I can’t afford a personal trainer right now, but I really want to get in shape and develop my discipline before starting post-graduate school. I am a complete newbie when it comes to exercise. I enjoyed learning and reading too much, and as a result, I’ve spent most of my life as a couch potato.
About myself: I have a natural hourglass body. However, I’m currently overweight. I have generally poorer arm strength, which is most likely due to the fact that my forearms are notably smaller than my body frame. My thighs are inherently large (even though I was still slim in 2019).
Goals: shed weight, improve my hourglass form, increase side hips, and have a fuller buttocks without expanding my already large thighs.
First, I’d check to see if your gym offers a free introductory session, as most typically do.
If not, simply choose one or two machines for each body area, such as the chest press for the chest and the seated row for the back. Could also do shoulder presses. Some gyms include glute machines, which allow you to kick back a weight. You could try leg abduction (sit and push the weights out), but my favorite glute workout is hip thrust (which is a strange position, as you mentioned) or deadlift (which is a technically hard exercise). Seeing as you stated arms you can either use a dumbbell curl for biceps or there might be a machine. For the back of your arms.
I believe Naomi Kong’s weight training for beginners routine on YouTube is totally up your alley. It lasts three days a week and focusses on machines while explaining good form, among other things. Some dumbbell stuff (I’m not sure whether you think squats are awkward, but she performs them with dumbbells). She starts and ends with ten minutes of cardio. I just started it, so I can’t speak to outcomes, but I’m enjoying it and it’s free!
One last thing I want to note here is that it is kind of hard to isolate the butt completely. There are exercises that will focus on glutes but there will be some activation in your hamstrings or some other leg muscle. My advice is to just not sweat it if your legs become more muscular. Don’t sweat about being “too big” because tbh, it is extremely hard to be big. A lot of people come into lifting worried that they will be too large, but the truth is it takes so much work to grow that to accidentally become too big is kind of hard. Approach lifting with the goal of being stronger.
I was likewise a couch potato for the majority of my life. I despised anything having to do with exercise. But when I started lifting, I quickly fell in love with it. I’ll present a simplified version of my workout routine that I’ve been following for a while, with a few tweaks here and there.
I do a push-pull-legs workout. Every day, you perform a set of workouts for certain body areas. Pushing is for the chest and triceps, pulling is for the back and biceps, and finally legs.
I train six times a week, doing two rotations of the routine. You can begin by completing them once a week, working out three days per week.
