5 Week Functional Fitness Program for Beginners

If you’re like me you’ll know that starting any new workout program can be very difficult, unless you have a simple, executable plan. This is that plan. Inside you will find 30 days worth of workouts, nutrition advice, and other key information that will help you kick off your fitness journey. We’ve included free PDFs and loads of great resources, enjoy!

Goals of the 5 Week Functional Fitness Program for Beginners

This plan is designed first and foremost for someone new to functional fitness who for whatever reason does not have access to a functional fitness gym and coach. You might live in an area of the world where there are no local gyms, or you might be on a tight budget. The reasons don’t matter.

What does matter is that you have all the resources you need to begin your functional fitness journey. In an ideal situation you would have a knowledgeable coach and a great gym to work out of, but that didn’t happen for me for the first 6 years of my functional fitness journey so, strictly speaking it isn’t a requirement. I just happen to think it is an easier path.

First let’s review the goals of this program

Program Goals

• Become Accustomed to High Intensity Workouts
• Build Muscle
• Start Your Fat Loss Journey
• Increase Work Capacity

This may seem like quite a lot, but I promise as a newer athlete you will accomplish much more in the first few months of your journey than I will in the rest of mine.

When you are new to an endeavor the initial starting period is where you make the most rapid growth. I have seen new athletes walk into my gym, barely able to perform a back squat, and within a month or two they are squatting their bodyweight for reps!

Statistically that is a bajillion percent increase (disclaimer I don’t math good). Sorry, I meant to say goodly.

Before we get into the specifics of the program I first want to cover some extremely common myths and beliefs that hold athletes back when they first start working out.

Functional Fitness Myths

The one I hear the most, at least from female athletes, is that they don’t want to be “too bulky.” I can understand the sentiment, but that is a fundamental misunderstanding comparing the functional fitness athletes they see on TV to what the average athlete does.

Myth 1: Too Bulky

Your average box goer works out 3-4 times a week, eats fairly healthily and sometimes goes a bit crazy on the weekends. They look pretty good and have made great progress from where they started.

A functional fitness athlete looks like they are carved from stone. They workout roughly 2-3 hours per day, and spend another 4-6 hours per day planning their meals, working on mobility, and other fitness related tasks.

There is nothing wrong with being either person, but one of them puts in much more effort than the other, and that is why they look so muscular. You can’t accidentally look like them with a normal amount of functional fitness.

Myth 2: You Have to Follow a Crazy Diet

This isn’t true, but athletes tend to be extremists. If a little is good then a lot is better. Here’s a secret most folks won’t tell you. All diets work. Some work better for certain folks but you can gain or lose mass with any diet with enough work.

As a new athlete, I recommend that you don’t try to add in a new diet, and a new exercise plan all at once. Becoming more healthy is all about sustainable lifestyle changes, not doing everything at once!

I will provide more concrete diet advice further below, but for right now I want you to focus on coming into the gym consistently and limiting the worst food choices. Stay away from the ice cream, donuts, or very high caloric foods.

Myth 3: I’m Going to Get Injured

I’ll tell you the truth. Given a long enough timeline and enough intensity you will get hurt doing functional fitness as you will in any worthwhile physical endeavor. This is true of jogging, bodybuilding, and power lifting etc.

For smart athletes the vast majority of “injuries” are strained muscles or a bit of tendonitis. These are remedied with a bit of rest, and relaxation.

I’ve been doing this for over a decade and I’ve seen thousands of athletes participate in functional fitness. I think I’ve probably witnessed three or four legitimate injuries where the athlete was using good form and they just ran into some bad luck that required surgery.

It is much more common for me to see someone not listening to their coach, doing something they are not ready for, and then incur a minor injury. The key to keeping these types of injuries minor is to take some time off and not go back to the gym as soon as you feel ok.

Pay attention because this is important. You should continue to work around your injury, doing what you can to not aggravate it. You should then take the amount of time it took your body to feel ok out of the gym, and double it before you start to stress that body part out with hard direct work again.

In the end be smart. If it hurts don’t keep pushing it!

Now that we’ve gone over some basics. Let’s get into the program.

The 5 Week Functional Fitness Program for Beginners

This program assumes that you have some understanding of the basic lifts, if you don’t thats ok, I’ll provide you with some resources further down to help you work on your technique.

Here is the link to the Free PDF for the 5 Week Functional Fitness Program for Beginners.

Week 1

This program is designed to be done three days per week. In my experience this is the ideal frequency for someone new to functional fitness, or someone new to fitness as a whole.

I promise you will be very sore, and this type of work is going to tax your body. You need time to recover. I normally tell new athletes that if they can get through the first 2-3 weeks then they stop feeling quite as sore because their body is adapting to the new workouts.

Don’t be intimidated if you don’t know all the terms. This website has done a pretty good job of explaining them, and there are tons more like it. Ask google if the terminology is getting to you.

Week 2

These workouts are going to feel very rough. Most of them will take you 10-20min in length. Think of them just like running. You wouldn’t take off on a sprint to run a 5k would you? Then don’t go out of the gates crazy during these workouts. You’ll find a more measured pace allows you to do much better overall.

Week 3

By now you are feeling a little more accustomed to this type of functional fitness workout. You should understand that these workouts are written for someone with ok technique who is familiar with most of these moves.

If that’s not you it’s ok. You will need to modify or “scale” the workout to what you can do, either with the weight, total reps, or movement. You’ll have to do a bit of research on the appropriate scale, but Youtube should be helpful here.

Week 4

It’s ok if you don’t have every bit of equipment as well. This program isn’t super equipment intensive and can be done in most regular gyms without much modification or need to monopolize tons of equipment.

Don’t stress if your modifications are “correct.” Remember the goal at the end of the day is to get a good workout, and if you did that then you’ve succeeded.

Week 5

This is our last week, and it is a little more intense then you’ve seen previously. You should feel proud of yourself for getting through this week as most people don’t have the gumption to stick out a program this far.

If you want a little more of a challenge, focusing on muscular growth then check this program out!

Resources for New Athletes

Any experienced athlete will be able to tell you that a good program is a great place to start your fitness journey, but it isn’t enough. You need to have some knowledge of diet and recovery practices.

5 Week Beginner Program Video

Nutrition for New Athletes

As I said above I don’t want you starting some crazy new diet, with your crazy new fitness program. You need to work on creating habits more so than doing the optimal program.

You can also read this article that covers the basics of nutrition for athletes. It will explain what calories and macros actually are, and give you some great in depth nutrition info.

If you like fitness programs and want to get our 3 free training guides, then  click here to join the Tier Three Team. It’s totally free, and thousands have already received their strength programming, fat loss, and their bonus guide.

Self Coaching for Functional Fitness

This is an area I struggle with the most. I’m by trade a functional fitness coach and I know just how hard it can be to get athletes moving correctly and safely when I’m there watching them. It can be very difficult to try and coach yourself but it is possible.

I recommend following Catalyst Athletics on Youtube. They focus on olympic lifting: clean, power clean, snatch etc. These are complex movements and you will need to pay close attention here.

I recommend using your phone to record yourself performing these movements. This will allow you to compare yourself with what you are seeing these athletes do, and make corrections.

Google, and Youtube will be your friend here!

Final Thoughts

This can be a lot to take in, but don’t sweat it. Anything can look hard when you look at it in it’s entirety, but once you start to break it down into daily and hourly chunks, it is much more manageable.

Now get out there and get in the gym and remember if you have any questions put them in the comments section where I can respond the fastest.

If you want to learn more about programming, and functional fitness check out my 125 page ebook!

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