It can be difficult for a beginner to do a full workout when it feels like every action is new and your body gets tired before you know what went wrong. This is where drills can help. Drills are mini-movements that focus on a specific part of an exercise so that you are actually aware of what is happening to your body. If a deep squat feels too tough, do chair squats or work on standing from the chair with good control. A floor push-up may be too challenging; instead, try a wall push-up and hold a short plank. Breaking exercise down into drills is not like making your practice easier, it is more like making your practice clearer.
A common mistake of beginning lifters is to feel that only full repetitions of an exercise are worth doing, which leads them into doing harder versions of the movement too soon. This approach usually results in poor form, and often ends in frustration or the feeling that you are backsliding in strength training. If the movement falls apart halfway, it is telling you something: It is telling you where the movement loses quality. A squat feels unstable? Try a pause squat while holding onto the chair. A hinge hurts your lower back? Practice hip hinges while slowly lowering your bodyweight against a wall to learn how to travel through the hips. A plank that turns into your head and neck? Practice shorter time holds while slowing your breathing. Do not work harder. Isolate the part of the exercise that is not going well and train that part until it is not new.
Drills are most effective when each drill has a specific purpose. If working on lower body strength, choose one drill for position and one for control: A chair squat teaches how to sit back properly and avoid falling down; a slow tempo squat that focuses on slowly lowering for three seconds teaches you how to balance your body while moving the knees. Trying to push through wall push-ups? A slow wall push-up teaches alignment and a wall push-up that includes a slow shoulder tap teaches you to keep your body in one line without moving side to side. Drills are great because you can repeat the drill and get feedback without doing the movements you aren’t ready to do.
You only need about fifteen minutes of practice to see results from drills: Spend three minutes warming up with light marching in place, arm circles, and a couple of easy bodyweight hinges or supported squats. Choose two exercises in one movement and do several easy sets; keep reps low so that form is consistent. The idea is not to get tired; the idea is to determine if your second round felt more smooth than your first. At the end of your practice, try doing one to two reps of the actual movement and note whether it feels any different from when you started your practice. Often the difference is very slight; you may notice your feet staying grounded with more ease, your core feeling stronger, or your breathing slowing down when you push.
You can make things even more manageable by focusing your attention further, so do not decide if a drill or workout went well or poorly, ask yourself if you noticed one small detail improve. Did your knee tracking get more even in your squat? Did your shoulder blades relax during the push-up? Was your lowering a bit slower in your exercise? If you do not have a video to watch or to check, or a fitness partner who can provide feedback, you may be able to use your own feeling of success for this. It is not about getting feedback, it is about finding one good signal and making it the focus of your next session.
When fitness stops being such an intimidating task because every exercise is an achievement, drills can take you out of the “do or don’t” mode. Drills make mistakes easier to learn by not letting a mistake become everything. You can slow your mind, do smaller reps, and make the full exercise start at home rather than being forced on the outside in front of an audience. For the beginner, this makes a huge difference: The sessions stop being chaotic, have focus, and feel like they can be improved, and even challenging movements can be learned, because you aren’t doing the whole thing right away.
