Simple Home Gym Workout Routine for Beginners

It’s easy to get sucked into the more is better scenario when it comes to getting a great workout. It becomes particularly difficult to decide on the right workout plan when you start watching YouTube videos or reading muscle magazines. All those professionals are more than happy to ramble on about the benefits of doing multiple exercises for each body part, leaving no single muscle fiber untouched.

The fact is, unless you’re a professional bodybuilder getting paid to look their best and be their absolute biggest, you only need a few basic exercises to build muscle and get in shape. This should be good news if you’re just starting out and only have a home gym sitting in a corner somewhere in your house to work with.

Below, you’ll find a great muscle building, fat burning workout you can do right from the comfort of your home gym, while working out only 3 days a week to maximize gains without incurring injuries. When working out at home without a partner, it’s important to keep repetitions in the 12 – 20 range to avoid joint and muscle injury from strenuous heavy weights.

Higher repetitions also burn more calories than lower rep schemes. So don’t get caught up in thinking that heavy weights and lower reps are necessary for building muscle and strength. The body’s anabolic processes including muscle hypertrophy and protein synthesis can be triggered using either heavy weights / low reps or lighter weights / higher reps as evidenced in this extensive study.

If you can’t perform a listed exercise because it isn’t available to you on your equipment, or because it aggravates an injury, feel free to substitute one of these bodyweight exercises in their place or try another movement that works the same body parts.

The Warm Up

Warming up is important. You could just jump on the machine and get started by using lighter weights. However, this low-impact, “dynamic” full-body warm up from Steve Lombard is perfect for loosening up all your muscles and joints for the rigors to come:

The Workout

Monday

Exercises:

• Pullups or Cable Pulldowns: 3 sets, 12 – 20 repetitions
• Chest Press: 3 sets, 12 – 20 repetitions
• Dips or Triceps Pushdowns: 3 sets, 12 – 20 repetitions
• Leg Extensions: 3 sets, 12 – 20 repetitions
• Hamstring Curls: 3 sets, 12 – 20 repetitions

Tuesday

• Take a rest day.

Wednesday

Exercises:

• Leg Presses or Squats: 3 sets, 12 – 20 repetitions
• Seated Rows: 3 sets, 12 – 20 repetitions
• Shoulder Press: 3 sets, 12 – 20 repetitions
• Lateral Cable Raises: 3 sets, 12 – 20 repetitions
• Preacher Curls: 3 sets, 12 – 20 repetitions

Thursday

• Take a rest day.

Friday

Exercises:

• Seated Rows: 3 sets, 12 – 20 repetitions
• Chest Press: 3 sets, 12 – 20 repetitions
• Dips or Triceps Pushdowns: 3 sets, 12 – 20 repetitions
• Bicep Curls: 3 sets, 12 – 20 repetitions
• Leg Extensions: 3 sets, 12 – 20 repetitions

Additional Advice

The above workout should be simple for most of you to follow. If you warmed up correctly, rather than just jumping into the routine, there should be very little risk of injury either. The weights don’t necessarily have to get heavier as you move from the first set, to the second and finally the third.

What’s more important is that you concentrate on good form, and that the poundage for each exercise continues to go up as you progress over the first several weeks. The great thing about being a beginner is that, in most cases, your muscles will grow and get stronger with relative ease when compared to the progress of more experienced lifters.

You can continue to use and realize gains from this routine for as long as you like, provided you can consistently increase the resistance used to accommodate strength gains.