Even before we start today, congratulations on completing the first-week gym routine for beginners! It is a great positive change towards life and towards yourself. Three more weeks to go before gym becomes a lifestyle for you and then you won’t skip on it no matter what happens.
Moving on to the actual topic of the post, week 2 – a gym routine for beginners. If you had joined the gym to gain weight, lose fat, tone your body or do grow some muscle mass, the second week at the gym for all body goals remains almost the same. There can be a few variations or rep changes for different goals, but all-in-all the workout schedule remains the same. After all, it’s gym routine for beginners for all body types and body goals.
Just like the first week, the second week is also all about getting your body used to the new routine. A gym routine where you move out of your sedentary office or school life and get used to the active gym life.
Second Week at the Gym
The second week is an Advanced Beginner’s Guide to the Gym. Instead of following the full-body gym routine for beginners which we did for the first week, in week two we will split the body workout into two to three phases. so, instead of just touching every variation once in the day, we will focus a little more on each muscle.
When I say focus on each muscle, remember it does not mean that we will focus on increasing the girth of your biceps and completely miss out on legs. You can never really do that because muscles grow as a whole. The strength of your biceps will eventually be restricted if you cannot balance yourself when you carry weight.
When I say focus on a muscle, I just mean we will give a little more time to every muscle and understand how each muscle works, working out on making it and the complementary muscles better and learning new variations.
Week-2 Schedule
For the second week there are going to be 4 days of weight training and 2 days of cardio and one rest day. The first days is going to be cardio, it goes like this
- Day 1 – Lower Body
- Day 2 – Upper Body
- Day 3 – Cardio
- Day 4 – Rest
- Day 5 – Lower Body
- Day 6 – Upper Body
- Day 7 – Cardio
The concept of the upper body and the lower body might sound a little off to you right now but it will be clear once we start working out. As for the cardio days, the sessions won’t be longer than 45 minutes to an hour. If we can then, of course, we will shorten it because we Cannot Cardio, remember?
About the rest day, you don’t necessarily have to take a rest day in the middle of the week. You can schedule rest on any day of the week. If your gym is closed on the weekend then that is your rest day. Always schedule rest days at your convenience. If you don’t think you need to rest then keep working out, because you never know what might come up.
But in any case, schedule a rest day because they are as important as any other workout. If you keep working out without breaks, you will only end up exhausting and overheating your body, or might just tear your muscle beyond repair. In the best case, you might have to take a week off from the gym routine for beginners.
Cardio Sessions
Many gym bros and broettes tend to avoid cardio sessions completely from week 2 of gym routine for beginners, but skipping out on cardio it comes with a price. You will soon feel that your body is becoming stiffer and you are not as flexible anymore. Besides, if you have the strength to pick something up but not enough stamina to hold it, then what is the point?
Cardio sessions eventually become repetitive but a cardio session is as important as a weight lifting day. As we move to the later weeks we will reduce the number of cardio sessions and cardio hours and bring in more to the table. But for now, you should not skip out on cardio even though that doesn’t really seem to align with your gym goals.
Body Workouts
For the next week, which is week two of gym routine for beginners, we are dividing the body workout into two parts, the upper body, and the lower body. This will allow us to have more time to target specific muscles, unlike the first week where we just scratched the surface of the muscle building.
In week two, each body part can take two or more variations and get a push towards the toning, fat loss or muscle building journey. It might sound weird to people here for weight loss journey but what you want to do is lose fat and not weight. Losing fat will tone your body and make you look good, instead of being just skinny.
In this journey of gym routine for beginners, the weighing scale will not be a good representation but the mirror will definitely speak more about you. If you are down for gaining some muscle, then don’t worry about the weight scale, it will go up, but you are not gaining fat, you are gaining muscle and muscle.
Upper Body
The upper body workout as the name suggests will focus on torso and arms. Chest, back, shoulders and arms will be the focus muscles on an upper-body workout routine for beginners. The idea is simple, covering the smaller chunks of the muscle and working on the appearance by puffing up the muscles.
While we are at it, we will also take up one crucial and big muscle mass which is your back. Two or more variations for the back will not be enough to cover the entirety of the muscle but get us used to the new schedule. A few more variations spread out through the other muscles will be enough exercise to wrap up the day.
Lower Body
Lower body means legs day. Don’t get frightened when I say you need to do leg days from your second week in the gym. Besides, we are not calling it leg day because it is less than a real leg day. The variations would be fewer and if you have some strength left, unlike that on leg day gym routine, we will do some core workouts.
Leg Days aren’t that bad!
So, yes, the major focus of the lower body day would be legs and we will be doing a few leg variations but there will be core variations as well. I will be a lot lighter than leg day and it will only open your body and get it used to the schedule.
Okay, Bros and Broettes, get ready for your second week at the gym and the big change in your life. Enjoy a fit and healthy life and follow Cannot Cardio for more fitness posts! Remember to Stay Awesome!