HOW DO I KNOW WHEN I’M NOT A BEGINNER?

I get asked the question “how do I know when I’m not a beginner” a LOT, and every time I give the same response “if you don’t know, then you’re a beginner”.  People tend to not like that answer, because they want something quantifiable.  They want to know how much they should be able to squat to not be a beginner, or how many years they need to train to not be a beginner, or what rate of progress that can achieve before they are no longer a beginner.  The thing is, ironically enough, this is approaching the question of “how do I know when I’m not a beginner” in the way that a beginner would approach the question, and it’s why an answer that requires thinking beyond quantifiable metrics confounds the asker.  But today, let me offer something a bit more in depth to elaborate on the answer: you are no longer a beginner when you are at a point in your training where you will take full accountability for your decisions and your actions.

And sometimes that means telling the trainer you hired that he's an idiot

Let me back up a bit and discuss 2 of my favorite topics: beginners, and beginner programs.  Beginners are people new to the world of training, both physically and intellectually.  However, what is fascinating about those two qualities it that lack of experience in the former is a blessing, whereas the latter is a curse.  An untrained individual will flourish on ANY program or protocol they are put on, because, simply put, a body transitioning from sedentary to active undergoes substantial physical changes under a rapid timeline due to the nature of physical adaptation.  This is why those select few people that actually stick with their New Year’s resolutions look totally different at the 4-6 month mark, because simply sticking with AN approach for a few months will yield rapid and remarkable results.  Hell, Jared Fogle of Subway infamy lost 200+lbs by walking to Subway and eating veggie sandwiches, and his story is honestly not terribly unique in the world of extreme weight loss, and, in turn, physical transformation.  So then, why the hell do beginner programs even exist?

Knowing that beginners can pretty much do ANYTHING and see results, the point/benefit of a beginner program is to not bolster the physical inexperience of the trainee but the INTELLECTUAL inexperience.  Beginner programs don’t unlock magical physical powers that lay dormant in a beginner trainee to “maximize beginner gains”; they outfit a new trainee with a program that is basically impossible to screw up as long as they do it EXACTLY as written.  It’s why these modern day beginner programs are so incredibly basic and can be hosted on a single webpage of poorly programmed app.  Give the beginner only 3-5 movements to learn, give them only 1 rep range, only have them train 3 days a week, and only have them focus on putting weight on the bar.  If you think the beginner is REALLY dumb, you make the number of reps the same number as the number of sets, so that they only need to know 1 number to do the program.  This type of programming coddles the beginner, spoonfeeding them a very very basic routine (I hesitate to call it an actual program) in the hopes of building compliance with training and established habits to one day transition to something greater.

Or you could just try to follow it indefinitely and see what happens

And what inevitably occurs?  The physical outpaces the intellectual.  Trainees stay on these beginner routines for WAY too long because they keep waiting to transform into something else: a non-beginner (or, of course, the real goal of so many of these: the esteemed “intermediate” title).  In fact, I’ll go off on a small rant here to point out that I’ve seen people refer to themselves as various stages OF being a beginner, to include late stage beginner, advanced beginner, intermediate beginner, etc.  What the hell?  Being a beginner should be a VERY short period of time in your training history: there shouldn’t BE stages.  But I digress.  Once this situation occurs and the trainee is no longer seeing the results they saw when they first started, they want to know if they are in fact ready to begin on the fabled “intermediate programs”.  And then, a follow up question: what the Hell IS an intermediate program?  And from there, the fabled search begins.

Oh, sure, the same charlatans that sold these trainees a beginner program will GLADLY sell them an intermediate program as well.  And what does it look like?  It’s the same damn beginner program with just a few of the numbers scrambled around.  And the “graduated beginner” eats it up…and makes no growth.  And then the tailspin begins, and with it comes the overeating, the “overtraining”, the stalling, the regression, and the eventual giving up.  But it doesn’t have to be that way!  All that trainee needs to do…is take control.  They have to give themselves autonomy and wrestle it away from those who stole it in the first place.  They have to lay claim to their own destiny and, with it, agree to suffer the consequences of failure in the pursuit of success.

Author's note: please do not take this as a call to shoot someone working on SkyNet

Specifically, they need to start trying new things, seeing how they work, and figure out what they respond to.  New rep ranges, new movements, new splits, differing amounts of days per week trained, max effort, repetition effort, EXTREME stretching, dropsets, rest pausing, etc etc.  Throw stuff against the wall and see what sticks.  But again: they have to be willing to take accountability for their decisions.  If that trainee posts one “sanity check” on some forum somewhere in regards to the path they’ve decided on, they just gave up their “non-beginner” status.  Get into an argument on social media over the validity of your approach because you’re insecure?  That guy you’re arguing with just made you a beginner again.  Beginners see the training of intermediate/advanced lifters and observe a variety of different approaches and techniques employed, and they mistakenly interpret those techniques AS “intermediate/advanced techniques”, under the guise that they “do not work for beginners.”  Here we mistake effect for cause, as it’s not that the techniques don’t work for beginners: it is that beginners cannot use these techniques, for they lack the ability to take the necessary degree of accountability should these techniques fail.

And sometimes we revert back to being a beginner, and that’s ok.  Sometimes, we’ve been out there on our own, doing our own thing, trying stuff out, and we stray so far from our roots that we forget how the hell to train in the first place.  When this happens, we become beginners again, and we seek out someone to give us another “beginner program”.  Something that is bound to work, so long as we stick with it.  We get our feet back under us, remember our core principles, and take on the mantle of accountability again.  And some people will simply never NOT be beginners, and if that’s how they want to live, that is their choice, but they will find that their results simply will not be significant until they’re willing to take some chances and deviate from the program to find out what they personally need to do to ensure growth.  But for those that are on the fence, wondering if they’ve “maxed out their beginner gains”, wondering if they are still considered a beginner, wondering if they’re ready for the next step, I will once again say that: if you are wondering, yes, you are still a beginner.  Once you know you aren’t, then you aren’t.