Lift Heavy, Live Happy: Why Resistance Training is a Game Changer & How to Get Started

Resistance training is a true game changer for anyone looking to improve their health and fitness that has benefits that go far beyond just building muscle.

If you want a bulletproof metabolism resistance training should be a priority because when you lift weights, you improve the way your body handles the food you eat (called nutrient partitioning) while also signaling to your body that it’s important to keep the muscle you have while you are in a calorie deficit which helps you avoid becoming skinny fat.

Additionally, resistance training helps you age gracefully because as we get older, bone density can decline, leading to increased risk of a trip to snap city but, when you prioritize weight lifting you maintain and even build bone density while also keeping up your strength and muscle which means that you can still do awesome stuff even if you are starting to get gray hair.

Let’s say you are sold on the benefits of lifting weights and you have decided to finally take action and start working out. You have purchased a gym membership or some home workout equipment, and maybe even some kind of powder that makes your face tingle after you mix it with water and drink it.

Now what?

This is about as far as most people get whenever they decide to get control of their health and fitness. Then they get to the gym or walk out into their garage and expect the workout muses to bestow on them an epic workout that moves them one step closer to their goal.

But it doesn’t happen. It’s Monday and all the bench press stations at the gym are taken by the bros with the stringer tank tops so you wander around for a bit and then head to the leg press or treadmill.

Maybe you can bench press tomorrow?

Do you have a thought out workout routine that you follow from week to week or are you just winging it?

Maybe you can relate to this story or maybe you can’t but, when it comes to choosing a workout routine there are a couple of factors to consider if you want to get the most out of your time in the gym.

Here are FIVE KEY factors for you to consider:

How many days per week are you ready, willing and able to get into the gym?

The answer is going to be different from person to person.

The good news is that you probably need to spend less time in the gym than you think is necessary to see great results. I would even go so far as to say that if you are commuting to the gym more than four days per week, you are not being efficient with your time.

I personally like to lift (in the gym) three days per week and I recommend my clients lift one to three days per week to start.
How long should your workout last?

Again, probably not as long as you believe. One of the biggest fitness myths people believe is that a workout needs to last an hour long (which probably originated from a personal trainer that charged by the hour). You can get a lot done in 20 minutes with a properly designed program however, 30-45 minutes is a reasonable length of time to allot for a gym based workout.

If your workout is longer than 90 minutes you are not gaining any additional benefits and are likely increasing the amount of time you will need to spend recovering.
How is my training week organized?

In gym bro speak, what kind of training split are you going to follow? There are a lot of options out there from traditional bodybuilding routines, push/pull routines, upper / lower routines, full body, and more.

Most people most of the time would be best served with a full body strength training routine for two big reasons:

Full body routines are adaptable to a hectic schedule, meaning that if have a lot going on in your life between work, kids, and hobbies, and you struggle with maintaining a set schedule, you won’t skip body parts like you might on an upper body / lower body split because you train the whole body at once.

The second reason you might be best served by a full body routine is because a full body routine lends itself to improving athletic performance because as my friend and legendary strength coach, Dan John, likes to say, “the body is one piece.” Now you might be saying to yourself that you don’t care about athletic performance which is fair but, if you want to be more coordinated and feel confident doing everyday activities, increased athleticism is going to make it happen.

A bonus reason to train full body is that it greatly reduces the amount of soreness you experience which should be of particular interest to you if you need to function physically in any capacity after your workout whether its wrestling with kids, yard work, or simply walking upstairs to use the bathroom, none are fun when you are cripplingly sore.
What time of day is best to workout?

I get asked a lot about what time of day is best to workout. The answer is simple, whenever you can do it consistently. A lot of people try to over optimize the timing of their workout routine to “blast belly fat” but find later that life gets in the way. You don’t have to worry about training fasted either, your fat loss progress comes from sticking to your diet, not from working out on an empty stomach.

So, fear not because the best time to workout depends largely on you. That being said, I like to workout out first thing in the morning before other events find their way into my to-do list/schedule. Some people like to workout after work as a way to blow off steam from a stressful day. Do you, as long as it gets done.

One possible exception is right before you go to bed. A restful night's sleep is critical for long term progress. Exercising right before bed raises your core temperature and concentration of stress hormones that can make it difficult for you to fall asleep. So if you work the graveyard shift, working out right before bed might not be a good idea. Other than that, choose a time that you can workout consistently and do everything in your power to defend that time of day from intrusions.
What style of workout do you enjoy?

Do you enjoy a traditional barbell and dumbbell workouts or do you prefer unconventional training that involves bodyweight, kettlebell, sandbag and other weighted implements? It’s important to find a style of workout that you enjoy and find engaging so a trip to the gym becomes less like a visit to the dentist office.

Personally, I prefer a mixture of traditional barbell and dumbbell workouts with some machines sprinkled in when I go to the gym and then the other days of the week perform unconventional type training methods either in my garage or outside at a park depending on my schedule and the weather. I like this approach for clients as well because you are still able to train with heavier barbell and dumbbell lifts when you can make it to the gym but you also have the ability to workout a couple of times a week without commuting to the gym which can help save a decent chunk of time if life is a bit on the crazy side.

Now that you know how many days per week you want to train, what style of training you want to use, and what time during the day you will be dedicating to your workout. Let’s talk about some other factors of effective training that you want to consider.

First, does your program allow for you to keep progressing by adding more weight to the bar, more repetitions per set, or some other form of increasing the difficulty week over week?

Here is a list of different ways to progress an exercise:

Lift a heavier weight
Lift the same weight for more reps
Increase the range of motion of the lift
Slow the reps down
Speed the reps up (make them more explosive)
Use better technique
Decrease rest between sets
Switch to a single leg/arm variation

Use one or more combinations of these forms of progression from week to week to keep seeing positive changes in your body.

Remember, random workouts will create random results. You want the signal you are sending to your body week after week to be as clear as possible. Adding randomness to your workout, while entertaining, will muddle the signal to your body and slow your progress.

Second, do you have the ability to recover from your workouts? A big mistake I see a lot of well meaning men and women make is to do too much too soon. Maybe you have taken a couple of months or even years off from working out but you still remember your old workout routine from college when you were an athlete or hitting the gym harder than Mike Tyson hitting Zach Galifanakus in the Hangover. If that’s that case your ability to recover from your workouts is going to be significantly reduced until you get your fitness levels a bit higher and dial in your sleep and nutrition. You may want to workout intensely seven days a week but your body can only recover from so much before burnout sets in.

Finally, is your workout routine designed well?

How to Design Your Own Workout Routine

A well designed program will have 3-4 compound exercise and 1-2 isolation exercises per session (there are exceptions/minimalist options as well). Compound lifts should be the foundation of your workouts because they involve a lot of muscle groups at one time which means that if you’re interested in making your workouts carry over to real life, you want to be efficient with your time, and are interested in building a balanced physique, compound lifts are where it’s at.

The best way to describe compound exercises are through gross movement patterns like pushing, pulling, squatting, hip hinging, carrying, and lunging. These movements involve a large amount of muscles and require a great deal of coordination.

Isolation exercises are useful as well however, they are the icing on the cake. If you are in a time crunch the first exercises to go will usually be isolation exercises.

How many sets and reps do you need per workout? I like to follow Dan John’s rule of 10 for full body lifts like Snatch and Clean and Jerk which means you do 10 solid heavy reps and you can break them down into as many sets as needed (2x5, 5x2, etc). For the other exercises like presses, squats, pull-ups, think 25-30 reps per workout split into however many working sets you’d like.

The most important factor in picking your sets and reps is the intensity of the set which I will define as “how close you get to muscular failure.” So a heavier weight will get you closer to failure sooner which means that you will need more sets and fewer reps to hit your 10 or 25-30 reps. On a weekly basis we are looking to get 10-12 sets per week per movement or muscle group taken close to failure if your goal is body composition improvement. The rules change a bit when training exclusively for strength but we will save that discussion for a later day as most of us, broadly speaking, would like to see more muscle and less body fat as a primary goal of training.

Organizing your training week is really up to you and your schedule and how you like to train. Every workout routine has its benefits and drawbacks.

Here are some of my favorite ways to organize a weekly strength training program:

Full body training 2-3 days a week
Push / Pull / Lower
Upper / Lower / Full / Full
Upper / Lower / Upper / Lower
Upper & Lower Push / Upper and Lower Pull

Whichever one you choose will depend on the equipment that you have available, how busy the gym is and how busy you are from week to week. For example, if you are a busy guy who wants to workout four times a week but you can only make it to a commercial gym twice per week but you happen to have a pair of kettlebells, I would recommend an Upper / Lower / Full / Full routine where your upper and lower body days are done in the gym and then your full body days are done with body weight and kettlebells at home.

Regardless of which routine you choose, the most important thing to remember is to find a routine that you can stay motivated and consistent with and as the seasons of your life change you can always modify your routine to better fit your circumstances. There is no need for you to turn your life upside down just because you want to get in great shape. There is a fitness program out there that will work into your lifestyle while allowing for you to still be effective in other areas of your life. In fact, I would argue that you become MORE effective in the other areas of your life when you begin taking your fitness and health seriously.

Resistance training is one of the most important pieces to the health and fitness puzzle if you are interested in making a lifechanging transformation that sticks around for the rest of your life. It is the key for looking amazing early in life AND for maintaining your independence later in life. There are many different ways to incorporate it into your weekly routine. Use the information provided above to build your own resistance training program, evaluate a program you are currently on.

Or if you’d like the warm fuzzies of knowing that your program is designed specifically for a busy man or woman who wants to look their best, have more energy, move better and age gracefully, you can get on the presale list for my six month group coaching transformation experience that is built to help you get in the best shape of your life for the rest of your life. You can get more information about the program, reserve a spot (I only work with 15 men and women at a time for the six months), and even snag a discount before open registration when you sign up with your email address here: