The Okada Method

4th February 2012

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The Beginner’s Strength Program

Most people have it all wrong. When it comes to starting strength and beginner programs, trainers are often in denial of how simple the program needs to be and should be.

Novice trainees should train with a full body split, meaning that each strength training workout, the entire body will be trained. Now when some trainers hear about this, they proceed to inundate every single workout with as many exercises as they can to hit every part of the body at every single possible angle. While I continue to scratch my head and wonder what the heck is going through their minds, I can’t help but think of how inefficient and counterproductive their training ideologies are. Why the heck are they doing so many exercises? Why the heck are they even doing those specific exercises?

When it comes to beginners, the best program is one that is extremely simple and one that they can do very frequently (for example, 3 times a week). This means that each strength-training workout should have no more than three to four exercises and doesn’t have too much volume (total work). The reason that beginners can train more frequently is because of the fact that they are neurologically inefficient and can’t use weights are heavy enough from a physics standpoint to really take too much of a toll in the long term on the body. Let me paint this picture out for you:

Let’s take a beginner and put him or her under the squat. Maybe at most they will be able to hit around 5 reps at 135 pounds and that will feel heavy for them. At the end of the day, it was a good amount of work and effort.

Now let’s take a more advanced lifter and him or her under a bar that weighs 405 pounds. They will hit 5 reps with it and that will feel heavy for them. At the end of the day, it was a good amount of work and effort.

But, when it comes to a physics standpoint, a more advanced lifter will take more of a beating out of 405 pounds than a beginner will at 135 pounds. Even though the perceived effort was generally the same, the heavier weight will have a heavier toll on the more advanced lifter, making it so that advanced trainees cannot train the same movements as often as beginners. This is also why advanced lifters take more time to recover between workouts.

Now, the reason why beginners should have no more than three or four exercises per workout (in fact, three exercises is optimal) is because they simply don’t have the skill to perform each exercise efficiently! Novice trainees are still learning the technique behind each exercise, so if they do too many exercises in one workout, there is no way that they will ever get better at any of them! Each of the big lifts is actually extremely technical and requires a ton of repetion to get it right. Frequent exposure to the same simple workouts will help them to master each exercise. This is part of the reason why people who change their workouts on a daily basis usually make very little progress. They simply do not get better at anything because they don’t perform the exercises frequently enough.

Beginner workouts are set up with one lower body exercise and two upper body exercises. More specifically, either the squat or dead lift for the lower body and one upper body pulling exercise and one upper body pressing exercise. This ensures that the legs, the pressing exercises, and back all get trained. All of the exercises should be the big lifts where you get the most bang for the buck in terms of efficiency. I will outline exercise selection and the big lifts in another post. The end result will look something like this:

Day 1:

1.  Squat: 3 sets 5 reps
2. Push Up: 3 sets 5 reps
3. Parallel grip Chin Up: 3 sets 5 reps

Day 2:

1. Dead Lift: 3 sets 5 reps
2. Dumbbell Military Press: 3 sets 5 reps
3. Dumbbell Row: 3 sets 7 reps

The two workouts will then be rotated Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. So for example, the first week they will rotate Day 1, Day 2, and Day 1. The next week they will rotate Day 2, Day 1, and Day2. Repeat.

Most people freak out when I tell them to do this, saying that it’s not enough and it’s too easy and what about my abs and what about this and that. The comments never end.

Look, the program is only as hard as you make it out to be. If you want the fanciest program that uses the biggest words and uses the most complicated but useless exercises and machines, then go for it. I’m not stopping anyone. Any idiot can make up a workout that will make people puke by the end of it. It still doesn’t mean that it’s a good workout. It takes some brains and experience to build a workout that will actually be effective. If you want to gain muscle and get strong, it takes some smarts.

Take it this way. If this is too easy, then the first workout with this program, load the squat to 400 pounds and rip out 5 reps with it. Then load your push ups to 200 pounds of extra weight and get 3 sets of 5 reps. Then hang on the chin up bar if you still can.

See where I’m going with this? The point of the program is to make progress, and for beginners, this is the most efficient way. You want to keep adding weight to the bar to elicit strength gains.

Now, a big problem that people have with this type of programming is that it doesn’t include any direct work for the abs and arms. The truth of the matter is that most ab exercises that people come up with are next to useless and are actually extremely harmful to the spine. In addition, beginners have no use for direct abdominal work. Their core is actually so weak that direct ab work will have no effect on their strength whatsoever. That is where the big lifts come in. The squat, dead lift, military press, push up, and pull-ups will all stimulate the core exponentially more than any direct abdominal work ever will. As for the arms, the big lifts for the upper body will elicit more size gains and strength gains than any isolation work for the arms. So quit doing those triceps kickbacks and concentration curls with those pink dumbbells and do some chin ups and push ups if you really want some bigger arms.

Another problem people have with this type of programming is the set and rep scheme. Most people are taught to do 3x10 (three sets of ten), but the reasoning is very skewed. While in theory, 3x10 can be a very good program, in reality, it is nearly impossible for a beginner to perform 10 reps in a single set with good form! The situation usually unfolds like this. By the time they hit the 5^th or 6^th rep of the set, their form is going to complete hell and injury is just waiting to happen. The supporting muscles of the body are just not strong enough to last through the entire set. And the point of beginner programs is to get better at each exercise, right? Well if half of the set is performed with terrible form, then half the time all they learn is terrible form! This is why beginners should perform slightly more sets with fewer reps than usually prescribed.

The main point here is that beginners need to master the big lifts and get considerably strong with them before they move on to more advanced programs. Be patient, the grind is where the character is made. The hard work you put in now will pay off later on. If you’re going to start something for yourself, start out the right way.

In future posts I will outline cardio and conditioning and how to implement them into your training regimen.