Hello friends.

This is basically me trying my best to cover information one would find useful if they were to start working out from point zero which means no previous experience or information. There are probably better ways of doing things as I am no expert but I can help out through mistakes I made and through my experiences from when I started to this day. I've been working out for ~1.5 years soon myself with the help of Finnish weightlifting competitor.



The starting

Everyone recommends going to a gym as a starting point but I didn't like that option too much. Gyms can be intimidating and are very crowded so you can't just do your own thing as you need to take others in consideration too. I went to a nearby gym for a month at the beginning but I dropped out after that. What I found better was buy equipment to home and go to the gym later on with friends when I actually knew what I was doing but I don't even find going to the gym all that necessary.

So I recommend buying equipment home. Let's be honest, gamers aren't usually really outgoing people so to have the possibility to workout at home is good in my opinion. It's also really easy to skip a gym visit whereas you usually would want to get some use of the equipment you have bought. It's much easier and faster to do workout at home.


Equipment

I recommend buying a barbell.



Straight barbell usually takes a lot of space and works better with a bench whereas easy curl bar doesn't really take much space and you can do a lot of different exercises with it, not just biceps + it's usually cheaper than straight barbell. I recommend adjustable easy curl bar that's something like: 7.5KG bar, 2x1.5KG, 4x2.5KG, 2x5KG and 2x10KG weights. You can find them from price range of 60€-120€. I have both straight one and easy curl bar. 70€ and 112€.


Lifestyle

Balance between exercies, food and sleep is important. It also really depends on what you're trying to achieve. Generally you want to eat a lot of protein as everyone probably may know but certain amount of fat is not bad either. Everyone always keeps nagging about getting enough protein but if you're skinny you want to have fat in your meals too. Usually you do want to cut your body fat % but that doesn't apply if you're skinny.

Ideal situation would be balanced meals 3-4 hours between each meal and each meal should include at least some protein. Great sources of protein are chicken, fish, diary products, meat, peas and nuts. I don't like protein bars and extra proteins like whey protein but they work so why not but in my opinion it's better to get used to eating healthy.

Avoid really sugary drinks, candies and so on. Especially if you plan on working on abs too. Abs come from not only from exercising but also low fat percentage (like ~4%). Snacking is a bad habit and really hard to get rid of.

Sleep is really important in order to let your muscles relax and grow. Basically how the whole muscle growth thing works is that you "break" your body, let it rest and then break it again. Talking more about exercise probably next but generally 2 times per week for each workout is enough. Anything more only puts stress on your muscles and may cause injury which happend to me. Abs can be worked out more often than 2 times a week though.


Exercises

Exercises depend on what you want. There are 3 kinds of training: one that trains your muscles for show, one in between and one for endurance. Exercises should be done 2 times per week, anything more causes extra stress to muscles and you may have no gains at all. 3 day break between each training is a good habit. Note: Recommended age to start training seriously is after you have grown so maybe age ~18. otherwise you may face some problems or growth pain.

Low repetitions

* 2-3 sets, preferably 3
* This mean low amout of repetition at heavy weights (1-5 reps)
* Long breaks between sets
* Faster change in appearance but mass/size doesn't equal actual strength.

Mediocre repetitions

* 3 sets
* Mediocre amount of repetitions (~10)
* Break between sets
* Recommended training, changes in mass equal actual strength.
* Last rep should feel heavy

High repetitions

* 3 sets
* High amount of repetitions ~15+
* Break between sets
* Mostly for increasing endurance, slow size changes

I highly recommend taking a motivational "starting point" picture because you don't really notice the results until you have worked out for several months. Motivation is a big part of the process and seeing results is a good way to keep high motivation. It's really hard to stay on regime and not skip workout but you get used to it after a month if u keep at it.

I guess I'll also add common mistakes here what I and many others did at the beginning. First one is having too heavy weights and second one is cheating the exercises. Too heavy weights usually lead into inproper exercises.

My first month at the gym included just lifting the bar without weights to get the hang of a proper movement so I won't do inproper repetitions. Many usually rush on adding as much weight as they possibly can and cheat the exercises when there is very little benefit in it. You want to start every single repetition from zero movement into complete swing as far as u can go (depends on which exercise your doing so more of that later). You can get a barbell up with just body movement, without using much arm movement.


Workout regime based on needs and goals could be something like:

Day 1; tricep/chest
Day 2; Forearm/bicep
Day 3; abs
Day 4; abs
Day 5; tricep/chest
Day 6: Forearm/bicep
Day 7: abs

Long term you want to have back and leg days too of course. Those have not been all that important for me so far as I've exercised them previous years and I only do light workout and can't really help with those but the point is you just want some kind of a exercise schelude you want to keep until it becomes a habit. I'll link a few exercises that are useful: