Your first four weeks in the gym

For your first four weeks, go to the gym three days a week and run two short sessions in turn, A and B. Each has one leg lift, one push and one pull. Start light, write down every set, and add a rep or one small step of weight only when your last session says you can. Print the plan as a sheet with the Printable Workout Log.

The plan at a glance

Three days a week, on days that are not back to back: Monday, Wednesday and Friday, for example. Two sessions, A and B, taken in turn. Four weeks of that is twelve sessions, six of each. Every session is one leg lift, one push and one pull, two or three sets each.

The plan is ours, but every dial on it sits inside a published range. The American College of Sports Medicine's 2009 position stand on progression recommends that novices train the entire body 2–3 days a week, use loads that correspond to 8–12 repetitions, and do 1–3 sets per exercise. ACSM's 2026 stand, which updates the 2009 one from 137 systematic reviews, found strength gains were greater with at least two sessions a week and two to three sets, and concluded that few other details of a program changed the main results.

The two sessions

Session A is leg press, chest press and seated cable row. Session B is a dumbbell Romanian deadlift, shoulder press and lat pulldown. Each session runs the leg lift first, then the push, then the pull. Six lifts in all, and because the two sessions take turns, each lift comes round six times in the four weeks.

The leg lift goes first because the 2009 stand recommends large-muscle exercises before small ones and multi-joint exercises before single-joint ones. The same stand recommends that novice training include both free-weight and machine exercises, which is why the table mixes machines, cables and dumbbells. The alternatives in the table are there so a queue at one machine does not end the session. Swap a lift only for the alternative in the same box.

Ask a member of gym staff to show you each of the six lifts once. Then write the seat height and the pin position in your log beside the weight, so the machine is set the same way next week.

All twelve sessions

Here is every session in order, with the weight rule for each. Nothing in the four weeks is decided on the day. The sheet gives the sets and reps; your last entry for that lift gives the weight. Sessions 1 to 3 are two sets of 10. From session 4 on, three sets, and from session 7 the reps open up.

Week 1: find your weights

Week 1 has one job: a page of numbers. For each lift, pick a weight you think you could lift 15 times, do 10 reps, and stop. If the tenth rep was hard, go lighter on the next set. If you could have done ten more, go heavier next time. Write every set down as you do it.

Reps to spare means how many more reps you could have done before your limit. About three to spare on a set of 10 is the aim this week. You will not judge it exactly on the first day, and a rough figure written down beats a precise one you forgot.

Session 3 repeats session 1's weights. Fix only the clear misses: the lift that was far too light, and the one where the eighth rep was your last. Leave everything else as it is. Week 1 ends with six lifts, each with a weight and a row of reps beside it.

Week 2: add a set

Keep every weight from week 1 and add a third set of each lift. Week 1 was three lifts × 2 sets, so six sets a session. Week 2 is three lifts × 3 sets, so nine. Nine is 50% more than six, and nothing has been added to the pin or the dumbbell.

That is progressive overload by sets: the same weight, more of it. The third set may be harder than the first two, and its reps may come out lower. Write what happened, not what you planned.

Weeks 3 and 4: reps first, then weight

The rep range opens to 8–12. Keep the weights you reached in week 2, stop each set one or two reps short of your limit, and never pass 12. When your best set of a lift reaches 12 with a rep to spare, take the next weight up and expect about 8 reps. Reps first, weight second.

Leg press, as it might run:

• Session 7: 60 kg for 11, 10 and 10 reps.
• Session 9: 60 kg for 12, 11 and 10, with a rep to spare on the first set.
• Session 11: 65 kg for 9, 8 and 8.

The step from 60 to 65 kg is 8.3%. The 2009 ACSM stand recommends raising the load by 2–10% once you can do one to two repetitions more than the target on two sessions in a row.

Reps come first because the steps in weight are not small. Going from 10 kg dumbbells to 12 kg dumbbells is a 20% step; going from 10 reps to 11 at the same weight is one rep. Added reps count as progress on their own: in a 2024 study of 39 previously untrained young adults, Chaves and colleagues in the International Journal of Sports Medicine trained one leg by adding reps and the other by adding load for ten weeks on the leg extension. Strength and muscle size rose on both legs, with no difference between the two. Two dials, turned one at a time, is called double progression.

How long, and how much rest

Rest about 2–3 minutes after sets of the leg lift and 1–2 minutes after the push and the pull. Nine sets, each about a minute of lifting followed by two minutes of rest, is 27 minutes. Setting up the machines adds a few minutes more.

The 2009 ACSM stand recommends rest of at least 2–3 minutes for the main heavy lifts and says 1–2 minutes may be enough for assistance exercises. Rest by the clock rather than by feel: start the timer on your phone when you put the weight down.

What to write down

For every set, write four things: the lift, the weight, the reps, and the reps you had to spare. Once per machine, write the seat height and the pin. That is the whole record. The next session reads from it, so a set you did not write down is a set you cannot build on.

Masheen is a workout log for people who lift, coming soon to iPhone and Android. It shows what you lifted last time on the set screen and starts the rest clock by itself after each set. Paper does the same job in the meantime: the Printable Workout Log on this site makes a sheet for a three-day full-body week, with boxes for weight × reps and a "last time" column, and you can change the exercises before you print.

After week four

Two options, both fine. Carry on with the same two sessions and the same rule for as long as the numbers keep rising; there is no reason to change a plan that is still adding reps and weight. Or move to a barbell program, where you load the bar by hand and the steps get smaller.

Either way, copy each lift's best set to the top of the new sheet, so session 13 starts from a number and not from a guess. If you take the barbell route, the usual beginner programs and their structures sit side by side in beginner strength programs compared, and you will need to count the bar itself: see how much a barbell weighs.