training

Well, I just started training, trying to build muscle, im not in a rush, want to start off doing things, from what my personal trainer told me, to start of with endurance, growth, and then strength, any input would be appreciated.

What are your goals for training? Your trainer seems to be using an old model of training to set up your program. In some cases, you can accomplish multiple things in your training. But it also depends on what your goal is. You should definitely establish a base to build upon, and as a beginner to training, you will be doing this. You can do it correctly by following the advice in T-mag. Go read the “Dawg School” articles in the Previous Issues (and possibly in the FAQ) section of T-mag. Start there.

Jorge, glad you found this forum. There are a numerous of programs in this web site. And it could be overwheming to someone new. So, with that said what are your goals so that we can give you better direction.

Good for you Jorge in getting started. Going slow is a good idea. One thing I think you should do is discover your weakness and work on them. They will hamper your other areas until you get them worked out. For instance, mine were forearms and lower back. I had to develop my forearms before I could really work the back because I didn’t have enough strength in my forearms to do the rows my back was capable of. The same applied to my lower back. I couldn’t do the quads to my true capacity until I had strengthened my lower back.

What he said does have some merit. There is evidence that newcomers will make size and strength gains off higher rep schemes. I think that up to 20 reps newbies were making size and strength gains. So doing endurance training first may cause the following to happen. You get used to lifting weights, you improve endurance and develop a base form of conditioning as well as possibly developing some size and strength. This would serve as a good base for the hypertrophy and strength training to follow on from.

While it is a simple 'western' periodized model I believe that if you have never lifted weights before it would be a great way to go.

On a side note i saw an interesting article by charles staley on training rank begginers. It mentioned doing many sets of very low reps as a means of teaching technique, dont worry he didnt want you to be doing classic strength training straight away. The reps were to be done with a weight you could many reps with, eg doing 10 sets of 2 with a weight you would be doing 2 sets of 10 with.
He wanted the begginer to do this only for a short period say for the first 2 or so weeks. The theory was that it was a great way to teach technique and avoid the sometimes excessive soreness that newbies get when first performing sets of 10 etc.
He also mentioned that the racking and unrakcing of weights (getting in and out of the start position) is possibly the most dangerous part and that getting some one to rack the bar for the first time ever in a fatigued state was not necasserily a good idea.
With this method one performs 20 repitions and practices racking and unracking the bar 10 times in a relatively fresh state while avoiding muscle soreness, compared with a typical 2 sets of 10 method where the person performs 20 reps and practices racking and reracking the bar only twice in a fatigued state with a higher likely hood of unnecassery muscle soreness.

So if you have never lifted weights before maybe you could try that for the first week or 2 to learn technique...

Just a thought