Starting at the gym for the first time is genuinely overwhelming. Hundreds of machines, unwritten rules, people who look like they know exactly what they’re doing – and you have no idea where to begin. In Episode 21 of the Kraken Power Podcast, Josko and Brandon asked themselves a simple question: if they had to start over from scratch, what would they actually do? Here’s the honest answer, from two coaches at Kraken Fitness in North Burnaby with over 10 years in the industry each.
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Start With a Personal Trainer (Even Just Three Sessions)
The first thing Josko would do if he started over is get a personal trainer. He knows how that sounds coming from someone who owns a gym. He says it anyway, because it’s true.
The point of a trainer at the beginning isn’t to get a perfect program. It’s to close the knowledge gap fast enough that the gym stops feeling foreign. Where to put your elbows on the lat pulldown. How to set the seat on the leg press. What weight to start with. Three sessions with even a mediocre trainer at a community center – 60 to 70 dollars a session – is enough to get those basics covered and make the gym feel like somewhere you can actually navigate on your own.
Personal training is expensive. That’s a real thing. But you don’t need months of it to get started. Three sessions, two times a week for the first month if budget allows, or just three standalone sessions if that’s all you can swing. The goal is a gym chaperone who walks you through the equipment and gets your foot in the door. Once that barrier is gone, everything else gets easier.
There’s also the safety angle. People are afraid of hurting themselves at the gym – and that fear is not irrational. You can get hurt in the gym. Josko has, doing exercises he knows well. The risk never goes to zero. But a trainer showing you basic movement patterns and how to use equipment correctly lowers that risk significantly at the stage when it’s highest.
There’s Nothing Wrong With Machines
The fitness internet has decided that machines are for people who don’t know what they’re doing, and free weights are for serious lifters. That take is wrong, and it stops a lot of beginners from getting started.
Machines were designed to reduce injury risk while still creating the stress and adaptation the body needs to get stronger. For someone brand new to the gym, that’s exactly what you want. A seated leg press won’t crush you. A chest press machine won’t tip over. The movement is guided, the weight is controlled, and you can learn what it feels like to push hard without worrying about form breaking down in dangerous ways.
Your body doesn’t know if the stress came from a barbell or a machine. It just knows stress happened and it needs to adapt. That’s the whole mechanism. A machine-only workout builds muscle, builds strength, builds the movement patterns, and builds the habit of showing up. None of that is lesser because it happened on equipment with a seat and a guided track.
Josko’s take on the free weights vs machines debate for beginners: stop listening to people on Reddit and do what you’re comfortable with. Barbell squats and deadlifts can come later when you have a feel for your body and how it moves. Starting on machines is not a shortcut. It’s just smart.
The Simplest Beginner Program That Actually Works
If Josko were writing a beginner program from scratch, it would look like this: seated leg press, leg curl or leg extension, chest press machine, lat pulldown, seated row. Five exercises. Three sets of each. Eight to twelve reps per set.
That’s it. No splits. No push-pull-legs. No A-day and B-day. Just that same workout two or three times per week with a rest day between sessions.
The reasoning is straightforward. At the beginning, the goal isn’t optimization – it’s habit formation. Showing up consistently to do the same simple thing builds the pattern. The workout itself is almost secondary. Once you’ve been going for a few weeks and the basic movements feel familiar, you can start adding exercises, experimenting with new things, and building out from there.
One thing Josko flags that a lot of beginners miss: at the start, just learn the movements. Don’t grind to failure on day one. As you get more comfortable, start pushing harder, getting closer to your limit on each set. The progressive challenge is what drives adaptation over time. But on week one, just moving the body and getting used to the equipment is enough.
Soreness is also worth mentioning. People follow a workout they found online, come in absolutely destroyed after one session, and never come back. A simple five-exercise program done at a sensible intensity won’t do that. You’ll feel it, but you’ll be able to walk the next day.
Gym Etiquette: What Nobody Tells You
The gym has its own unwritten rules. Nobody hands you a guide at the door, which means most beginners learn them by accidentally breaking them. Here are the main ones.
The phone rule is the biggest one. If you’re sitting on a machine scrolling between sets, people are waiting. Rest times should be around 60 to 90 seconds for most beginner exercises – not five minutes. If you need to check something, step off the equipment. The gym is a shared space, and the equipment is a shared resource.
Working in with someone is totally normal and acceptable. If someone is using a machine you need, you can ask to work in – take turns between their sets. The one exception is when swapping out handles or attachments would take too long or disrupt their setup. In that case, just let them know you want the machine next and you’ll wait. That alone is usually enough to move things along.
Clean up after yourself. Return weights to the rack. Don’t leave dumbbells scattered around your area. Wipe equipment when the gym provides wipes. None of this is complicated – it’s just being aware of the space you’re taking up and the people sharing it with you.
And if someone gives you unsolicited form corrections? That’s on them, not you. Josko himself never approaches strangers in the gym to correct their form unless they’re about to get seriously hurt. The people who do it unprompted are the exception, not the rule.
Nobody Is Watching You (Really)
Josko works out at a commercial gym, not at Kraken. He’s been coaching for 12 years and owns a gym. And he genuinely does not look at what other people are doing when he trains.
This is the reality of the gym. Everyone there is in their own head, focused on their own workout, managing their own fatigue. The person on the treadmill next to you is not evaluating your form. The guy on the squat rack is not watching you figure out the cable machine. They’re thinking about their next set.
The fear of judgment is real and completely understandable. But it’s mostly not matching what’s actually happening in the room. The people who are genuinely judging strangers at the gym are the outliers – and they’re the ones with the problem, not you.
If you’re brand new, rounds, your back, fumbling with the adjustment on a cable machine, or doing something that looks a little uncertain – that’s just starting out. Nobody who’s been training for any length of time looks down on that. Most of them remember exactly what it felt like.
Stop Overcomplicating It
The last thing that stops people from getting started – and keeps stopping them after they start – is information overload. Optimal rep ranges. Macros. Split programming. Periodization. Supplement stacks. All of it starts piling up before a single workout has happened.
Here’s the actual truth for a beginner: anything is better than nothing. When you’re new to training, your body has enormous headroom to respond to almost any stimulus. You don’t need the optimal program. You need a program you’ll actually do. Showing up twice a week and doing five simple exercises consistently will produce real results. A theoretically perfect program that’s too complicated to follow consistently will not.
Use AI if you want help building a simple program. Give it some context about what equipment you have, what you’ve learned, and what your goal is. It can put together something workable. But keep it simple. Five exercises, three sets, two or three days a week. Build the habit first. Optimize later.
Josko and Brandon close the episode with something worth repeating: the gym is a lot less complicated than the internet makes it. Go in, do what you can, get a trainer if you’re able to, and keep coming back. That’s the whole thing.
FAQ
Do I need a personal trainer to start at the gym?
You don’t need one, but even just three sessions makes a real difference. A trainer removes the knowledge gap fast – they show you how to use equipment, what weight to start with, and how to move safely. That confidence carries you a long way once you’re on your own.
Are machines okay for beginners or should I use free weights?
Machines are completely fine – and often smarter for beginners. They guide your movement, reduce injury risk, and still build muscle and strength effectively. Your body responds to stress regardless of whether it comes from a machine or a barbell. Start where you’re comfortable.
How many days a week should a beginner go to the gym?
Two to three times per week with a rest day between sessions is ideal. That’s enough stimulus to build the habit and see results without overdoing it and ending up too sore to come back. Consistency over the weeks matters far more than frequency within the week.
What’s a simple beginner workout program?
Seated leg press, leg curl or leg extension, chest press machine, lat pulldown, seated row. Five exercises, three sets each, eight to twelve reps. Same workout every session, two or three times per week. Add exercises as you get comfortable. Don’t split it up until you’ve built the habit.
What are the basic gym etiquette rules?
Don’t sit on equipment while on your phone. Rest between sets and then move on. Ask to work in if you want to share a machine. Return weights when you’re done. Be aware of the space you’re taking up. That covers most of it – the rest is just being considerate of the people around you.
Ready to Start?
If you’re in North Burnaby and you want to try the gym for the first time – or try it again after a gap – Kraken Fitness is built for exactly this. No judgment, real coaches, and a program that fits where you’re actually at right now.
Listen on Your Favorite Platform
Apple Podcasts – https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/if-we-had-to-start-over-at-the-gym-after-10-years-ep-21/id1769000945?i=1000768743384
YouTube – https://youtu.be/AdWZsFduNX8
Spotify – https://open.spotify.com/episode/70amHycH5xsDVSXy4ih6LJ?si=f1b3ce08e9ee4280
About the Author
Josko is the Founder & CEO of Kraken Fitness in North Burnaby and co-host of the Kraken Power Podcast. He’s been coaching for over 12 years and has worked with clients at every level – from complete beginners walking into a gym for the first time to competitive athletes.
Brandon is the Co-Owner & COO of Kraken Fitness and co-host of the Kraken Power Podcast. He brings a kinesiology background to every conversation and trains for jiu jitsu performance – which gives him a grounded, practical view of what fitness actually looks like for real people with real lives.
[Josko]
I was just trying to visualize what it would be like for somebody walking in the gym for the first time. You’ve never worked out before. You’ve never seen the inside of the gym and then you walk in and you just see like hundreds of pieces of equipment with like potentially hundreds of other people that are working out after work and you’re just like where do I even start? Like that must feel so overwhelming. It’s like a different culture in there. You walk into there, like the rules in society may not always apply to the rules in the gym. It’s kind of like driving a car for the first time. There’s things going on. There’s people moving at different paces and you kind of have to be aware of your surroundings to know where you fit in and what actions that you can take without disrupting other people or at least pissing them off as you do your own thing. Welcome back to the Kraken Power podcast.
So, you know what I hate? I hate when like people do podcasts and they’re like, “Oh, this was what I would do if I started over at the gym,” but then you’re a trainer and it’s like it just seems like you’re trying to sell yourself, you know? So, I really want to avoid sounding like that. That’s what we’re doing today. It’s like, okay, if I were to start all over, I would get a personal trainer. You know, it’s like, oh god, I really hope it doesn’t sound like that. I’m not trying to sell you into Kraken or anything. I’m just honestly trying to tell you my advice. If you were trying to start over, like if you were literally from scratch, you didn’t watch any YouTube videos, you didn’t do anything, all you know is that you need to start working out. Like, what would you do? Okay, so here it goes. The first thing I would do is get a personal trainer. So, it’s honestly what I would do. So, I’ve had personal trainers in the past. I’ve had tons of personal trainers from good ones to bad ones. And honestly, like the first thing that I would do if I were to get into fitness is get a personal trainer. So, the reason is because like let’s say you have no experience. Maybe you watch a couple YouTube videos and stuff. You can get somebody at least to get you going on some machines to show you how to do them. Like where to put your elbows, how to hold on to them, how much weight to use. It’s automatically going to make you feel so much more comfortable in the gym. So, budget’s a concern for a lot of people. Personal training is expensive. I’m not going to lie to you and say that it’s cheap. You can get like a crappy personal trainer, right? And it’ll honestly be better than just you trying to wing it in the gym. Start off if you can afford it for 3 months, two times a week. I think that would be a great amount for a lot of people. If you’re really budget bound, get a personal trainer from like the community center for like 60, 70 bucks a session. Pay them 200 bucks for three sessions and just use that. Just three sessions just for them to be like, “Here are the buttons on the treadmill. This is what they do. This is how you use the leg press machine. This is how you do a sit-up.” Even whatever crappy advice they have, at least it’ll get you going.
[Brandon]
Yeah. So, again, not to sound too salesy, but there’s so much value to it, even if it is just to remove that barrier of getting into the gym in the first place. And like a lot of it about getting into the gym is a little bit of a knowledge gap that a lot of people like – you said just learn how to work the treadmill and the buttons and such – that will stop people from coming in and starting to run on the treadmill when all it takes is a trainer to be like, “Oh, you just push this green button here. The arrow button up is going to change your speed. You’re probably going to want to be around like a five or a six for about this time.” And that’s just going to make you feel more confident, more comfortable, and that’s just going to refeed into your learning over time. And not to mention the safety of everything, too. Like a lot of people will not begin in the gym because they’re afraid of hurting themselves. And there is inherent risk in going to the gym. That’s the thing. There’s a risk to going in the gym. You can hurt yourself.
[Josko]
In fact, it’s likely that if you start going to the gym, at some point you’re going to hurt yourself. For me, I’ve hurt myself at the gym before doing basic exercises, doing extremely heavy weight. And not that I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s just if you move your body, you have risk of getting hurt, right? It’s like the people who say, “Oh, I slept funny. My neck hurts because I slept funny.” Imagine now moving your body. Like, yes, there’s a risk to that. And there’s a risk to walking, you know? Like going for a walk, you can trip and you can fall. So yeah, like a lot of people think that the chances of injury are low, but the chance of injury are still there. So that’s why it’s really important for you to at least learn how to exercise by getting a personal trainer. The other thing that I want to mention too is like – because you were just mentioning how the gym is overwhelming for a lot of people too at the beginning. Imagine you get a membership at a big box gym somewhere. You’ve never worked out before. You’ve never seen the inside of the gym other than like on YouTube and Instagram. And then you walk in and you just see like hundreds of pieces of equipment with like potentially hundreds of other people that are working out after work and you’re just like where do I even start? Like that must feel so overwhelming. So yeah, and then now let’s say you got a personal trainer – you can just have that person that’s just guiding you through, being like ignore all that other noise, start with this piece of equipment right here. It’s like okay, like at least I have this.
[Brandon]
Yeah. They’re like your gym chaperone where they’re just like bringing you through the equipment, the journey of where you should be and where you should just start, get your foot in the door. And like I was saying before, that alone is just enough for you to start building more skills. And one of the things that stops people a lot is not knowing how to do movements correctly. So I think one of the points when you’re first starting off is not really to be ashamed about using machines. Like there’s a big stigma about using machines because it limits the movement that you can do, but those things are obviously designed for you to reduce that risk, but still be able to create that stress and adaptation that you need while working out in the gym. And then as you get a little more familiar with your body and how those movements are ingrained, then you can actually start moving into things with higher degrees of freedom of movement.
[Josko]
Yeah, I think you know there’s a huge shift in the fitness industry saying like, oh, you got to do free weights, like the machines are dumb, like do barbell squats and stuff. But like as we were talking about earlier, like there’s an inherent risk to all of these movements, especially when it comes to barbell squats, barbell deadlifts, any kind of free movement. Yes, of course you can still get injured on a machine, but the risk is much lower, especially if you’re starting off with like low weights and stuff. So there is absolutely nothing wrong with going into the gym and just doing a machine-only workout. You’re still building strength, you’re still building muscle, you’re still learning movement, you’re still moving your body, you’re still getting healthier. Who cares if your entire workout is just machines only? You know, the reality is like you’re just trying to feel better, get stronger, lose a little bit of weight. Why do you need to do barbell squats, you know? Stop listening to guys on Reddit and just do what you’re comfortable with. Your body doesn’t know where the stress comes from, whether you do it in a free movement or a machine. It just knows that it’s stress on the body that it has to adapt from. And of course, we want to build proprioception and build something that will look a little bit more functional. But if that’s your starting point, there’s no shame in that.
By the way, if you’re watching this thinking, I wish I had a coach like that, you can. We coach people online. You get a real dedicated Kraken coach writing your program, checking in every single week through video all through your phone. The links in the description.
So, if you were to start off program-wise, like what would you encourage a new person to do?
Okay. So, let’s say if I were just programming for somebody – like I was just writing a random program for beginners – I’d probably just say like go to the gym, do a seated leg press. Not laying down on your back – one of those seated leg press ones because those have minimal chance of injury. It’s pin loaded so you can just select your weight and just push with your legs. There’s an emergency stop.
[Brandon]
Yeah, there’s an emergency stop. Yeah, exactly.
[Josko]
So that would be like the first exercise that somebody can do just to get their legs going. And maybe incorporate some hamstring curls or leg extension machine. And then from there I would probably do some upper body stuff. So I’d probably go and do a chest press, a pulldown, maybe a row, just so you can double up on the back movements, and I’d go home. Five exercises, three sets of each. And then maybe somewhere between like 8 to 12 reps on each one and try to push yourself. Maybe at the beginning, just do the movements and then as you kind of gain a little bit more experience, then start pushing harder and harder until you’re getting closer and closer to failure. And then meanwhile, just remember while you’re doing this, do some more research. Look at some YouTube videos on new exercises that you can experiment with.
Oh, and by the way, don’t worry about like splits. Don’t worry about like, oh, I do this on day A and do this on day B. Just do the same workout every single day – right, two or three times per week with a day rest in between, you know? Don’t complicate it. Just go in, do the same thing. As you’re doing that, you’re building a habit of exercising, start doing research, start looking at more exercises and start including some other new exercises randomly here and there. Start experimenting a little bit.
[Brandon]
I think one really good thing to do after you follow up with a trainer is input those things into an AI and build like a very simple program for you and say, “Hey, these are the things I know and this is kind of where I want to expand.” You have AI. You can just ask it to build you a program and give it some history about yourself. Maybe put the transcript of this podcast into it and get it to write you a basic program. But you also need to include like what kind of machines are you familiar with or what equipment is actually available at your gym. And again, it can get a little bit more complex, but tell it just to start off simple where you’re probably going to have some kind of squatting movement or leg pressing movement, some kind of hinging movement, some kind of pulling, some kind of pressing, and maybe a carry. If you can have all five of those movement archetypes, your bases are pretty covered.
[Josko]
But I also don’t want to complicate it for people too. Like at the beginning, you don’t even have to do a carry, you don’t have to do a hinge or any of that. Like at the very beginning, don’t worry about any of the movement archetypes. I don’t want somebody to feel like they have to go watch 30 minutes of YouTube videos just to figure out what a hinge is before they can go into the gym. And there’s a machine for that already anyway.
I guess one other thing that stops a lot of people from going into the gym too is knowing what gym etiquette is. It’s like a different culture in there. You walk in there and the rules in society may not always apply to the rules in the gym. For the most part they do, but it’s kind of like driving a car for the first time. There’s things going on. There’s people moving at different paces and you kind of have to be aware of your surroundings to know where you fit in and what actions that you can take without disrupting other people. Or at least pissing them off as you do your own thing. I think probably the most annoying thing for me at the gym is when the gym is busy and then people are on their phone sitting down using a piece of equipment. That’s probably the most annoying thing to me because I’m like – I’m timing you and you’re resting for like 2 minutes. Way too long. You don’t have to be resting for 2 minutes for your bicep curl. Just get off the machine. Let me use it.
And of course that brings up the next thing too. You can always ask to work in with somebody. The only thing that’s going to prevent that is like if they’re using the same handles or attachments that you want. So if you wanted to do a tricep push down and they’re using a t-bar but you want to use the rope, it takes too much time to swap it out. You potentially might not want to ask them to work in. So the best thing to do is just let them know, “Hey, I just want to use that machine after you. So just let me know when you’re done.” Because this is automatically going to get the person to hurry up a little bit.
[Brandon]
But it just comes down to communication. And ideally just being aware of your surroundings. Like we go back to the phone issue. You finished the incline chest press machine and you’re sitting on your phone for the next 10 minutes and you’re just unaware that three people are waiting for that machine. That’s just being inconsiderate. Or if you’re doing some dumbbell exercise and you’re leaving all the dumbbells around you and people are tripping over them – that’s being inconsiderate. So you’re cleaning up after yourself, you’re just aware of the space that you’re in and what you’re taking up, because it is a commodity that other people want to use, which includes the space, not just the equipment.
[Josko]
A lot of people are afraid of judgment as well. So I actually don’t work out at our gym here. I work out at a commercial gym. And I’ll just tell you right now, I’m a personal trainer – been personal training for 10 plus years. I own a gym. So I know a lot about fitness. I know a lot about form. I literally don’t look at anyone. I don’t want to correct anybody’s form. I’m not going to go and approach you and say like, “Hey, you’re doing this dumbbell bicep exercise wrong.” I’m never going to approach them. In fact, I never even look at people and I never judge their form. I literally just focus on my own workout and I get out. There’s nobody really judging you at the gym. And if there are people judging you, those people are the weird ones.
[Brandon]
Unfortunately, it’s like the loudest people in the room get noticed the most. I think I do notice and I do judge people only if they’re about to hurt themselves. If I see the barbell and it’s loaded way more on one side, then I might be like, “Hey, man, you might want to stop that.” But other than that, I really don’t care. I’m just in there doing my own thing.
[Josko]
And so as a beginner, you should have confidence to go in there and kind of do your own thing. Your back’s rounded during a deadlift? Not my problem. Like the thing is, I just don’t want somebody to feel embarrassed to come to the gym. In the past when I have helped people when I’m actually concerned for their form or something, I’ll just pop in and say like, “Hey, do you mind if I give you a few tips?” And if they say no, then no problem. I’m never going to jump in and just start correcting someone. So yeah, I do understand there’s definitely people out there that are like that, but they are definitely the oddballs.
I guess the last point that a lot of new people in the gym get mixed up on is just overcomplicating things. Like the program, or how many supplements you’re taking, or how many reps you’re doing – just getting too much information. A lot of people will see things online and be like, in order to build your biceps, you need like two to three times per week at this much load, this much volume. But when you’re first starting off, it really doesn’t matter that much. You just need to get in there and just do the work. A lot of people forget that. You just need to do the work. And when you’re starting off, you actually have way more headway to grow muscle tissue because you just haven’t done anything like that before. So anything at that point is better than nothing.
[Brandon]
I think we actually did a pretty good job of keeping this podcast very casual. And this is the reality of the gym. We don’t want to freak you out and it’s a lot easier than you think it is. Just go in the gym, do what you can, get a trainer if you can afford it. Even just for a few sessions, it’ll be worth your while. And there’s a ton of gyms that are starting to make these machine circuits now. A ton of these local gyms around here will have a machine circuit that works out your legs and then goes through your whole body all the way to the end. So if you see that at the gym, just do that. Start with that. Done. You don’t even need a personal trainer. And then now you’ve just trained your whole body. Just keep coming back and doing the same thing.