Workout Plan To Gain Strength | Gym Mistakes For Beginners

YouTube, what's going on? Welcome back to the channel. Welcome to the video. In this video, you and I are going to be covering my top 7 things that you should be doing in order to get stronger and build muscle. And that's kind of like the result of really what these 7 things are going to bring to you is you're going to have better workouts. You're going to be able to lift more weight. You're going to be able to do more reps. You're going to be able to have more energy. You're going to feel stronger. You're going to feel more powerful. You're going to feel like you can push yourself harder in the gym. All of these 7 things are going to help you do that in your workout. So that will then in turn bring you the result of getting stronger and building muscle. Because if you are lifting more weight, doing more reps, pushing yourself harder, all of these good things, the result of that is going to be able to bring you Those 2 things right there. So if you are interested in that, this video will be for you. Without any further ado, let's dive right in. All right? The first thing you are going to do to help yourself have better workouts, lift more weights, do more reps, is gonna be number one, eating before your workout. Quite literally, food is fuel. I know some people are like, oh, food is more than fuel. I celebrate my holidays with food and it's a, it's a sentimental thing to me. Cool. That's fine. Food can be that as well. But in the literal aspect of things, food is fuel, especially protein and carbohydrates. Those 2 things are going to be fuel for your workouts. And so if you're having those 2 things before your workout, roughly about 30 to 90 minutes Before your workout, you're giving your body— it's almost like you're injecting your body with more gasoline. You're injecting your body with diesel fuel, with like the supercharge. You ever played those like Midnight Club, or you ever played those like car racing games where they have like the nitric oxide boost in it? That's essentially what eating before your workout is gonna bring to you. It's going to allow you to have more energy, more stamina, more endurance, more intensity, more focus, push harder. Because carbohydrates are like the actual fuel source for your body. So roughly eating about 20 to 40 grams of carbs pre-workout is absolutely going to help you have a better workout. And protein as well. Getting protein into your bloodstream before your workout is going to help you be able to help mitigate that muscle protein breakdown so you don't get as fatigued So you're able to, you know, lift heavier weights for longer. Like I'm thinking right now, for example, let's just take like a squat. For example, let's say on the first set of your squat, which we're going to talk about like sets and reps and stuff like that later. So hint, hint, stay around. But let's say for your first set of squats, you're doing 80 pounds for 6 reps, right? Let's say the second set, you can't get 80 pounds for 6 reps again because you feel it's too heavy. You feel run down, so on and so forth. But let's say if you're eating before your workout now, you can do all 3 sets of squats at 80 pounds for 6 reps as opposed to having to do, let's say, 80 pounds for 6 reps for the first set, but then 75 pounds for 5 reps for the second set, and then 70 pounds for 5 reps for the third set. You would see more muscle gain and strength gain progress over time if you lifted all 3 sets at 80 pounds for 6 reps, right? Because you're lifting more weight for more reps than you would if you had to back down each set. That's kind of how, like, I tend to tell people eating before your workout can give you that little bit of extra push that you are looking for to really make sure your workouts kind of go in the way you want them to go and you just have better performance overall. And I know I'm going to get the question, Eric, I work out super early in the morning. What do I do? Oh my God. I know, I get it, I got you. I also work out earlier in the morning. And here's what I will say. Number one, I would still try to encourage you to at least get something small. So whether it's like a protein shake and a Rice Krispie treat, whether, you know, what I personally, what I do, I have this as my breakfast every day at 4:30 in the morning. I have Rice Krispie cereal and I have a protein shake. So I mix up my protein powder and I pour my protein shake over my Rice Krispie cereal. And I have a Greek yogurt and a banana. That is my pre-workout meal. I have that around 4:30, and then I go and work out. Personally, I go and work out at about 6:00 AM. So that's what I eat. But again, you could literally just do something as simple as like half a banana. You can do something as simple as like just some blueberries or strawberries or watermelon. You can do something as simple as having Rice Krispies or rice cakes or oatmeal or something that you can just like quickly get down. It doesn't have to be anything too, too heavy. But just getting something in is going to help you. But if you're one of those people who are like, I'm just not eating before my workout, just make sure the dinner the night before, if you work out early in the morning, just make sure the dinner the night before is high in protein and carbohydrates because that's what your body will use for fuel for the workout for the next morning. But again, I would just personally strongly encourage you to at least try. And I've coached so many people who they swore Up and down. They were not a breakfast person. They could not eat before their workout. They always felt sick and heavy and so on and so forth, which I get, but this is why I say again, eating something just small, easy to digest. Again, that's why I talked about Rice Krispies cereal or Rice Krispie treats or rice cakes. All 3 of those things are super easy for your body to digest, or even some of those instant oatmeal packets, like the flavored ones. Those actually might be even better for pre-workout meal because they have a little bit more sugar in them and they're faster digesting so they can get into your bloodstream a bit quicker and so on and so forth. So something like those sugar packets, for example, protein shakes, Greek yogurt, you know, whatever it is, get something into your system, roughly 20 to 30 grams of protein and 20 to 30 grams of carbs, roughly 30 to 90 minutes pre-workout, and that will absolutely help you to have a a better workout. You'll feel stronger, be able to do all the, you know, more weight, more reps, all of that good stuff. All right, the second one is gonna be setting goals. And that may sound very simple, but stick with me here. I'm gonna give you a little bit of a secret, a little bit of an insight that we do with all of our clients here that we coach at Eric Roberts Fitness or our Clubhouse members as well. I think literally, yeah, this month as I'm recording this video, we just had a challenge on this inside of Our Clubhouse. And so what I mean by setting goals is roughly for all of our clients, and what I would recommend to you as well, we switch up our workouts every 4 to 5 weeks. So every 4 to 5 weeks, basically every, every month, all of our members get a new workout program, right? With new exercises, new reps, new sets. Like, it's, it's a new everything, right? It's a new, it's a new program. So what we encourage people to do is Week— let's just say week 1 to week 4, you're doing a barbell back squat, for example, and you are doing— on week 1, you did 3 sets of 5 reps at 100 pounds, right? I want you, and I encourage you, to set an end-of-program goal. So let's just take the squat, for example. If on week 1 you did 3 sets Of 5 reps at 100 pounds, I want you to set a goal for the end of week 4, if that's how long the program's going for. Set a goal for the end of week 4 to try to squat 140 pounds for 5 reps for 3 sets, or whatever the goal is for you. Because that way, from week 1 to week 4, every single time you go into the gym, you now have a purpose. for that workout. You know, you're trying to build and build and build upon each and every single workout in order to help you reach that end of program goal. Every single workout has a purpose. You're pushing hard. Like, you know, you know, if week 2 and 3 rolls around, and again, we'll just use that simple example there, but if week 2 and 3 rolls around and you know your end of program goal is 140 pounds for 5 reps and you know, like that's what you're shooting for on that week, You're going to push hard in week 1, push hard in week 2, push hard in week 3. Every single thing is going to have a purpose and you're going to try to push yourself. And because you're pushing yourself to try to reach this goal, inevitably you're going to lift more weight, you're going to do more reps, you're going to push yourself harder than you would if you just kind of said, oh well, I'll try to do my best. It's like our bodies— remember, your body likes something called homeostasis. It doesn't want to change. It doesn't want to build muscle or lose fat or anything for that matter. It just wants to stay the exact same, right? Because that's what's easiest to keep you alive. And so in order for you to change your body and for you to get stronger, build muscle, all these great things, that's amazing. But you got to push yourself to do that. Setting end-of-program goals is a tremendous way to do that. What we typically recommend for all of our clients is, you know, I wouldn't pick every single exercise. I would probably pick your like 1 to 2 main exercises that you really want to focus on for that day. So Let's just say, for example, you are running a 4-day-a-week lower-upper, lower-upper split. That's what a lot of our clients do. You're running a 4-day-a-week split. Let's say on day 1 you pick squats, on day 2 you pick a bench press and chin-up, on day 3 you pick your deadlifts, and on day 4 you pick push-ups, for example, right? Like, you now have those 4 or 5 exercises that you are going to push really hard at and really look to, like, just again overall push yourself. And that will also set the tone for your workout. Because like, let's say you start off with your squats, for example, and you really push yourself. Like, you're in that mindset, you're like pushing really hard, you're in a really good mental place, you're trying to, you know, get stronger, you're trying to do more reps. Like, it's just going to set the tone, I've seen, for the entire workout. So set your end-of-program goals. Again, that's a secret that I want to give to you that we do with a lot of our clients that has helped them a ton, and it can help you a ton as well. The third one is going to be Take longer rest. You're not going to be able to lift as heavy as you can. You're not going to be able to be as strong as you can. You're not going to be able to build as much muscle as you can if you're only resting for like 30 seconds in between your sets. Because I always get pushback on this, I'm going to link a study here below if you're somebody who like is going to try to sit here and tell me this is inaccurate. So you can go check out the study if you want to, and if you want, we can have a conversation about it, but I'm not just going I'm just going to sit here and provide like no context to you like some people try to do to me, but there'll be a study below if you want to check it out. But there has been research to show the most optimal rest time in between your sets is going to be anywhere between that 2 to 5 minute mark. This is what is most optimal in order for you to maximize hypertrophy and strength gains. For most people who are resting entirely way too short in their workouts, here's typically the way I kind of like, like to, uh, I guess, paint a picture for you, right? Let's say me and you are doing a challenge and we're trying to see who can hold our breath underwater the longest. You know, we're going side by side and like we both go down underwater, we hold our breath for 60 seconds straight. I come back up, you come back up. I am going to take a 2-minute break, you are going to take a 20-second break. So, in 20 seconds, you have to go back underwater And try to hold your breath as long as you can. Whereas I, I'm going to take 2 minutes of rest. You go back underwater and you only hold your breath this time for 45 seconds. I go back underwater and I hold my breath for, again, 60 seconds. You come back up, you only rest for 20 seconds. You got to go back down in the water, try to hold your breath as long as you can. You can only hold your breath for 30 seconds this time because You're already gassed from the first time, let alone the second time. You come back up and you're like, you're trying to catch your breath and you're really trying, but you got to go back underwater because there's 20 seconds and you got to go back and try it again. So you're trying to do this again, whereas I'm over here and I'm just kind of like, I come back up, I'm like, I'm kind of huffing and puffing, but you know, by the end of the 2 minutes, my heart rate has come down. I feel pretty good. I'm talking normally. I've caught my breath again. And so I can go back underwater again and hold my breath for as long as I can. And it's going to be a longer duration than what you can hold your breath for. That's because I'm, I am recovering much more than you are recovering in between your sets. And that's how your muscles work. Like you need to be able to give your muscles and something called your central nervous system, you need to give your muscles and your central nervous system time to recover so that they can push as hard as they possibly can. In your next set. This right here has been single-handedly the biggest game changer for thousands of people have messaged me about this. It has been the biggest game changer for them because when you actually start to rest for roughly 2 to 5 minutes in between your sets, again, you're going into that next set so recovered so you can lift more weight, you can do more reps, you can push yourself harder in that set than if you only rested for 20, 30, 40 seconds. And when you're only resting for 20, 30, 40 seconds, you're transitioning the workout from being a workout that is going to make you stronger and build muscle, and you're turning it into a cardio-based workout. Because sometimes I get the pushback of, well, Eric, I really feel like I'm pushing close to failure when I, when I only take a 30-second break. You're pushing close to failure from a cardiovascular standpoint or from a muscular muscular endurance standpoint. You're not necessarily pushing close to failure from a strength standpoint or from like a muscle contraction standpoint. It's more of your cardio or your muscular endurance. And so when you're able to rest for 2 to 5 minutes in between your sets, you transition away from like the limiting factor of that set being your cardiovascular system or muscular endurance system. And now you're actually working and taxing You're taxing your strength building system, which when you actually tax your strength building system, the result that you are going to get from that is going to be building strength and building muscle. Whereas opposed to if you're only resting for 30 seconds in between your sets, because you're taxing your cardio and muscular endurance, the result is going to be your cardio and your muscular endurance might improve, but your strength and you building muscle is not going to improve. From you only resting for 30 seconds in between your sets. And so again, take longer rest times. People ask me this too, supersets. If you're doing a superset, 2 exercises back to back, which I think I've actually done an entire video on supersets on this channel, can link it here above if you'd like to watch that after this video. But if you're doing supersets, you would do those 2 exercises back to back and then you would rest for 2 to 5 minutes after the superset. So that's— I'll say one more thing to this. I was going to move on, but one more thing. A lot of people hear like 2 to 5 minutes and they tell me 2 things. Number one, Eric, what the fuck do I do for 2 to 5 minutes? You just fucking chill the fuck out and rest. Okay? And this is a great indicator. If you think you don't need 2 minutes of rest after your sets, you're not pushing yourself anywhere near hard enough. And I'm not trying to be an asshole to you, but that's just the bottom line. Because when you start pushing yourself hard enough, you will realize 2 minutes of rest really ain't that fucking much. So that would be number 1. And number 2, people ask me, Eric, I'm gonna spend all the time in the world in the gym. No, you're not gonna spend all the time in the world in the gym because you're gonna do less exercises. You don't need to do as many exercises as you're doing right now, and we're actually gonna talk about that right now. So number 4 is gonna be simply do less exercises, and there's a few reasons for this. Number 1, like I just said up here, you don't need— when you're actually taking longer rest and when you're doing all these things I kind of talked about, you're pushing yourself more. You're having more intensity. You don't need as many exercises or as many reps and sets if you're actually taking the exercises and the sets that you're doing and pushing them very close to failure. What a lot of people fall into is something called junk volume, which is essentially just kind of like, let's take like a construction worker team, for example, right? And let's say they're trying to build a house. And every single day they go to the work site, but like they kind of just like they're there, but they're kind of just like dicking off. Like they don't really get anything done. Maybe they sweep the floor a bit. Maybe they start to like weld some things together. But like, let's just say, you know, a month goes by, 2 months goes by and the homebuilder comes by and there's been no progress made, nothing at all. So people are like, well, what the fuck are you guys doing all day? Like, oh, well, you know, we're kind of working, but it's like nothing's actually getting done. There's no progress being made. They're just kind of like busily doing things kind of here and there that don't really add up to any progress being made. They're like working 8 hours a day, but they're not really accounting for anything. They're not really making progress, stacking progress on top of each other, actually building the foundation, the house, whatever it is. I know how to build a house. I'm sure somebody out there is going to comment and be like, oh, you're a fucking idiot. The fucking, uh, the drywall comes first. I don't fucking know, but you get what I'm saying. They're doing work with no progress to show for it. That's kind of what most people are doing in their workouts because they're doing too many exercises. And so typically speaking, what I would say for exercises is I'll do lower body, upper body, and full body. On a lower body day, most, if not all of the lower body days I program for myself and all of my clients, all of my Clubhouse members, the exercises I do on a leg day are usually 4 to 6. I'm trying to think of a time I've done more than 6 exercises on a leg day. I can't even fucking tell you. So 4 to 6 exercises on a lower body day. Again, if you actually learn, because you're now taking proper rest time and you're eating beforehand and all these good things, you're pushing yourself harder in the workouts. So doing 5 exercises on a leg day is fucking brutal, brutal, absolutely brutal on a leg day. You don't need 10 exercises on a fucking leg day. And I've done videos on this channel as well on kind of like how to set up, you know, workouts and so on and so forth. So feel free to peruse my channel. There's a shit ton of information on here, but lower body, 4 to 6 exercises, upper body, I'd probably say anywhere around 6 to 10 exercises, maybe up to 12 if you're somebody who's really trying to focus on upper body, but 6 to 10 exercises. And you can do those in a superset fashion, which again, check out the superset video. I've done on my channel that'll help you out. And then for a full body workout, I would say same thing, anywhere between 6 to 12 exercises in a full body workout. Because now, because you're not having to do so many exercises in your program and because you can actually program in a smarter fashion, like I talked about utilizing supersets for example, right? You're programming smarter, you're doing less exercises, you're having more intensity. All of these things combined You don't need as many exercises in order for you to see progress. And that's number one. And number two, on top of that, when you look at like a leg day and you have like 10 exercises, whether you want to like actually admit it or not, I know this is happening. You're looking at that and you're like, holy shit, like I gotta do so many things. I have so many exercises, so many reps, so many sets. And you're like getting overwhelmed. And not only are you getting overwhelmed, but you know in the back of your head, after you get done exercise number one, you have 9 exercises. That's So inevitably you are going to leave some in the tank because you know you have to try to get through 9 more exercises as opposed to if you have 4 exercises, for example, you know you only got 3 left. So you're going to push yourself so much harder in all of those 4 exercises, which again, you're going to have more intensity, lift heavier weights, push yourself closer to failure, do more reps, all that good stuff, which is going to lead to you getting stronger and building more muscle. Number 5 is going to be giving yourself a rep range. So instead of saying you are going to do 8 reps, for example, give yourself a rep range of 6 to 10 reps. And here's the reason why. Number 1, if you only give yourself 1 rep, I'm going to do 3 sets of 8 reps. If you only give yourself 1 rep, the only way you can progress that movement is by adding weight. And especially the more intermediate to advanced you get, You won't be able to add weight every single week. Not to mention there's going to be movements like bicep curls, for example, that, or tricep extensions where you won't be able to add weight every single week. And so what are you going to do? You're just going to go in there and do like 3 sets of 8 because you can't lift heavier and like just do that for eternity, right? So like giving you a rep range, you can do 3 sets of 8, 3 sets of 9, 3 sets of 10. And then once you get to 3 sets of 10, for example, then let's say you add weight and then you drop the reps down to the 6 reps. So you go from lifting 10 pounds for 10 reps to 15 pounds for 6 reps and then 15 pounds for 7 reps, 15 pounds for 8 reps. You see how much more progress you are now making and how much, you know, you're pushing yourself closer to failure and just again, overall making more progress. So a rep range just makes sense for most exercises that you are doing. But then also number 2, you can kind of think of it like this as well. I'll give you an example of what I did today earlier in my workout. I was doing a rep range of about 5 to 8 reps for my flat dumbbell chest press, Right? The first set, I knew I could do, uh, 120-pound dumbbells for like 5 or 6 reps. I knew after that first set I wasn't going to be able to get 5 reps again on that 120, on the 120s. But I did know I could probably do the 110s for about 6, 7, 8 reps after that. And so what I was able to do was I did the 120s for the first set, got 6 reps, I think. And then I was able to do 110s for, I think it was 8 and 7, right? So now, but if I only was doing 5 reps, for example, or if I was only doing 6 reps, I probably wouldn't even have done the 120s because I knew I was only going to get 1 set and it wouldn't be worth it and so on and so forth. Right? So that's another like secret kind of, not secret, but just like a tip you can give yourself, which is if you have 3 sets and you have a set, a rep range of, 6 to 10 reps, maybe you take that first set and we're going to talk about this here in a second as well, but maybe you take that first set, go as heavy as you can, maybe aim towards the bottom end of the rep range. And then once you know you won't be able to do that weight again, you can back off the weight and maybe increase the reps just a tad bit, which leads me to the next point, which is please make sure you are doing proper warmup sets. And I've done an entire podcast on working sets versus warmup sets. I'll link that here below if you want to give it a listen. But essentially there's a difference between your working sets and your warmup sets. Okay? Your working sets are sets that you take within 1 to 3 reps shy of failure. If you do not do that, it does not count towards your workout. So when your workout program says, 3 sets of 8 to 12 reps. In set 1, you're kind of like, oh, this is kind of easy. And then set 2, you're like, all right, this is kind of hard. And then set 3, you're finally like, oh man, this is really difficult. I'm struggling on the last few reps. You've done 1 set. You haven't done 3 sets. You did 2 warmup sets and 1 working set. If your program says 3 sets of 8 to 10, every single one of those sets needs to be a working set. Where you are pushing within 1 to 3 reps shy of failure. And so I don't mean you should head right into your working sets. Let's take, for example, a squat. Let's say you're doing a 100-pound goblet squat with a dumbbell. I don't suggest you going from like you walk right into the gym and you just go grab the 100-pound dumbbell and start lifting it because you're probably going to get injured that way. Let's say you're doing 100 pounds for 3 sets of 8. Let's say warmup set 1, you do a 35-pound dumbbell for 5 reps. Set 2, warmup set, you do a 60-pound dumbbell for a set of 3 reps. And then let's say warmup set, set number 3, you do 85-pound dumbbell for 2 reps just to get the movement down. And then you go into your working sets of 3 sets of 6 reps at 100 pounds or whatever it is that I said earlier. You did 3 warmup sets and then 3 working sets. This is a phenomenal way to improve your performance inside of the gym, lift heavier weights, get stronger, you know, push yourself closer to failure because now you're making sure you're warming up properly before you go into your actual working sets. And people ask me, should you have a warmup set for every single exercise? I personally, yes, I do like having a warmup set for every single exercise. Even things like bicep curls, just so I can get the movement down, just so I can make sure I feel the right muscles working and nothing like hurts or anything like that. So I like having at least one warmup set. Yes, I would do it on every exercise. The exercises you lift heavier weights with, you'll probably do more warmup sets. And so your deadlifts, for example, you doing a deadlift from the floor or Romanian deadlift or whatever it is, those exercises might have 2 or 3 warmup sets. Like let's just say if you're somebody who you're deadlifting 225 pounds, okay, let's say your warmup set is like, let's say it's just the barbell, just like get the movement down for 5 reps. And by the way, the warmup set, you're not taking it anywhere close to failure intentionally. You're just like doing a couple of reps to get the movement and then moving on. So let's say you like do the barbell and then you do a 135 and then you do 155 And then you do, uh, 195 and then you go into 225 in your working sets. So you did like what, 3 or 4 warmup sets for that bigger compound movement. So maybe you do more for the bigger movements, less for the non-bigger movements for your accessory or isolation-based movements is what we call them. But you should be having some warmup sets in almost to feed into your working sets. And then last but not least, Just do less reps. So many people have this standard, like, 3 sets of 10, 3 sets of 12, and that's all they do for every single fucking exercise. That should not be what you're doing for every single exercise. There should be some exercises where you're doing 3 reps and 5 reps and 6 reps. There should be some exercises where you do 8 reps and 10 reps. There might be some exercises where you do 12 and 15 reps. Like, if you're somebody who you just Always do 12, 15, 20 reps, 30 reps. This is 40, 50, 60 reps like some of these like classes do and stuff. That's not going to get you stronger. It's just not going to get you stronger. It might get you stronger for like the first month, but after that you're not, because like I talked about over here, you're not taxing and working the system of like a strength training program. You're just doing cardio. So you're not going to gain much strength from you doing 12, 15, 20 reps of an exercise. You will gain strength when you're doing 3 reps, 4 reps, 5 reps, 6 reps, 8 reps. Those are reps where it's heavy enough because you're doing less reps. You can lift heavier weight. It's heavy enough that you can gain strength. But if you're always doing 12, 15, 20 reps, you're never going to gain strength. And not to mention, again, the amount of weight you can lift for 5 reps is just more than what you could lift for 20 reps. Like, think about it again. We'll use a squat for example. If you're doing a squat, maybe you can lift a hundred. Like let's just say you can lift a hundred pounds for twenty reps. Awesome. That probably means you can do like let's just call it two hundred and fifty. It's that you can do two hundred and fifty pounds for four reps. It's like you can lift automatically so much more weight if you just do less fucking reps. So do less reps in your workout. Stop sticking to only twelve, fifteen, twenty reps. And if you want a video on how to like. set up your workouts and how many reps and sets you should do. Again, I've done a video on YouTube here on that if you want to check it out. But other than that, I hope you enjoyed the video. If you are interested in getting some coaching from myself or my team and/or joining the clubhouse, I'll link all that stuff here below in the description of this video. We would love to help you out and help you get results. But other than that, if you enjoyed, please feel free to give it a thumbs up, subscribe to the channel, and thank you so much for watching. We will chat soon.