Keri’s Simple, Citationless Guide to Success at the Gym

This simple guide is dedicated to a past version of Keri who was a bit too concerned with hitting the gym optimally, and not concerned enough with the boring basics.

Absolute Essentials

Go to the gym consistently

At least twice a week. Put it on your calendar, get a gym buddy, whatever you need to do. If you’re not lifting regularly, the rest of this guide will be of little use to you.

Compound lifts are king

Now that you’re going to the gym consistently, you need to do some lifts. Compound lifts are your bread and butter - they hit multiple muscle groups and joints so you get more exercise per lift. The traditional big three compound lifts are Bench Press, Squat, and Deadlift, but lifts like Pull-ups, Cable Rows, and Overhead Press are also really good.

If you want to keep things simple: pick 2-4 of the above lifts, and throw in 1-2 isolation lifts: lateral raises, bicep curls, calf raises, etc. If you want something more creative, ask your favorite local LLM.

Learn good form

For the most part, good form is about not hurting yourself. All you need to learn good form is youtube and your phone to record video of yourself. You’ll learn it a lot faster with direct feedback though! Good form is also about exercising the parts of your body that the lift is intended to, which is important because you may otherwise compensate for a weak part of your body by using a stronger one. We want to strengthen our entire bodies, so avoid cheating like this (unless, perhaps, you’re close to the end of your set and a little cheating helps you complete more reps), and try to do the full range of motion.

Sleep

If you’re not well rested, your workout will suck. That is all.

Warm-ups

For each of your lifts, you should be trying to figure out what your target weight is - the amount of weight for which you can do a good number of clean sets and reps. For compound lifts, don’t go straight to that weight on your first set. Avoid injury by first warming your body up with one or two sets at a lighter weight.

Getting Strong

Volume

Once you’re going to the gym regularly, exercising most or all of your body, and not hurting yourself, the next most important thing is to maximize your volume - the amount of weight you moved. This is just the amount of weight you’re lifting multiplied by how many times you lifted it (you don’t need to calculate this).

Generally, you should aim to do about 3-6 sets of 6-20 reps per exercise. Much ink has been spilled about exactly how many sets and reps are optimal, but I think you shouldn’t worry about it. If you insist, here’s one simple heuristic: for more full body lifts do fewer reps and for smaller more isolated lifts do more reps.

Progressive Overload

This is the secret sauce to getting stronger - gradually increasing the amount of weight you lift. If you follow all the above techniques, you’ll find that week to week your sets are starting to feel easier! That’s great! When that happens, put on more weight. This is how we get stronger.

One Rep in Reserve

If the last rep of your set was really very easy, you probably didn’t do enough reps, or didn’t put on enough weight. If, on the last rep of your set, your muscles reached a point of exhaustion such that they mechanically failed (despite your iron will), you did too many reps! A good general heuristic for how many reps you should do is to keep going until you think you have only one clean rep left and then stop. Leave one rep in reserve.

Other Good Stuff

Resting

Take rests between sets. That doesn’t mean you should pull out your phone and then lose track of time though; use a timer. The more compound the lift, the longer you should rest. It’s not unreasonable to take 3 or 4 minute breaks after heavy squat sets.

If you’re just getting started, you’re limited not by how strong your muscles are but by your ability to make use of the strength that you do have. In this case you probably don’t need 3 or 4 minute breaks, but you should do whatever feels right. If you need another 30 seconds, take it.

Abs

Your abs probably aren’t strong enough. They do a lot of the work of keeping you stable while you’re doing big lifts. It’s usually a good idea to throw in some ab exercises to the beginning or end of every session.

Focus

A disproportionate amount of your gains at the gym come from pushing yourself close to the limit of what you’re capable of. While you’re at the gym, don’t dilly-dally, and stop checking your phone. You’ll get a lot more out of your sessions by making lifting your absolute focus while you’re at the gym. No pain, no gain (Specifically, muscle pain and exhaustion - don’t push through actual pain. duh).

Protein, Creatine, and Caffeine

Try to get some extra protein after your session, and if you’re lifting a lot, try to add more protein throughout the day. Some experts tell you exactly how much protein you should be trying to get but let’s be real, counting grams SUCKS. If you love giving yourself new daily routines, start taking ~3 grams of creatine per day. It almost certainly helps a little bit. Caffeine is a solid performance enhancing drug. If you’re already an addict, you may as well take a bit just before your workout. Everything else is a wash.

Drop Sets

Drop sets are a great way to squeeze extra juice out of your muscles without taking a big risk of hurting yourself. When you have one rep in reserve, quickly take the weight down some, maybe 20-40%, and then do a bunch more reps until you again have only one in reserve. This will hurt a bit :) but it’s great.