How to Coach Beginning Lifters

Coaching advanced strength athletes takes extensive knowledge in the training process, exercise physiology, sports psychology and much more, but how did they get there? Developing beginning strength athletes and bodybuilders has many different opinions (Starting Strength, 5x5 programs, the beginning bodybuilder split, etc.) but they all have several of the same themes and important points. These 5 points are what I consider most important in training beginners and getting people to stay in the gym over the long term.

1. Start with a baseline of health.

There are many times that I get a client, either new or more advanced, that has a preexisting condition of ailment. Chronic back pain, bad shoulders, hips, knees; we see it all coming from new lifters. If I am starting new with someone new, this is my most important step, regardless of the level of lifter. Being able to perform the movements I prescribe at the volumes I give is an extremely important aspect of coaching. Learn how your diet effects you, stick to a diet and find out what works. Do your cardio, its good for you. Learn which exercises hurt, and which ones work. Learn the difference between being injured and being hurt. All of these start with a baseline of health and learning your own body.

This also applies to every level of lifter during training. If you have high blood pressure, get nose bleeds every squat warmup, your urine is brown and you cant walk up a flight of stairs, how can you consider yourself to be an athlete? How can you expect your body to recover and perform? How do you expect to get better when its a fight to live for another 5 years in your current state? Get your health together.

2. Get perfect technique.

Technique is of utmost importance for anyone who wants to move, perform, or look better; all of the reasons why people lift weights. In eastern strength sports practice, technique is viewed as the main reason people miss lifts, while in the west it is generally viewed as a muscular failure. I personally think that this is because of the "main" sport of the area, weightlifting in the east vs bodybuilding in the west, that lay these foundations of thinking.

Regardless, technique should be perfected, then optimized every training session. What I mean by this is that there is a range of technique that is considered perfect, this is mostly dictated by your mobility as well as anatomical structure. There are many ways do to the lift that are considered correct, but then after this has been achieved and can be repeated, you must optimize your lifting based on your current size, strengths, weaknesses, and leverages. Working on this over years and years is how we learn to squat, bench, and deadlift in the most efficient manner.

Me and my wife Irene with Pluto. 6 years apart, I was 280lbs on the left and was not lifting weights. I was 330 on the right and had multiple 2000+ totals by this point. Time and consistency towards a goal.

3. Get stronger.

Starting by getting stronger rather than getting bigger. Many people fall into the trap of wanting to be big and strong instead of strong then big. This is an issue of total volume. For example, if someones maximum bench press is 100lbs first day in the gym, and you have them do 4 sets of 8 at 60% of their maximum, this would be 1920lbs of total volume. If you have them do a 5x5 at 70% instead, they would do 1750lbs of total volume on bench press. The trick is, the client doing the 5x5 will reach strength gains potentially faster than the client doing sets of 8. So if their bench presses move to 110 (hypertrophy focus) and 125 (strength focus), those total volumes now add up to 2112lbs of total volume and 3125lbs of total volume with the same rep and percentage schemes, respectively. The client who focused first on gaining the strength is set up at an advantage, even if they wanted to be better at hypertrophy because they can do more volume per set.

While this obviously is a different idea in training for specific sports or competitions, the baseline of all barbell sports is strength. Being strong makes your more coordinated, better at movement patterns, and allows you to move more weight in a shorter period of time. As Mark Bell likes to say, "Strength is never a weakness".

4. Get your GPP up.

This one is simple. Be better at everything at the beginning. Do sled pushes, pulls, box jumps, sprints, hills, sledgehammer drills, battle ropes, etc. Be sure to allow yourself the capacity to grow, meaning that things will get heavy and hard quick. Sets of 10 on squat are different at 200lbs than they are at 100lbs, and the demand is much more than twice as much. Gain the capacity to become more than you were yesterday.

5. Get bigger.

The last step, but arguably the one that most people go to the gym for, is to gain size. Lots of size. This means to not be afraid to lose your 6 pack you had at 120lbs body weight at 5 foot 11, because that doesn't impress anyone. Do the compound movements, bust ass on your accessories, eat and sleep as hard as you train. Do this for 6 months and don't be surprised to be 20lbs heavier and still have your abs because hey, they have grown too. This mostly comes down to diet and consistency, two things that happen to be the hardest to practice for beginners and elite athletes alike, so you might as well be good at it now as opposed to try and relearn later.