What Is The Best Way To Start A Barbell Workout Routine?

If you’ve been wanting to start a barbell workout routine but don’t know how to, here’s a guide that will explain everything you need to know without beating around the bush.

However, before learning where to start, you should first know what a barbell workout is.

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What is a barbell workout?

A barbell workout is essentially a series of exercises that's done using a barbell and weight plates. These exercises can be heavy on the joint and more often than not, they’re compound movements.

Moreover, barbell exercises add variation to your workout routine, which ensures that the muscles do not become too used to a particular movement. If you’re going to start a barbell workout, you should know that the process cannot be rushed.

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How to start a barbell workout?

To start with, you need access to a barbell and to weight plates.

Learn the basic movements

Once you do that, you need to get into the zone where your body is used to certain basic movements.

So, prepare yourself using bodyweight and dumbbell exercises such as squats, push movements, pull movements, lunges, twists, and hangs (to strengthen your core muscles).

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Mobility and stretching

Next, focus on mobility and stretching. Before any workout session, you must stretch. That allows you to warm up your muscle fibers and get the blood flowing much better.

As the idea is to start a barbell workout, you don’t need to spend days, weeks, and months preparing yourself. A month of dumbbell exercises or maybe two can enable your body to learn the movements.

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Start off slow

When you’re focusing on starting a barbell workout, you shouldn’t try to overload the barbells. The idea is to use lower or moderate weights to understand the form. A good form will allow you to reap all the benefits from the exercises.

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Get a trainer

A barbell workout routine isn’t always a cakewalk. It’s better to get yourself a trainer who can help you through each exercise. As compound movements work on more than one muscle group, it’s better to have someone coach you through the exercises.

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Understanding muscle-mind connections

A muscle-mind connection helps you to engage the correct muscle group during any exercise. For example, the barbell bench press works on the chest as a primary, and triceps and shoulders as secondary.

A strong muscle-mind connection should be built using a lighter weight. That way, as you lift heavier, the muscle-mind connection can be of great assistance.

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Bottom Line

It’s easy to start a barbell workout, but it can also be challenging. Eventually, you need to be able to comfortably use a barbell.

There are different types of barbells. Initially, you should use the smaller ones, as it's easier to work them at the start. However, the idea is to move on to the bigger barbells that will allow you to add more resistance and help you become stronger.

Finally, add progressive overload to your workout routine to ensure you’re moving forward in your fitness journey.