5 Best Strength Training Exercises for Beginners to Lose Weight

Exercises for beginners to lose weight. (Photo via Anastase Maragos/Unsplash)
Exercises for beginners to lose weight (Photo via Unsplash/Anastase Maragos)

If you’re looking for exercises for beginners to lose weight, you’ve come to the right place. It’s important to understand which exercises can enable you to understand the basics before doing advanced variations.

There are several exercises for beginners to lose weight, but it would be too overwhelming to incorporate all of them in a beginner’s routine. Therefore, it’s best to pick a few that can help you optimize the weight loss process and prepare you for the next part of your fitness journey.


Strength Training Exercises for Beginners for Weight Loss

The following are five exercises for beginners to lose weight. You need to focus on them as much as possible. Also, pay attention on your form, and understand the basic push, pull, and leg movements. Let's get started:

1) Squat

It’s a given that the lower body, especially the legs, is an important muscle group. You must not skip leg days if you want to lose weight and define your overall physique.

Squats are the king of leg exercises and come with several variations, such as bodyweight, dumbbell, barbell, hack squats, and others. Focus on the one that works best for you and allows you to master the form.

Ideally, you should begin with bodyweight squats before working your way upwards.

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2) Push-up

Push-ups are a push movement and a basic one at that. To do push-ups, put your palms and toes on the ground, and stabilize your core. Slowly lower yourself towards the ground, but do not let your torso or legs touch the ground.

Once you’ve reached close to the ground, push yourself back up. If you’ve never done push-ups before, begin with incline push-ups, and move to knee push-ups, before doing toe push-ups.

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3) Lat Pull-down

The lat pull-down is one of the exercises for beginners to lose weight. Usually, every fitness establishment has this machine, and you will likely be using it regularly throughout your fitness journey.

To do a lat pull-down, hold the bar slightly wider than shoulder-width, and pull it towards your chest. As you bring the bar down, focus on squeezing your shoulder blades together while keeping your back and core muscles stable.

It’s important to maintain a strong muscle-mind connection during this exercise, otherwise the biceps could take over.

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4) Leg Extension

Coming back to the lower body, there are two large muscle groups that make up the legs - quads and hamstrings.

Leg extensions help with isolating the quad muscles and working on the smaller and bigger muscle fibers. It’s important to mix compound and isolation exercises to create a proper workout for the muscle groups.

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5) Hamstring Curl

Hamstring curls are a great exercise to isolate the hamstrings. However, hamstring curls aren’t always the easiest to master.

To do hamstring curls, bend your legs towards your glutes from the knees. It’s best to do this exercise with the lightest weight to understand how the hamstrings engage during the exercise. Otherwise, using too much weight at the start could lead to painful muscle cramps.

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Bottom Line

Exercises for beginners to lose weight only come in handy when you put yourself in a calorie deficit. That's only achievable with a calorie-deficit diet. The body will be urged to burn the stored calories to make up for the deficit, which will trigger the weight loss process.

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