How does one hack strength training?

1. Gym workouts require answers to a lot of questions. For example, how many sets should I do? One or three? How long should I rest between sets? What order should I perform the exercises in, free weights, machines? It's confusing and perhaps a little intimidating. 
2. If you haven't done any strength building exercise before even if you just do this once per week, you'll still be building strength. Because it all goes back to the hack that we discussed  earlier: "Something is better than nothing, while more of something is better". 
3. So that twice a week is better for you and three times a week is better still. At some point, the returns do diminish. The important thing is to set goals that are realistic and that you can do. 
4. Workouts should have four elements: an upper body, push exercise, a pull exercise, or core exercise and something for your legs. 
5. Push exercises work the chest or pectoral area on the back of the arms or the triceps. They help with any action in which we have to push something like a door or getting yourself out of a chair. 
6. Pull exercises build strengthen in the back muscles and everyone's favorite, the biceps. These exercises help you lift things off the ground or any activity if they requires a pulling motion. 
7. The core, describes our trunk muscles, the link between the upper and the lower body. We're weak as a whole if our core is weak. 
8. Finally and maybe most importantly, leg exercises benefit your quads, your gluts, and even your calves. Building strengthen your leg muscles helps you get yourself from a sitting position to climb stairs, to get in and out of a car. 
9. The squats  is the most important exercise to your functional movement and since arguably it's working more of your muscle tissue in the legs where 60 percent more of your muscle mass exists. 
10. Most Beginning strength trainers will get a great workout simply by performing what's known as air squats, which is a squat that simply uses your own body weight.
11. Many people particularly beginning exercisers will start to feel burning in their quads before they hit 10 reps. Do as many as you can do until you're exerting yourself to about an eight or nine out of 10. You'll be doing well if you can perform 20 or 25 air squats without a long stop. Keep your back straight as you go up and down. You can place less strain on your back by squatting onto something at a height that allows your thighs to sink parallel to the ground like a weight bench. Or if you're not in a gym, feel free to use whatever is available like a chair, a bed, or a couch. 
12. Next, you do a push or pull exercise -  push-ups or  inclined push-up. 
13. Do 20 repetitions before you're tired. Once this feels easy, try knee push-ups. Once you're able to do 25 knee push-ups, you can graduate to the standard push-up which sees you use your toes as the hinge. 
14. Now for the pull exercises, like the push, the pull  has a standard form that can be difficult for beginners. That's the pull-up or a chin up. But few beginning strength trainees can even do a single pull-up or chin up. It's something to aim for down the road just like the standard regular push-up. 
15. Once you feel stronger, another at-home body weight hack to exercise your pulling muscles, is to get yourself under a sturdy bar like this one and perform a reverse push-up using your arms to pull yourself up while keeping your body straight from your heels to your shoulders. The bar can be anything you like. 
16. The last of the important exercises is something that works the core. The contemporary standard is the plank which comes in all forms and difficulties. One of the best ways for beginners, is to get down on a soft surface. Using your knees as the fulcrum, raise yourself up on your elbows and forearms and hold it. Keep your body straight from your shoulders to your knees. Try to hold it for as long as you can, 20 seconds is a good start a minute is better. Once you can do more than that, consider increasing the difficulty by using your toes as the fulcrum coming into what we call a contemporary full plank. 
17. Now, how many sets of each exercise? At first, if you haven't ever resistance strain, you can feel great about yourself knowing you're getting a ton of benefit, even if you're just getting in one set.  Most of the training adaptation and health benefits happen as a result of the first set. Once you've gone through the workout several times in a row, consider adding sets until you're performing three sets of each exercise.