Rob Jackson Personal Training

Warm up sets don’t need to be complicated.

Most of the time just grab a weight that’s 50% to 60% of your working weight.

Do 8-12 reps

Take your time. Don’t rush it.

Then do your working sets.

You don’t need warm up sets across all exercises, maybe just your first 2 exercises.

Then apply common sense.

If it’s a heavy weight and an exercise using a dumbbell or barbell then chances are you might be best having a lighter set before doing your working sets.

Visit: https://www.robjackson.co.uk/free-app-access to get free access to my training app, so you’ll be able to easily track all your workouts and chase those extra reps on every exercise.

A client recently told me his struggles with going to the gym.

He felt like he didn’t belong because he had no clue what to do.

So I’ve gave him a program to follow. Which was basically a list of exercises with reps and sets.

You know what happened?

His experience of the gym completely changed over night.

He no longer felt lost.

All that happened was he now had some structure rather than just trying to wing it every time.

So if you walk into the gym and feel you don’t belong, then make sure you have a program or just a simple list of what you plan to do.

Nobody is going to call you out for putting the bench 45 degrees rather than 30 or 15.

So don’t overthink it, because these small details don’t matter all that much.

Whats more important is the quality of your reps and the proximity of failure that you work towards.

Basically how many reps you have left in the rank before you stop, is it 0 reps, 1 rep or maybe 2. These are the details that actually matter.

If you can’t do a push up yet then follow these steps.

Another approach can be to skip the kneeling push ups, and start with incline push ups being a little bit higher almost like wall push ups, which can work well too.

The lateral raise really can be a slow one to progress.

There will come points where you feel stuck on the same weights for ages, but just be patient and stick with it.

It can be very hard to see if you are making progress you only look at your weight from one day to the next, because it will fluctuate so much. Which only leads you to feel frustrated.

So instead focus on your average body weight across the week, and compare week on week. You’ll get a much better indication of what direction you’re heading in.

Make sure your rows don’t look like Bobs, the roll in the shoulders is a common to see and it usually means you haven’t set the shoulders down and you are focusing on pulling from the hands, instead of driving the elbows back.

Are you struggling to do your first pull up?

Then follow the steps outlined in the video and you should eventually get there.

The important part now is to be consistent and patient because going through these stages can take time.

There will be days you feel you aren’t progressing but stick with it and trust the process.