s a pretty good sign you’re growing your muscle mass.
You may also consider getting some blood work done at your physician’s office or through an elective service. Lyon suggests some of the measurements, especially those related to glucose, insulin, and triglycerides, may help you determine what range of skeletal muscle mass you have.
“What becomes really important to understand is where they are and making improvements,” Lyon says. So don’t get too caught up in the numbers if you can help it. No measurement of body composition is a perfect indicator of overall health. Finally, if you are concerned about your lean muscle mass or want to learn more specific info, it’s always a good idea to visit your healthcare provider.
If you want to lose weight, gain muscle, and/or just look and feel better, strength training will do just that.[1]
In this comprehensive series, we’re going to cover EVERYTHING you need to know about getting strong.
By the way, hi. I’m Staci Ardison,Senior Coach for Team NF, with a 455 pound deadlift, and strength training has changed my life.
Here’s that deadlift by the way (at a bodyweight of 150 lbs):
I help men and women get strong with our 1-on-1 Online Coaching Program, and in addition to this strength series, I’d love for our team to help you get strong too:
In this introduction to Strength and Resistance Training, we’ll cover:
This is also quite a lot to absorb, so we’ve combined this article along with the rest of our strength articles into a “Strength Training 101: Everything You Need to Know” guide.
Grab it free when you join the Rebellion by putting your email in the box below.
Download our comprehensive guide
Everything you need to know about getting strong.
Workout routines for bodyweight AND weight training.
How to find the right gym and train properly in one.
#1) Halt and even reverse sarcopenia: As we age our skeletal muscle deteriorates, which is a condition known as sarcopenia. Strength training has been found to reduce the negative effects of sarcopenia allowing us to maintain an independent lifestyle (and out of a nursing home) and live longer.[3]
#2) Prevent disease and degenerative conditions:[4a] Heart disease is the leading cause of death for both men and women.
Strength training helps correct issues relating to cholesterol, high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, and inactivity – all factors for heart disease.
Cardiologists are even starting to recommend strength training for people who have suffered a heart attack as little as three weeks after the attack.[4b]
#3) Improve the quality of life for people with: arthritis,[5] osteoporosis,[6]Parkinson’s Disease,[7]Down Syndrome,[8] lymphedema,[9]fibromyalgia,[10]who have recently had a stroke,[11]have had a spinal cord injury,[12]cancer survivors[13] and clinical depression.[14] Clinical exercise physiologists working with these special populations listed above strongly recommend incorporating strength training to slow down the progression of their disease or disorder, decrease their risk for other comorbidities, and decrease their risk for premature mortality.[15]
Now, in addition to making life easier LATER, strength training has a lot of great benefits right now.
How Strength Training Will Help You Today:
#1) Lose weight, look good naked: You can find study[16] after study[17] after study[18] that shows you the benefits of strength training for weight management when combined with “calorie restriction.”(eating fewer calories than you burn every day), such as greater fat loss and improvements in muscle mass. Additionally, the combination of these two behaviors also decreases one’s risk for the development of chronic diseases (e.g., CVD) and premature mortality.[19]
#2) Strength training can help increase your metabolism by speeding up your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR).[20] It takes your body more calories to maintain muscle than it does to maintain fat!
#3) Strength training has a much greater level of excess post-exercise oxygen consumption than aerobic exercise.[21]
What does this mean?
When you finish a workout, your body needs to do a lot of work to replenish itself in order to bring itself back to a normal state (the way it was before you worked out). This takes a lot of energy, and some studies have shown that it can boost your metabolism for up to 38 hours after you finish your workout. If you do your resistance training quickly, minimizing rest intervals in-between sets, you can actually increase this effect.[22]
This is why it’s important to stay off of the phone in-between sets!
In addition to physical improvements, strength training will improve your next doctor’s visit.
How Strength Training Can Make You Healthier:
#1) Strength training increases bone density, builds a stronger heart, reduces your resting blood pressure, improves blood flow, halts muscle loss, helps control blood sugar, improves cholesterol levels, and improves your balance and coordination.[23] This is all great news because this will decrease your risk of developing conditions such as osteoporosis, hypertension, and type 2 diabetes.
#2) Strength training will make you FEEL better: Not only will you find yourself with more energy and confidence, less stress and anxiety,[24] and a better overall mood,[25] but you’ll actually begin to think better (resistance training has been proven to help increase cognitive function[26]).
You may be asking how this is possible?
Strength training allows for neurogenesis and neuroplasticity to take place, which is the process of creating new neural pathways in the brain.
Plus, strength training also allows for certain neurotransmitters (e.g., dopamine) to be released that plays a role in brain health.[27]
And while training too close to bedtime can be a bad idea, exercising earlier in the day has been proven to help prevent sleep apnea and insomnia.[28]
But wait, there’s more!
I even improved my posture from strength training – when I started lifting, I was 5’4”. Now I’m 5’5.5”.[29]
This is also a major concern for today because of prolonged cell phone use, which finds people constantly tilting their head forward and down resulting in neck pain and faulty posture.[30]
#3) Last but not least, strength training is fun! Whether you are looking for the most effective 20-30 minute workout (to stay fit and look great naked), or are looking for a competitive sport that you can really get into, strength training can help you meet your goals.[31]
It’s easy and fun to see progress as you strength train, almost like leveling up (“You gained 100xp and +1 STR with your deadlift today”).
If you’re looking to improve in other areas (a sport, traditional cardio, or an activity like rock climbing), strength training is an easy choice! Strength training will help keep you injury free too.[32]
We have coaching clients from 18 to 80+, and we work on strength training with practically every single one of them due to just how many benefits it provides! We’d love to work with you too:
Who SHOULDN’T strength train?
Trying to be balanced, I wanted to find studies of a single group of people who should not strength train.
But it didn’t go so well…
I found studies on how strength training can be beneficial for paraplegics.[33]
There are also studies that show the benefits for children and adolescents.[34]
You can also find plenty of studies that explain the benefits of strength training for pregnant women.[35]
And thus I’ve decided, not knowing you, you should probably strength train.
IMPORTANT CAVEAT: if you do fall into any of these special populations (e.g., paraplegics, children, pregnant women, etc.) it is imperative that you work with a qualified professional (e.g., clinical exercise physiologist, strength and conditioning coach, etc.).
These qualified professionals will perform a risk stratification and pre-assessments so they can start you off with the perfect training program that will improve your physical and mental health, and will decrease your risk for injury and prevent your condition from progressing to a more severe state.
Oh, and if you are already injured, you should check with a doctor[36]or physical therapist before strength training.
Long story short: EVERYBODY should strength train.
Robots too…probably.
It’s what we’re genetically designed to do: move around, push, pull, jump, and carry things.
“Strength training” of any kind can be explained by two things:
Movement of any weight (including your body weight) – Doing ANY exercise that pushes your muscles outside of their comfort zone, forcing them to rebuild stronger to prepare for the next challenge.
Progressive overload: exerting slightly more effort than last time (lift heavier weight or do 1 more rep) consistently. Your muscles will constantly have to adapt and will constantly be rebuilding themselves to get stronger.[37]
That’s strength training!
If you want 7 different ways to achieve progressive overload, watch this video:
All this means if you do 10 squats and 10 knee push-ups right now, you have completed a strength training workout.
Feel free to do this right now to give yourself a quick win.
And we’re back!
So what’s actually happening to our bodies when we strength train?
Let’s get on our magic school bus and learn about the wonders of muscles!
Here’s what you need to know your muscles and strength training:
We’ve got 642 muscles in our bodies (but who’s counting), and they all work together to help our bodies move, stand, and exist.
When you bend your arm, your biceps contract and your triceps do the opposite (elongate) in order to let your elbow bend.
Every muscle in your body works alongside other muscles to let you move and do things. In this particular example, the biceps is known as the agonist muscle and the triceps is the antagonist.
Strength training starts when you move your bodyweight (doing 10 push-ups), or pick up a weight (a 100 pound deadlift) that is beyond what your body is normally used to.
In other words:
Strength training finds you pushing your muscles outside of their comfort zone.
They “break down” and tear slightly during this workout, and then over the next 24-48 hours they rebuild themselves stronger and more resilient.[38]
This is the foundation of strength training, and it’s called hypertrophy, in which the individual muscle fibers packed into your muscles are growing larger in size.[39]
There are a few types of hypertrophy,[40] which you can nerd out about here (don’t worry, this won’t be on the quiz):
Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy focuses on increasing the amount of sarcoplasm, the non-contractile fluid found in your muscle. This type of hypertrophy helps build overall size.
Myofibril hypertrophy focuses on strengthening the myofibril, the contractile part of the muscle. You are strengthening the actual muscle fiber so it helps you build super dense, strong muscles.
Transient hypertrophy is the temporary increase in muscle size that happens during and immediately after weight training due to fluid accumulation in the intracellular space, that you might know as “the pump”.
“Staci, what does this mean for me?” You might be wondering.
We cover exact strategies in our “How many sets and reps?” guide, but here’s what you need to know:
If you want dense muscle and strength (myofibrillar hypertrophy), keep the reps low and the weight heavy (in the 1 to 5 rep range).
If you’re looking to build muscle size, (sarcoplasmic hypertrophy), do more reps with a lighter weight (in the 8-12 range).
If you’re looking to build cardiovascular health and muscular endurance, hang out in the 12-20 reps per set range.
Please note: each of these rep ranges are NOT exclusive – when you train in a higher rep range you’re not JUST getting size, you’re also getting strength.
And if you get really strong, it can also help you with size and endurance.
#2)Recovery: The general rule is to wait 48 hours before working the same muscle group again. For example, if you trained your biceps and triceps today, then you should wait 48 hours before hitting them again. However, recovery is different for everyone depending on many different factors such as what the actual workout is, how old you are, your sleep quality, diet, and other recovery elements (such as massage, including the popular massage guns, foam rolling, and stretching).[42]
#3) Soreness after a workout: The day after an intense strength training workout – or 2 days after – you’re going to be VERY sore. This is called “Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness(DOMS)”. It’s a normal part of the process of repairing your muscles from the damage to the fibers you created while exercising. More recently, research evidence has found that the eccentric part of a lift, or the part of the lift in which the muscles are lengthening and stretching, produces the greatest degree of soreness.[43]
Expect to be more sore after doing an exercise for the first few workouts. As your muscles get used to that movement (and adapt to being put under stress), they will get less and less sore every time.
If you are sore, don’t skip the next workout!
That’s because:
The best way to alleviate soreness is to continue exercising.
This increases blood flow to the muscles and helps them heal.[44]
We get questions relating to weight loss and strength training all the time, and it’s a BIG part of this entire Strength 101 series.
Let me quickly address it here:
Fat and muscle are two different things – one can’t transform into the other.
We all have plenty of muscle right now (otherwise we wouldn’t be able to move, walk, sit up, etc.), the muscle is just hiding underneath a layer of body fat.
In order for us to lose weight and look better, we want to do two things:
Build our muscles stronger and tighter.
Burn the fat on top of it!
And luckily, both of those things happen simultaneously through strength training!
So NO, you don’t need to lose weight first before you start strength training.
You will lose weight BY strength training (and keep the muscle you have).
You do NOT need to do hours of cardio for weight loss – weight loss is 90% a result of your nutrition. So honestly, you don’t need to ever set foot on a treadmill again (unless you WANT to).
Strength training will help you lose weight and look better IF you do two key things for effective weight loss:
As we cover in our “Why can’t I lose weight” article (full of fun Harry Potter references), combining a caloric deficit and strength training is magic:[45]
You’re not consuming enough calories to carry out your body’s daily functions. Our bodies require enough calories to support normal physiological functions such as heart rate and breathing. Additionally, enough calories are needed to help maintain our blood glucose, which is the major energy source for our brains.[46]
Your body needs to use lots of calories to rebuild the muscle that was broken down during the strength training workouts. Our bodies use calories to facilitate a process known as protein synthesis, which is the process of muscle hypertrophy.[47]
Your body has no choice BUT to pull from fat stores to get stuff done! As mentioned earlier, higher-intensity strength training results in a greater post-exercise oxygen consumption, resulting in greater caloric expenditure post-exercise.[48]
Just by doing those two things (get strong, reduce calories), all sorts of wizardry and witchcraft takes place in your body:
Get stronger and keep the muscle you have.
Build tight dense muscle.
A revved up metabolism while rebuilding muscle.
Burning of body fat to get things done.
Yeah, you’re hearing me correctly.
Lose the body fat that sits on top of your muscles and you’ll make your muscles tighter and denser = look better without clothes on.
Oh, what’s that? You just want somebody to tell you exactly how to train for your body, and how to eat for your goals?
Fine!
Check out our 1-on-1 Coaching Program– it’s helped thousands of people lose weight through strength training – and proper nutrition. We work with you on habit building and lifestyle design to actually get stuff done!
I cited dozens of studies above that show strength training is beneficial for people of all ages. And even for the frail elderly, studies have shown that drastic resultsare possible in just 10 weeks of weightlifting (for both men and women in their 70s through their 90s).[49]
In fact, weight training has also been shown to delay Alzheimer’s and stave off dementia.[50] As mentioned earlier, strength training allows for neurogenesis and neuroplasticity to take place, which is the process of creating new neural pathways in the brian. And, strength training also allows for the dopamine (i.e., neurotransmitter) to be released that plays a role in brain health.[51]
Research has also shown that older adults can safely engage in higher-intensity strength training resulting in improvements in strength, body composition, disease status, and independent lifestyle.[52]
So, if you think you might be “too old,” you’re probably the exact type of person that SHOULD be strength training!
Team NF’s Steve’s gramma is 89 and she strength trains. You are not too old!
We have plenty of coaching clients who are retired and just STARTING to strength train now in their 50s or 60s+. In fact one of our coaches, Kerry, is certified as a Functioning Aging Specialist, and you better believe she has her clients strength training!
By the way, if you are 90+ and reading Nerd Fitness, please email us at contact@nerdfitness.com – I’d love to hear from you 🙂
Or Christina, who got strong as hell, lost 31 total inches, and now crushes sets of pull-ups!
That “bulky” look in women does not happen by mistake or overnight – we simply do not have the hormones necessary to get there on our own.
To achieve this look, women have to eat incredible amounts of food and consume incredible amounts of drugs.
When we strength train normally, without these supplements, we end up looking like athletes.
And for the men: if your fear is getting too bulky, you can rest easy. Steve, creator of Nerd Fitness, has spent his entire life trying to get “too bulky.” It was only after fixing his diet (and hiring an online coach) that he went from Steve Rogers to Captain America.
That’s right, strength training is only 10% of the “slim down or bulk up” equation. The other 90% is nutrition and total calories consumed.
Want to lose weight? Strength train + caloric restriction. It is recommended that you seek a calorie deficit by consuming 250-500 less calories per day below your typical calorie intake. This will result in a realistic weight loss goal of 1-2 pounds per week.[53]
Want to get bigger? Strength train + caloric surplus. It is recommended that you seek a calorie surplus by consuming 250-500 additional calories above your typical calorie intake. This will result in a realistic gain in lean muscle mass of about 0.5 pounds per week.[54]
“My focus is on running/basketball/quidditch and I need to stay slim! How do I strength train for this scenario?”
Studies have shown that strength training increases the endurance of your muscles.[55]
In fact, resistance training and weight training not only help to tune up an out of shape nervous system and increase the activation of motor units within your muscles, but also helps increase their overall endurance. More specifically, strength training can result in improvements in how much force muscles can generate and also how much fatigue they can resist leading to better exercise economy.[56]
You just have to keep challenging your muscles and get strong as heck.
Look at any gymnast, male or female – those physiques are built through bodyweight training!
To progress in bodyweight exercises, you need to start, so you have something to advance from. You can begin by trying our beginner bodyweight routine RIGHT NOW:
It’s super fun building your own program, but many people just want to follow a plan that they know is aligned with their goals. If you hate gyms and still want to get strong, let us help!
We’d recommend a simple program to get your feet wet.[57] You know, to learn the movements, build some confidence and prove to yourself that you can DO this!
If you want to take the Next Step, here’s how Team Nerd Fitness (that’s us!) can help you:
1) Work with a professional Yoda! If you want confidence that you’re following a program that is tailor-made for your busy life, situation, and goals, check out our popular 1-on-1 Coaching Program.
You’ll work with a certified NF instructor who will get to know you better than you know yourself, keep you accountable, and help you reach your goals.
2) Join our amazing free community, the Nerd Fitness Rebellion! It’s free to join, and we provide you with free goodies like our Strength Training 101 ebook when you sign up:
Download our comprehensive guide
Everything you need to know about getting strong.
Workout routines for bodyweight AND weight training.
How to find the right gym and train properly in one.
3) Read ALL of the other amazing resources on Nerd Fitness. We’ve published millions of words over 800+ articles at Nerd Fitness that you can read, but these are the guides that will be the most helpful to you on your journey:
I don’t care which next step you pick, as long as you PICK a plan that works for you
It’s simple to follow
You have all of the equipment available
It focuses on compound, full-body movements
Congratulations: You just made it through the first class of Strength Training 101!
What big questions do you have about strength training?
Finally, you’ll want to pair these workout tips with adequate protein intake in order to reap the benefits.
The Recommended Dietary Allowance of protein is 0.8 gram per kilogram of body weight1 per day. This is the minimum amount of protein a sedentary person needs to meet their nutritional requirements; meaning, it’s conservative and not exactly applicable for those looking to build muscle or working out frequently.
If you’d rather not count down to every last gram, leading protein and amino acid requirements researcher Don Layman, Ph.D., previously told mindbodygreen that getting around 100 grams a day is a solid goal for most women.
You’ll want to spread that out throughout the day by consuming around 25 to 30 grams of protein during breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and eating a protein-rich snack or two when possible.
Protein shakes can be a helpful addition to fulfill this goal, which, according to Baxter, can be consumed within an hour before or after your workout for maximum muscle benefits.
The most basic heart rate monitors will measure how many times your heart beats in one minute, with 60 to 100 beats per minute being a healthy range for most people.
The most accurate way to track heartbeat is with a chest strap. These straps have sensors that pick up the electrical signal directly from your heart. Since they usually sit over your myocardium (heart muscle), they’re less likely to be thrown off by “artifact1“—or movement that interferes with heart rate readings.
Watches, bands, and rings measure heart rate less directly and are more likely to pick up on artifact as your arm moves around. Unlike chest straps, these work by shining a light to pick up the pulse of your blood vessels and using that to compute your estimated heart rate. This makes them slightly less accurate than chest straps2, according to clinical research.
In addition to basic heart rate readings, some monitors also measure your heart rate variability (HRV), or the timing between each consecutive heartbeat. “Heart rate variability is a measure of how much stress your nervous system is sensing,” Michael Twyman, M.D., a board-certified cardiologist, explains.
“When the autonomic nervous system is in balance, there tends to be a higher variability in time between heartbeats,” cardiologist Bradley Serwer, MD, FACC, previously told mindbodygreen. “When the autonomic nervous system is out of balance either due to increased stress (physiologic or psychological), illness or autonomic dysfunction, the variability between heart rates decreases.”
HRV is a more sensitive metric than heart rate, and it’s constantly changing based on how much you’re exercising, how well you’re sleeping, if you’re getting sick, etc. When your HRV takes a sudden dip, it’s a signal that your body is in a fight-or-flight response.
In addition to measuring your HRV, some devices might also connect to apps that tell you how to optimize it. Next-gen heart rate monitors can also measure metrics like heart strain3 and let you read your ECG in real-time.
Here’s a recap of what different types of heart rate monitors will measure:
Outside the door, I heard a flurry of thudding that reverberated back through the floor. I looked at my friend, then stepped in behind her. The room was damp and stuffy, despite a fan droning loudly in the corner. Six people were dispersed across the floor, weaving to their own rhythms. I was 18 and hadn’t been to a gym more than twice in my life; this was my first boxing class.
Though I was the least fit person in the room, the coach put me through all the drills: shadowboxing in front of the mirror (fine), punching a bag (cathartic), light sparring (rough). The coach struck my nose, my forehead, my jaw, my abdomen as he reminded me to keep my hands up and to keep moving. My legs were screaming; even a gentle tap on the nose stung. (It didn’t help that mine’s been broken since I was 7.) I realized that I liked martial arts anyway.
I wasn’t trying to be an amateur fighter, but I wanted to keep getting stronger and quicker. In this boxing class held at my college gym, and at the gyms I found to train in over summers, sparring was a given. The whole point of training was to get better at landing punches (and eluding them) in the ring. I liked to feel myself improving concretely every time I stepped back in to face a real opponent. But after graduating, I discovered that the experience I’d had that first day, an immediate induction into boxing by light sparring, was almost impossible to find.
Over the past several years, the popularity of “fitboxing” classes, which involve intense cardio, strength training, and ab workouts, has skyrocketed. These classes might look a lot like boxing, but they have a key difference: For the grand finale, you get to punch … a bag. Many of these gyms are entirely “noncontact,” and the few that do let you spar tend to charge extra for it. I asked Bryan Corrigan, my coach that first day, what he sees as the value of sparring—why had he started me on it the very first time I’d boxed? “It’s the whole mind game behind boxing and the science of it,” he told me. Yes, getting hit can be scary, but you learn to keep your calm and be strategic in the face of it. Without sparring, “that gets lost.”
For a long time, boxing gyms were, by nature, fighting gyms: You couldn’t find one without a ring. “In the beginning, we only had professional players and amateur fighters,” Bruce Silverglade, the owner of Gleason’s Gym, in Brooklyn, New York, told me. Many gyms were in low-income areas, and many of the people who fought in them were new immigrants or members of minority groups. Some viewed the sport as “a positive alternative to the streets.”
By the time “fitboxing” started to gain ground, that landscape had shifted. Many professional boxing matches had moved to pay-per-view TV, some fans had come to question the sport’s inherent brutality, and others were gravitating toward MMA fights. Professional fights were harder to find in New York and other storied boxing cities; those shows had moved largely to Las Vegas. Many free programs such as Cops and Kids, which made boxing accessible and provided a pathway for promising fighters from underserved neighborhoods, had also shrunk or shut down altogether. People inside and outside the sport were contending with boxing’s violence, and the brain damage that often resulted.
Meanwhile, fitness classes everywhere were exploding: barre, hot yoga, spinning. Fitboxing soon joined the ranks, and enough white-collar professionals were interested to start a sea change: Michael Hughes, the head trainer at Church Street Boxing, in Manhattan, New York, dates this shift to about 2012. Boutique boxing gyms sprang up to cater to this new clientele; many old-school fighting gyms had to revamp their offerings too. “Today, probably 85 percent of my members are businessmen and women that are just here for conditioning workouts,” Silverglade said.
And most of these newer boxers just weren’t interested in sparring, gym owners told me. As a result, now even many more traditional boxing gyms either don’t offer sparring or separate it out from their regular classes. Joey DeMalavez, the owner of Joltin’ Jabs, in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, explained that sparring is simply not profitable, especially when gym owners have to contend with increasing rents and high insurance costs. “There’s just not enough people that want to get in there and do that,” DeMalavez told me. “To offer sparring into a regular boxing class will scare a lot more people than it’ll help.” What people really want is the experience of boxing without the possibility of getting hit.
The fear concerning safety is real, and it makes sense. Katalin Rodriguez Ogren, the owner of Pow! Gym Chicago, acknowledges the tension. “An old-school boxing gym doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a safe training environment,” she told me in an email. While these gyms will give you what Rodriguez Ogren calls an “authentic” experience, many “don’t understand injury prevention, or have the education to provide safe training classes,” she said. That’s not to say gyms can’t be both safe and authentic to boxing. With sparring (as opposed to actual fighting), the point is not to hurt someone or knock anyone out; it’s to hone accuracy and reflex. You take knocks where your defense is weak, and there is always a risk of accidents, much as in any sport, but the shots are not full power. Being hit and being hurt are different.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting a boxing-inspired workout—all of the boxing coaches I spoke with agreed. It has some very real fitness benefits: It’s good cardio and can build strength and coordination. But fitboxing is not growing in popularity alongside boxing; it’s overtaking boxing. The few authentic boxing gyms I was able to find in Manhattan and Brooklyn can cost more than $100 a month to join. And boxing without sparring is a fundamentally different activity. “I kind of look at it like, Zumba is super fun and I love Zumba, but I’m not going to go to a Zumba class if I actually want to learn how to salsa dance,” Rodriguez Ogren said.
The risk of getting hit gives you direct, instant feedback about how much better you’re getting—and an extra boost of confidence and reward when you find that you are. “In order to keep you safe, you rely on your skill,” Peter Olusoga, a senior psychology lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University who has a background in sports and exercise psychology, told me. “The confidence boost that you get from seeing yourself improving and feeling more competent is really beneficial.” Although simply rehearsing boxing moves, as in fitboxing, can give you a taste, sparring enhances that feeling. Actually trying to hit another person, and keep yourself from being hit, represents a higher level of difficulty and intimacy with your sparring partners.
When I asked people in the boxing world what they consider the inherent value of sparring, many spoke to the discipline gained, or the visceral lessons it offers in dealing with adversity. But for me, it’s even more basic. A boxing-inspired workout is a great way to get in shape; sparring is a mind game. No matter how much I do it, I’ll still get hit, but I can now hold my own in the ring (mostly). I may never want to fight, but sparring is more than a workout—it’s a form of problem-solving that’s equal parts mental and physical. If you’re interested in boxing, I suggest slipping into the ring and actually trying it out.
The name may be a mouthful, but the concept is actually quite simple. The numeral tag will simply help you remember what this process entails.
But first, a little background: The husband-wife duo invented this mini routine for the sake of exercising during their busiest eras of life. “We were in the phase of our life where we were growing two businesses and two little humans,” Juliet recounts. As a result, they were left with about 10 minutes at 10 p.m. to prioritize exercise.
This doesn’t sound like much, but even a little movement is better than no movement at all, especially if you optimize this quick, at-home routine:
Some meal delivery services can be pretty rigid: They put together a meal plan and leave little up to choice or preference. Flex Pro Meals gives you the power to design your own menu, without having to cook anything yourself.
First, you’ll choose between a low-calorie, “fat-trimmer” program, or a high-protein, “lean muscle” plan. From there, you’ll select regular or large portion sizes. Next, you build your box using high-protein, keto, and low-carb meals. You can also sort by allergens and specific dietary preferences, such as beef-free, dairy-free, gluten-free, and pork-free. If you’re not on a super strict diet, you can opt for a “customer favorites” plan, and Flex Pro Meals will curate your box based on what’s most popular.
You can choose from seven to 21 meals per box, and you have the option to add high-protein snacks, such as peanut butter bites (for an additional fee). Boxes ship weekly or every other week, depending on your preference.
If you don’t want pre-portioned meals, you can opt for a meal prep box instead. You’ll have the option to choose from various pre-cooked proteins (e.g. sous vide chicken and prime rib), carbs (e.g. Mexican rice and garlic mash), and veggies (e.g. Hibachi veg and toasted garlic broccoli). With these selections, you can put together your own meals based on your preferences and macro goals. Each item comes with two servings, so you can enjoy your meal with someone else or get even more of a head start on meal prepping. The only requirement when ordering this way is that you spend at least $85.
Two example meals:
Santa Fe Skillet
Cowboy Stew
Sustainability & quality:
Flex Pro Meals doesn’t offer much information about food quality or sustainability on its website. However, after chatting with customer service we learned that the company doesn’t use any organic ingredients, but does source its ingredients from manufacturers within the United States. The packaging is recyclable.
