T Nation

Girlfriend Wants To Start Lifting (INB4 Rolls Eyes)

Bigger Stronger Leaner
#1

Hey guys, Chica wants to start lifting. Well, exercising in general. But were limited to my extremely powerlifting focused home gym.

There is no super specific goal, shes lost over 100lbs before we started dating, but she wants to gain some strength and tone up a bit. She feels weak after the weight loss.

I’m thinking some very basic base building and strength focused lifting. Ie. Full body workouts, moderate reps, until we start dialing in exactly what she wants to do.

I’m thinking squats, some light bench, and I’d prefer to start with hip hinging accessories before we dive into reap deadlifting. Accessories are easy breezy.

Any articles on tnation, or personal experience based advice?

Thanks!

#2

My wife got her best ever results doing 5/3/1, haha. I had her do trap bar Deads instead of Deads. Jim talks about his wife having a healthy diet of squats, bench, presses and deads. Doesn’t get simpler than that, especially with programming. Once you find a TM you can write out a months worth of exercises, down to the exact poundage, and you could simplify it even further by keeping it 5’s pro.

Since you have a PLing home gym, this works even better.

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#3

Get a somewhat workable goal before you start doing this:

I’m thinking

For example, unless she says I want a bigger bench press, I wouldn’t be doing bench pressing (that’s “I” personally, not the group “I” lol) …

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#4

My wife has been lifting for a while, then stopped and has recently started again. I put her on a simple Push/Pull/Legs split, she loves it and has seen some good results.

1 Like
#5

For sure, I’ve done my fair share of 531, I’m going to try get her started on something pretty broad and experiment with what she actually likes to do, so she will stay interested. Shes never lifted, well, really lifted before. If she takes a liking to simple programming and the bigger lifts, 531 would an amazingly easy choice.

I guess my reasoning is that her biggest gripe is her strength, shes super independent and hates being helped, which is something I’m slowly trying to break her of lol, but at the same time shes getting aggravated that simple things are way harder for her now, so I want to help her get stronger all the way around first.

I guess the goal is a baseline strength, but without gaining fat. Should be easy considering her weight gain was a thyroid issue that’s been resolved.

If she sticks with it, well probably end up going this route, but I think for the starting point I want her on full body, I think shell get more out of it at first

1 Like
#6

Good wimmenz focused tips in these…

#7

Be careful that she isn’t angling to have gym time become something you do together…

#8

Id highly suggest this. There’s enough room to play around and get creative, while still being able to keep most of the heavy hitting movements.
Especially if you’re going the full body route, get more bang for your buck, without tiring her out much, and can start some sort of rotation to get progress going steady.