Starting strength training can become unnecessarily complicated. How many days should you train? How many exercises do you need? And how many sets should you actually be doing?
If you're new to lifting, Spanish fitness and nutrition expert Marcos Vázquez has a simple framework that answers all three questions. He calls it the '3-5 rule': train three to five days per week, perform three to five exercises per workout and complete three to five sets of each.
It's not a magic formula for building muscle, but if you're struggling to turn up at the gym with anything resembling a plan, it's an extremely simple place to start.
Why Beginners Should Strength Train
Including resistance exercises in your routine can make a significant difference to your health and fitness. Whether your goal is to build muscle, maintain your strength as you get older, improve sporting performance or simply change the way you look, resistance training deserves a place in your programme.
But if you've previously been sedentary or have little experience with strength training, you don't need to immediately start throwing around heavy barbells.
Relatively short sessions can be enough to get started. The original recommendation is around 30 minutes, including a warm-up, accessible exercises suited to your ability and some time to cool down afterwards.
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Bodyweight movements such as push-ups, planks, squats, glute bridges and lunges can help you become familiar with the fundamentals of strength training while gradually building your capacity.
Once you're comfortable with those movements, you can start introducing external resistance using dumbbells, barbells, kettlebells or resistance machines.
That's where the 3-5 rule can provide some useful structure.
How Does the 3-5 Rule Work?
‘There are many ways to incorporate strength training into our lives, and the 3-5 rule can help,’ says Vázquez.
‘It consists of training with weights 3-5 days a week, performing 3-5 exercises per session and 3-5 sets per exercise. If you can do a little more, even better, but for most people this is enough.’
So, the formula is:
- 3-5 strength workouts per week
- 3-5 exercises per workout
- 3-5 sets per exercise
You don't necessarily need to start at the top end of every range. If you're a beginner, three workouts per week with three exercises in each is likely to be a much more manageable starting point than immediately attempting five workouts containing five movements apiece.
As you become more experienced and your ability to recover improves, you can gradually increase the amount of work you're doing.
How Heavy Should Beginners Lift?
Once you've decided how often you're going to train, the next question is how much weight you should use.
When muscle growth is the goal, Vázquez points out that you don't necessarily need extremely heavy loads.
‘You can increase muscle mass with light weights, provided you reach muscular failure in each set – the muscle responds more to effort than weight,’ he says.
You don't need to take every set to absolute failure to build muscle, particularly when you're starting out. But the broader principle is useful: lighter weights can still stimulate muscle growth when your sets are sufficiently challenging.
As a beginner, choose a weight that allows you to perform your exercises with good technique while still making the final few reps feel challenging. You can then gradually increase the weight or reps as you become stronger.
For maximising strength, heavier loads eventually become more important.
‘You can also increase strength with lighter loads, but it isn't as effective, and it is advisable to include sessions where you work above 80% of your one-rep max (1RM),’ says Vázquez.
Your one-rep max, or 1RM, is the maximum amount of weight you can lift for a single repetition. Beginners don't need to rush into testing it, however. Building good technique and gradually increasing your loads should come first.
Which Exercises Should Beginners Choose?
There's a huge number of exercises you could use within the 3-5 framework, but that's no reason to try to do all of them.
The Italian article suggests movements including bicep and tricep exercises, overhead and bench presses, deadlifts, kettlebell squats and swings, lat pulldowns, barbell squats, leg extensions and lateral raises.
For beginners, however, you can simplify things further by choosing exercises that cover the major movement patterns.
A straightforward full-body workout could include:
- Squat: goblet squat or bodyweight squat
- Push: dumbbell bench press or push-up
- Pull: dumbbell row or lat pulldown
- Hinge: Romanian deadlift
- Carry or core: farmer's carry or plank
You don't need all five in every workout. Pick three to five exercises, learn to perform them well and focus on gradually improving them rather than constantly swapping movements.
Is the 3-5 Rule Enough to Build Muscle?
There's nothing magical about the numbers three and five. You can build muscle and strength with programmes that fall outside these ranges, and factors including your total training volume, effort, progression, nutrition and recovery still matter.
But for a beginner, that's arguably missing the point.
The biggest advantage of the 3-5 rule is that it removes some of the uncertainty from starting strength training. You don't need a complicated split or dozens of exercises. You need a manageable number of sessions, a handful of effective movements and enough challenging sets to give your body a reason to adapt.
Start towards the lower end of the ranges, concentrate on learning the movements and gradually make your training more challenging as you become stronger.
Three workouts. Three to five exercises. Three to five sets. For someone who doesn't know where to start, that's a pretty useful starting point.
