In partnership with

Good morning!

In an effort to prevent this from being far longer than you care to read on a Wednesday morning, this newsletter will be the first in a two-part series about how to get started with resistance training. This week’s is more educational, and the next one will be more practical.

(If this email was forwarded to you and you'd like to receive this weekly newsletter, sign up below!)

Fuel Your Ambitions

• 40g protein, plus 27 essential vitamins & minerals

• Ready in 30 seconds – just shake, sip, go

• New customers get 15% off with code BEHUEL15

Upgrade Your Nutrition Now

^From Drew: Click the link to check it out! I’m considering getting some, myself!

🏋️ Resistance Training 101: How to Start Lifting Weights

So you’re ready to get started lifting weights. You’ve heard about the endless benefits. You’ve found or mustered up some motivation. You’re ready to improve your health, get stronger, and put on some muscle.

Let’s cover a few basics first:

Resistance training = lifting weights (or using body weight, bands, etc.). There are essentially four possible outcomes of resistance training:

• Strength: the ability to lift higher weights

• Hypertrophy: growth in muscle size

• Power: strength with speed, and

• Muscular endurance: the ability to continue contracting against resistance over time

Muscular endurance should not be confused with cardiovascular endurance. The former is less necessary—though beneficial still—and typically trained by lifting weights for more than 20 repetitions (reps) at a time. Cardiovascular endurance, however, is trained by steady state, continuous, rhythmic exercise (e.g. walking, running, biking, rowing, swimming, etc.) and has tons of health benefits. But that’s not what we’re talking about today.

Most people resistance train—and rightfully so—to improve strength and/or hypertrophy. If you’re just getting started, those should probably be your two primary goals as well. 

• Power is vital, especially as we age, but can be trained over time once you have some baseline strength built up.

Strength & Hypertrophy: The Differences

Strength is mostly a neurological adaptation. Hypertrophy (muscle growth) is more of a physical/mechanical adaptation. 

This means that strength gains happen internally without us able to observe much physical change on the outside. A number of factors improve, including our brain’s ability to make our muscles utilize all their fibers (cells) for a given effort in a coordinated, forceful movement. Strength gains can occur without an increase in muscle size, though they often do go hand in hand—especially for beginners.

Hypertrophy, on the other hand, is when our muscles grow in size. Believe it or not, the exact mechanisms for this are still debated today, but there are theories. You can also theoretically grow your muscle size without increasing much strength, but again, if you’re a beginner, you’re likely to increase both at the same time with training.

Strength is primarily trained in the 1 to 5, maybe up to 8, repetition range. Think of it all as on a sliding scale. Hypertrophy is best trained between about 6 to 8 up to 12 or 15, maybe 20 repetitions. This image I saw in grad school really helps visualize how much each quality is trained when working in select rep ranges:

Make a change

Now that you’ve got an idea about the adaptations your muscles can undergo, let’s talk about how to elicit them.

Starting off from zero, almost any activity has a high likelihood of making you sore. Do NOT overdo it in the first couple weeks. 

Next newsletter, we’ll discuss the movement patterns to get down with correct form and how to start slowly, then progress them. But for now, here’s more of the knowledge you’ll need to carry forward.

In terms of frequency, starting out with just two full-body workouts per week (meaning you do enough exercises to target every major muscle group throughout the workout) will be plenty to get you going. Twice a week could even be enough to continue progressing long-term, but you may want to lift more than that over time.

After you’ve gone through your initial base-building phase and are now a regular exerciser (woohoo!), here are some tips on frequency and volume.

Strength gains can come with just a few hard, heavy sets per week, ideally done around the 3 to 5-rep range. Since it’s more neurologically taxing than physically exhausting, you can strength train the same muscles pretty frequently—even daily in some cases.

• But at least once, ideally 2–3 times per week, is probably where you want to land.

• I’d suggest anywhere from 2 to 5 hard, heavy sets where you’ve got about 1 to 3 possible reps left in the tank after each working set. 

Hypertrophy, on the other hand, is dictated more by volume and tension. This means you need to A. push close to failure in a set of over ~6 repetitions (yes, you’ll “feel the burn”), and B. accumulate enough of these “working sets” on a weekly basis to induce muscle growth.

• You can probably build muscle with just 4–6 hard sets per muscle group per week.

• Ideally, 10–20 sets per muscle per week is where you want to land to stimulate the most growth.

Newbie Gainz

The last point I want to make this week is around what we affectionately call “Newbie gains.” If you’re new to resistance training without much history, you will never again see gains and progression like those you experience in your first 3 to 6 to 12 months of training. Take advantage of it and don’t squander this time.

Your body is basically a sponge just waiting to expand into the strength and healthy muscle size that you haven’t tapped into. Neurological connections are dying to be made. Satellite cells are waiting to be activated. Muscle bellies are waiting to be filled! (No, don’t worry, you won’t magically become bulky and massive accidentally in a short period of time.)

Those of us who have been lifting for a decade or longer are infinitely jealous of the newbie gains that lie just ahead of you. We salivate at the thought of adding muscle (and likely simultaneously shedding fat) at the rate you’re about to experience. So enjoy it!

• My late Granddad starting resistance training in his seventies! He had been in the Army 50 years prior and had an active occupation most of his life, but he still saw incredible health benefits once he started lifting weights. We even attribute much of it to staving off his Parkinson’s disease symptoms for so long.

The most improvements in strength, muscle, and health you’ll ever see come by going from doing nothing to something. You’re about to unlock a much healthier, more robust and resilient body with just a few months of consistent, intelligent, progressive training. 

Let that excite you! 

Next newsletter, we’ll get into the nitty gritty of which movement patterns (and in turn, exercises) to focus on, proper form & injury prevention, and how to progress to loading your lifts heavier over time. And of course, the most important factor in all this is consistency.

As the adage goes, the best time to start was yesterday (or 20 years ago). The second best time to start is today.

✅ Take Action

Every newsletter's Take Action section will invite you to take small steps to improve your health. Recognizing that we all have different capabilities, I'll offer three different levels of action you can choose to take.

Level 1: If you’re brand new to this, either continue doing research (resources like Functional Bodybuilding and Renaissance Periodization have great video demonstrations) on how to safely and properly lift. If you want professional eyes, feel free to hit me up as well!

Level 2: Ease into it. Even if I take 1-2 weeks off from the gym, I’m always much more sore upon return if I don’t temper my intensity and volume at first. Don’t scare yourself off by crushing yourself. Easing into training over several weeks helps safeguard against injury and burnout.

Level 3: You’re a pro already. Keep up the good work, but consider macro-periodization. Every 8-16 weeks, shake things up, make new goals, try new exercises, and push yourself in different ways, even subtly.

✍️ Drew's Picks:

• Quiz long & prosper: Take this quiz to find your estimated lifespan! I was pretty impressed by the span of questions they ask. I got 87.33. But I plan to beat that!

• Listen: This longgg podcast on Huberman Lab has some great strength training principles and perspective.

• Listen more: Another great audio tome on resistance training in The Peter Attia Drive podcast.

Heads up, I may take next week off or send just a short n’ sweet newsletter, as I’ll be taking a ski trip over the weekend! ⛷️ 

I haven’t fully decided yet, but if I’m not in your inbox next week, don’t fret. I’ll be back soon with this newsletter’s part 2!

Keep moving,

Drew

The content in Move to Improve is meant to be informative in nature, but it should not be taken as medical advice. It is always a good idea to consult with a trusted health professional before making any major lifestyle changes that could have a significant impact on your health. This is not a medical resource, and any opinions and articles are not intended for use as diagnosis, prevention, and/or treatment of health problems. They are not substitutes for consulting a qualified medical professional. Please think critically and take what I say with a grain of salt (aka don’t sue me).