Workout Plan for Beginners: Why a 3-Day Plan From YouTube Won't Work for You

My team sent me a content plan this week. One of the ideas was: “Here's a workout plan for beginners, the exact three-day plan I'd give you.”

I looked at it and almost sent it back. I don't even want to speak on it, I thought, because I think it's a bad idea. And then I realized: why I wouldn't make that video is probably the best thing I could tell you. So here it is. Get ready with me while I explain why you should never hop on someone's YouTube, grab their three-day plan, and run it at the gym.

Why you can't just copy someone's plan

There are certain things in training that are rules. And there are other things that have to be tailored to you. That line is the whole reason you shouldn't take what someone online says at face value.

You have to have discernment, and the only way to have discernment in the game is to have time in the game. When you're new, there are so many moves and plays happening that you don't understand what's going on. Everyone else is playing at an advantage, in a game you don't understand yet. That's a massive problem, because when you can't tell what to keep and what to leave, you end up with skewed information.

That's also why I'm pro-coaching. If someone online gives you a plan and they don't know you, your life, your injuries, your schedule, how could that possibly be the best advice? They're giving advice while knowing nothing crucial about you. And when it's your body, you can't take that at face value.

Supplements are not a guessing game

I'll give you the clearest example. Never take someone's advice on which vitamins to take.

I wrote a whole guide on this, The Energy Upgrade Blueprint (I call it the Energy Blueprint), because figuring out your supplements is not a f***ing guessing game. There are certain supplements that are toxic if you take them when you don't need them. Iron is the one people get wrong most: if you supplement iron and you're not deficient, it builds up, and that can be dangerous. The research backs that up: the body has no easy way to get rid of extra iron, and high intakes can cause real harm, which is why health authorities set an upper limit for adults. (NIH Office of Dietary Supplements)

So that's the first bucket: things nobody should hand you from a screen.

How often should you train? Two games, two levels

Frequency, how many times a week you go, is lower on the list of things that need tailoring. We can talk about it almost universally, as long as you understand which game you're playing.

Game one is staying in the game. Game two is getting good at it. Most people try to play game two while they're at level one. They see someone with the body they want who trains six or seven days a week, so they decide they need six or seven days. That's not wrong. It's just level two, and you need to know what level you're at and what's relevant to you right now.

If you're at the beginning, your first goal is to stay in the game. Consistency is your first hurdle. If you go six days a week and then stop, that wasn't better for you. You'd be better off going once or twice a week in that season than forcing yourself into something it isn't your time to do yet.

At level one, one to three times a week is enough to stay in the game.

Once you're at level two, you'll be looking at five to seven, because that's where the bigger goals live. There's real value in training more. But I would never shame you for not being there at the start. There's a lot of value in holding the line for yourself and accepting where you are at this point in time.

How do I tell which level someone's at? I've been doing this for years, I messed it up plenty, and now I have certain indications I see in myself and in a client: it's more of an energy, the way a person moves through a week. That's why a second pair of eyes matters so much early on.

Learn it with training wheels

Here's something people forget: there are two kinds of stretching, and it matters which one you use when.

One kind tells your muscle to warm up, that something is about to happen. The other tells your muscle to relax. If you do the relaxing kind before a workout, you shock your body, and depending on where you're starting from and what muscle imbalances you have, that can put you at more risk of getting hurt. Think dynamic before, static after; the clinicians say the same thing, and they'll tell you not to treat a stretch as your warm-up. (Mayo Clinic)

I say this as someone who's had a lot of injuries from simply not following my own protocol. It's not that I didn't know better. I knew better. I just wasn't doing it. Which brings me to the other thing I believe in: have someone watch you.

There are two ways to learn. You can jump in the deep end with no floaters, or you can start with training wheels and take them off gradually. The best approach is the training wheels. That's how I learned: there wasn't one time I set foot in a gym in the beginning without a personal trainer next to me. Gradualism. I know not everyone's in a position to do that, and I wasn't rich either. I just didn't have the excuses. It wasn't my resources that were better; it was my resourcefulness.

And when I teach my toddler something, I show him first. I don't only explain it. Explaining alone usually ends in a tantrum. You're not a toddler, but there's something to be said for just being shown, and for letting yourself not know. A lot of adults think that past a certain age they should know everything. That's a crazy expectation. If you haven't done it, you're new, and you get to be a student.

Warm-ups, rep ranges, and why it's called the Body Blueprint

So the rules: start every session with a warm-up, not a cool-down. Know which stretches you're doing and what they tell your body. Then get into your movements.

Now the personal part. Your rep ranges depend on what you're building in this season. Your warm-up is personal too. I could give you general ones (dynamic, not static), but if all of that sounds like gibberish, it's because you need to be given something in the beginning, by someone who can see you.

And your split, which muscles you train on which days, depends on your lagging muscles. That's why I called it the Body Blueprint. We look at what you have right now and what we want to develop. Some things are nearly universal: most people can use more back, most people can use more legs. But then you get the outliers, the person who's been training two years with better legs than someone who's trained for ten. Genetics. Some people naturally carry more muscle in one area, and that's fine. It just means you can't treat everyone as equal, because they're not.

So in the Body Blueprint I go over each individual muscle and look at what needs developing. You have natural strengths. We use those, and we bring the other things up, so the whole package comes together.

My lip nurse taught me this, years ago. I walked in with inspiration pictures of another woman's face and said, this is what I want. She turned it into a lesson: the features that make her beautiful are not features you have. We're pulling out the best in you. It's for you, not for her. You're starting with a canvas, and the canvas already has things on it.

Follow a plan that doesn't take your canvas into account, and you're following a plan for a different person.

Who I coach (and who I won't)

I did five or six years in sales, and the only thing I was thinking the whole time was: let me fully see this person. When I fully understand them, I can use what I know to tell them if this is right for them or not. It was my decision to sell someone or not, and if you weren't the right fit, I walked away and left money on the table.

Would you trust that person more? Someone willing to leave money on the table and keep their reputation? I would. That's how you know someone leads with integrity.

So my goal is to look at what's on your blueprint right now. Your injuries. What you like doing. Your lifestyle, the demands on you, your cognitive load: if I put one more thing on your plate, are you about to snap? How can we take things off your plate so this actually works, instead of being an imaginary plan that lives in our heads? I'm not into made-up things. I'm here to build something that works, and then the fun part starts: you get to live it. We're building a lifestyle. We're not here to get you in shape and then watch you fall off.

But I need you on board with me. I can't be the only one wanting this. That was the hardest lesson of my career: wanting to help people who didn't want to help themselves. I've turned people around at the door because they weren't sick and tired of being sick and tired yet. When you're ready to be receptive, we can work. Until then, we can't get anywhere.

My goal is to give you transferable skills and the principles of success in this, so you can use them for a lifetime, instead of chasing something for a while and letting it go because you were white-knuckling it.