Most of the important points have already been made. However, there is one important consideration if you are actually a true beginner - ie, haven’t been messing around in the gym for a month or two:
When you first start lifting, your connective tissue will be fairly week, and will lag behind your muscle development. At around the 6th week of lifting, muscle development is so far ahead of the connective tissue that you’re very prone to injury - in fact, that’s about the time people have their first injury.
Fortunately, beginners also make an incredible amount of progress with light weight at first.
For the first couple of months, it really isn’t a bad idea to do some of the things that you’re mentioning, especially because beginners make progress with very small percentages of their rep max. Alwyn Cosgrove is a proponent of people learning to do bodyweight before real weights.
I personally don’t entirely agree, because so people come in who need weights because their own bodyweight is TOO heavy (ex, can’t really complete pushups, so must do light benching).
You can think of doing things “Smart from the Start” this way:
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From the beginning, use “Magnificent Mobility” dynamic warmups, including activation work for the glutes/abductors.
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From the beginning, do the program from “Cracking the Rotator Cuff Conundrum” for the rotator cuff.
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From the beginning, do Cressey’s work for the shoulder blades, including lower trap work, scap push-ups, posterior delt work, and plenty of horizontal rowing.
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All of the above should not add more than 10 minutes to your workout (especially if done while waiting for equipment).
Then, if you want, do unilateral work for six weeks to two months. As a beginner, as long as you’re eating enough (Berardi’s Precision Nutrition highly recommended) you will make a significant amount of progress.
The point is that, as a beginner, your body is also not used to using weights. You want to train your body to activate properly in movement patterns. Using dynamic warm-ups/activation work and unilateral work will help to train your body to activate correctly and move in correct patterns.
You can use lower weights and higher reps and still make significant progress because you’re a beginner. Some guys on here recommend 15 rep sets - I wouldn’t go that far. The rep ranges you have there would be good for a month or two, before you move on to, for example, ABBH. Even Waterbury, in an interview with FitCast, placed ABBH and Big Boys Basics as second-tier programs, after the trainee had some experience on their own.
Those programs would be way over your ability right now and might lead to injury if you don’t have your body conditioned to lifting.
Just make sure you have the basics:
Quad Dominant (squat variations, single-leg squats, lunges, etc)
Hip Dominant (deadlifts, single leg deadlift variations, etc)
Push (Bench with Dumbells, Military (unless it bothers your shoulders) with dumbells (can be done strictly unilaterally if you really want to).
Pull (Unilateral row on bench, One arm lat pull down)
Abs - just make sure you add in dead bug series and hold plank and side plank for a long time to stabilize big lifts later (Bill Hartman recommends that you be able to hold both for 2 minutes before you attempt big lifts - a bit much, but give it a try). I’m sure you’ve probably read Mike Robertson’s stuff on core.
Good luck!
