Best Push Day Workout For Beginners According to NASM

Before switching over to a Push Pull Legs routine, I followed a 5-day split of: chest/back/shoulders/legs/arms. There’s a good reason why I switched, which is why I wanted to use this comparison as an example. Comparing these routines highlights the differences between beginner, and intermediate workout plans.

To make this simple, every Saturday and Sunday is a rest day. I only filled in the first week because let’s assume that each week is the same and the rotation doesn’t change.

The main reason I stopped following this program was because of my chest, shoulders, and triceps. Since I do mostly compound movements, I have no choice but to work these muscles together. If I train chest on Monday, I also train shoulders on Monday. When I have to train shoulders again two days later, they won’t be fully recovered. In this case, I would lose reps on shoulder day.

But it’s not just about the drop in performance — there’s also the issue of overtraining, and the risk of getting injured.

Once you get to the point where you’re lifting heavy with a lot of volume, it will be hard to maintain a five day training split where two of the five workouts are chest and shoulders. Your shoulders can only take so much abuse. Can you imagine taking pre workout and having 90 minutes to do nothing but shoulder exercises? They’re not even fully recovered from chest day.

Your shoulders and triceps are getting too much action when doing compound movements. Two of the smallest muscle groups are getting the most days of work. You might be able to get away with overtraining during the first few years, but eventually you’ll want to be strategic about how you split your workouts.

Following a specific training split is not as important as consistently putting in work, especially during your first year.

One of the main benefits of a Push Pull Legs routine is being able to group your muscles together based on the exercises you do. But what works for me may not work for you.

PPL is a good fit if you mostly do compound movements. But if you’re doing isolation exercises, a 5-day split would also work because you can isolate one muscle per day and still get good results.

Also when you’re first getting started, you don’t need to lift with the same amount of volume as you do when you’re more advanced.

I talk about training each muscle twice a week for maximum gains, but this may not apply if you’ve only been lifting for a year. Since you can get away with training each muscle only once a week, Push Pull Legs twice a week is probably too much volume for you.

It all depends on what exercises you choose, and how you do each exercise. Next, I want to show you the differences between each of the four phases of training that you’ll go through during your first couple years.

Phase 1: Stabilization

This is the first stage of learning how to lift weights. Before trying to pack on muscle or set a PR, you have to be able to stabilize your body. The main focus here is building a stable foundation, not building muscle or getting stronger.

To break it down further, stabilization training involves your bones, muscles, and joints all working together to create tension in the muscles and balance the weight. If you’re new to lifting, you actually have to teach your body how to move so that you can engage the right muscle, at the right time.

You can’t build muscle or strength until you can first balance the weight and your own body during exercises.

If you decide to follow PPL as a beginner, your Push Day should look a little different than what you see others doing.

To train for stability, you should do the opposite of training in a stable environment. This means no laying down on a bench. Or sitting on a regular seat. Find ways to make the exercise unstable.

For example, doing push ups on a ball makes the movement more unstable than a normal pushup. You’ll notice that your body shakes as it tries to stabilize itself during the movement.

This instability trains your muscles to work more efficiently by strengthening connective tissues (ligaments

A general rule of thumb for this phase of training is to do your exercises while standing, versus sitting, or laying down. Unless it’s on something like a stability ball.

The idea is to create an unstable foundation on purpose, which will train your body to stabilize and balance itself.

The tempo of the movement should be 4/2/1 – that’s 4 seconds eccentric, 2 seconds isometric, and 1 second concentric.

Or in other words, four seconds on the way down, hold at the starting point for two seconds, and push the weight to the top for one second.

Everyone’s different but NASM recommends that you stay in this phase for about a month before moving onto the next.

Phase 2: Strength Endurance

The stage after stabilization is teaching your muscles to hold tension and do work for extended periods of time. This stage of training involves a little bit of everything.

This is like a hybrid stage where you transition from only doing stability exercises to more of the typical variations for building muscle and strength.

Building muscle or strength is still not the main focus. Even though you do build muscle and strength (newbie gains), your primary goal is to hold tension in the muscle for as long as you can.

Before you can build mass and lift heavy, you need to first increase your stamina when lifting weights.

An important feature of the endurance phase is combining both traditional strength training, and stabilization training.

You can either mix these exercises together in the same day (e.g. superset one after another), or you can alternate between “strength-focused push day”, and “stabilization-focused push day”.

You might want to stay in this phase for about three to six months. Everyone starts out different, and it also depends how quickly you progress.

If you’re new to lifting weights, there’s a good chance you also want to lose some weight.

According to NASM, you burn more calories when:

• More muscles are being used for longer periods in controlled, unstable environments
• Rest periods are shorter [1]

Keep this in mind when choosing your exercises.

Speaking of exercises, below you’ll find an example workout using only dumbbells, and a stability ball.

Example Push Day Strength Endurance Workout

Pushups using dumbbells to grip (2 sets/10 reps/superset)
Ball Pushups (2 sets/10 reps/90 seconds rest)

Seated shoulder press on ball (2 sets/10 reps/superset)
Single-leg overhead press (2 sets/10 reps/90 seconds rest)

Dumbbell bench press (2 sets/10 reps/superset)
Single-leg lateral raise (2 sets/10 reps/90 seconds rest)

Close-grip dumbbell press on bench (2 sets/10 reps/superset)
Supine dumbbell triceps extension on ball (2 sets/10 reps/90 seconds rest)

The tempo for endurance training is 4/2/1 just like in stabilization training.

4 seconds on the way down, 2 seconds hold, push up quickly in one second, repeat.

The exercises are in groups of four supersets. The first exercise is a traditional strength exercise, and it’s immediately followed up with a similar stabilization exercise.

So you’re actually doing sets of 20, only it’s split up between two exercises of 10 reps each.

This might still be too much volume for you. You have to learn what your volume sweet spot is, and adjust accordingly.

During these first two phases, you’re not doing the same exercises that you see everyone else doing.

You won’t be lifting heavy, that’s for sure. It’ll be hard, but it won’t be heavy. There’s a difference.

As a side note, I do think there’s some benefit to lifting heavy early on, but it’s pretty minimal. The only positive that I can think of is the ego boost.

It’s not good practice to rely on just that, but early on when you’re getting into fitness, whatever helps you get to the gym consistently and enjoy lifting is what you want to keep doing. With that said, obviously the first priority is not getting injured.

If you’ve been lifting for less than a year, the heaviest you can lift right now is nothing compared to what you’ll be lifting in 3 years.

When you look at it from a long term perspective, it makes sense to hold off on doing heavy sets of 1-5 reps…for now.

Phase 3: Hypertrophy

Now we’re talking about building some muscle. NASM defines hypertrophy simply as the “chronic enlargement of muscles”. Sounds like a good problem to have.

The previous two stages were necessary for this process of muscle growth to happen.

Before actually building muscle, your muscles and joints work together to create tension in the muscles (stabilization). Then it needs to handle the weight for an extended period of time (strength endurance).

Which brings us to phase three. The transition from endurance to hypertrophy training really depends on the individual. Some people go through the endurance phase quickly, some need more time to progress.

Even when you reach this phase, it’s a good idea to do some endurance and stability training once in awhile.

Did I focus on endurance and stability when I first started lifting? Not at all. At least not intentionally. I got my first gym membership in 2007, so I don’t remember exactly what I did.

This is when you can start doing Push Pull Legs full time.

It’s hard to talk about training volume because everyone is different. There are many different training volumes that make sense depending on the individual. It’s one of those things that you learn best by doing.

However, you don’t want to overdo the volume in the beginning. Your body is not efficient enough to turn the extra work into muscle gains yet.

With that being said, you shouldn’t hold back on the volume just because you don’t want to do too much. You should always be looking for ways to increase the volume or make the workout more intense.

I’m a firm believer that you don’t know what overtraining is until you do it. So although this might not line up exactly with NASM, if you want to train with a lot of volume from the start, I don’t see why not. Either way, you’re gonna quickly find out if it’s too much.

As far as the tempo for hypertrophy training, it’s a bit different than stabilization and endurance. It’s 2/0/2 — 2 seconds on the way down, 0 second hold at the bottom, 2 second push to the top.

What this looks like: the weight is constantly in motion, moving at a moderate and controlled pace.

Phase 4: Maximum Strength

The next phase of development is about getting as strong as possible — training your nervous system (brain) and your muscles to handle lifting heavier. This is when you’re lifting more weight for 1 to 5 reps. Rest times are longer between sets to give your body enough time to completely restore ATP levels.*

*ATP = Adenosine triphosphate, which is the main ingredient for creating short bursts of energy in your muscles.

Lifting heavy improves the connection between your brain and body. The scientific term is neuromuscular efficiency.

I’m not going to go into this one as much, since it’s not as relevant during your first year. But get ready, because right around your third year lifting, you’re about to get really strong, especially if you’re 18-25.

However, you don’t build a lot of strength simply lifting weights. You do build some strength by default, but this phase is called Maximum Strength. In order to get significantly stronger, you need to lift heavy.