Every week I meet someone who wants to know how to start working out as a complete beginner. They're usually a bit embarrassed to ask. They shouldn't be — it's the best question in fitness, and hardly anyone answers it honestly.
So here's my honest answer. I'm a personal trainer in Elgin, and most of the people I coach aren't athletes. They're folk in their thirties, forties, fifties who haven't trained since school, or never trained at all. This is the guide I'd hand every one of them on day one.
Fair warning: some of it isn't what you want to hear. Results take months. Motivation is unreliable. And the biggest danger to your progress isn't doing too little — it's doing too much. But if you read to the end, you'll know exactly what to do this week. Not in theory. Actually do.
The mistake that finishes most beginners by week three
Here's the pattern I see over and over. Someone decides this is it — they're getting fit. They go from doing nothing to training five days a week, cutting out everything they enjoy eating, and getting up at 6am for good measure.
Week one feels brilliant. Week two, they're aching, knackered and secretly dreading every session. Week three, life gets in the way once — a late shift, a poorly kid — and the whole thing collapses. Then they tell themselves they've got no willpower.
They don't have a willpower problem. They have a dosage problem. Hand a learner driver a Formula 1 car and you don't get to act surprised when it ends up in a hedge. I've written before about why people fail to get fit, and this is the heart of it: the plan was built for a version of you that doesn't exist yet.
The fix is embarrassingly simple. Start smaller than feels impressive. You can always add more later — but you can't add anything if you've quit.
What should a complete beginner actually do first?
One short workout. This week. That's it.
Not a programme, not a gym membership, not new trainers. Ten minutes, in your living room, with no equipment. Something like this five-minute beginner core workout plus a decent walk counts perfectly well.
Why so small? Because your first job isn't to get fit. Your first job is to become someone who trains. Those are different projects. Getting fit takes months of consistency. Becoming someone who trains starts the first time you finish a session and think, "that wasn't as bad as I expected."
I've lost count of the clients who started on ten minutes twice a week and thought I was at it. A year later they're training four times a week and wondering what they were ever nervous about. The ten minutes was never the workout. It was the foundation.
How many days a week should you train?
Two or three. Not five, not six.
Two full-body sessions a week is enough for a genuine beginner to get stronger, feel better and build the habit. Three is great. More than that, this early, mostly just makes you sore and eats into your recovery — which is when your body actually adapts.
Rest days aren't the absence of training. They're part of it. Plan them like sessions.
If it helps to see it written down, a first week might look like this: a short session on Monday, nothing Tuesday, a walk Wednesday, a second session Thursday, and the weekend completely off. Nobody would put that on a poster. That's rather the point — it's a week the real you can actually repeat, and repeating it is the entire game.
Which exercises should you start with?
You don't need fifty exercises. You need a handful of movements your body was built to do: squatting down, pushing something away, pulling something towards you, hinging at the hips, and holding yourself steady.
In practice that looks like bodyweight squats, press-ups (on your knees to start — that's not a lesser version, it's the right version), glute bridges, and planks. Every one of them can be made easier or harder, which means they'll still be useful to you in five years.
Form matters more than reps. Slow and controlled beats fast and sloppy, every time. If you're not sure what a movement should look like, watch a real person do it properly before you try — not a diagram, and not someone's showreel.
Do you need a gym?
No. And if the gym is the thing putting you off starting, the answer is definitely no.
Everything in the last section can be done on your living room floor. Short home workouts are how most of my beginners start, and plenty never bother with a gym at all.
This is honestly why I built Core Buddy. The bit beginners struggle with isn't effort — it's decisions. What do I do? For how long? Am I doing it right? The app takes all three off your plate: you tell it how long you've got and what kit you have (none is fine), it builds the session, times every interval, and every single exercise has a video of me doing it in my own gym. The free plan gives you unlimited 5 and 10-minute workouts, which is genuinely all you need for your first month.
How long until you see results?
Honestly? Longer than the adverts say.
Here's a rough, truthful timeline. In the first two weeks you'll notice better sleep, better mood, a bit more energy. Within a month, things feel easier — stairs, shopping bags, the workouts themselves. Strength comes on surprisingly fast. But visible change in the mirror? For most people that's two to three months in, minimum. Anyone promising faster is selling something.
That's why I tell clients to stop relying on the mirror — it's the least reliable witness you've got, because it sees you every day and notices nothing. Take photos on day one. Measure things. Write down what you lifted. In eight weeks the evidence will surprise you.
Do you need to change how you eat?
Eventually, probably a bit. Right now? Leave it alone.
Trying to overhaul your training and your eating in the same fortnight is the classic too-much-too-soon trap — twice the willpower bill, twice the ways for the week to wobble. Let training settle in first.
When you're ready, change one thing. Not everything — one thing. Swap the nightly takeaway habit for a couple of batch-cooked meals, or the mid-afternoon biscuits for something with a bit of protein in it. Give that one swap a month before you add another. It sounds too slow to work, which is exactly why it works.
What happens when motivation disappears?
It will. Usually around week three or four. That's not a flaw in you — it's how motivation works. It shows up for novelty and leaves when things get routine, which is precisely when the results start.
What carries you through isn't willpower, it's scaffolding: sessions planned at a set time, kit left out the night before, a tiny minimum you can do even on rubbish days, and ideally another human who notices whether you showed up. Consistency isn't a personality trait. It's a system you build.
And on the days you manage ten minutes instead of the plan? That counts. You showed up. Nothing to make up, nothing to feel bad about — pick it up again the next day.
Quick answers to the rest
Am I too unfit to start?
No. There's no fitness level you need before you're allowed to start — the ten-minute version of a workout exists precisely so the current version of you can do it. If you can get down onto the floor and back up, you've got everything you need. One sensible caveat: if you've got a health condition or you're on medication, have a quick word with your GP first. Costs nothing, buys peace of mind.
Am I too old for this?
I've coached beginners in their sixties and seventies. Getting stronger matters more the older you get, not less. You'll start gentler and build a wee bit slower — that's the only difference.
Do I need to warm up?
A little, aye. Two or three minutes of easy movement — marching on the spot, arm circles, a few slow squats. You don't need a 20-minute routine. You just need to not go from the sofa to your hardest effort in ten seconds.
What about the soreness?
Some soreness in the day or two after your early sessions is normal, and it fades fast as your body adapts. Sharp pain during an exercise is different — stop, and get it looked at if it lingers. And soreness is not a badge of a good workout, by the way. The best sessions often leave you feeling better, not broken.
If you'd rather have the first month done for you
Everything above still leaves you making decisions — what to do on Tuesday, when to make things harder, whether you're building up at the right speed. Some people enjoy that. Most beginners, in my experience, would rather someone just handled it.
That's what the 28-day Core Foundations programme in Core Buddy is for. Twenty short bodyweight sessions over four weeks, with rest days built in. The first sessions are around eight minutes, and they build up gradually as you do. Each day's workout unlocks when it's due, so you can't cram a week's worth into one over-enthusiastic Tuesday — the programme quietly protects you from the too-much-too-soon trap this whole article opened with.
It's part of the paid side of the app (£9.99 a month or £49.99 a year), but the 30-day free trial is longer than the programme itself. So you can do the whole thing, start to finish, without paying a penny — and decide at the end whether it earned its keep. I think that's the fairest way to sell anything.
Want your first month mapped out? Get Core Buddy and start Core Foundations — 28 days, 20 short sessions, every exercise demonstrated on video by me. The 30-day free trial covers the lot.
The honest last word
You don't need more information after this. You need one short session this week, and another one a few days later. That's the whole method. Do it for a month and you'll be surprised how much of the rest sorts itself out.
Slow feels wrong when you're keen. Trust it anyway. The people who get fit aren't the ones who start hardest — they're the ones still going in March.