I am a teen girl, 5’6", 116 pounds. I just got through a major surgery that left me bedridden for a few months, and ever since I have felt extremely weak. Does anyone know how I can gain more muscle, get back to exercise, and start feeling healthier again without going overboard and hurting myself? Any advice appreciated. Thanks!!
Hello and welcome! There are 3 easy things you can do to start your journey into fitness and getting your strength back.
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Start Slow: Body weight movements are your friends early to build foundational strength. Think bodyweight squats, push ups (on knees if needed), and planks to name a few. Remember to focus on form.
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Daily Activity: Low Impact Steady State (LISS) is your friend! Go on a walk with you parents or a friend. Start light with 15-20 minutes daily. Progress into longer walks, around 30 minutes.
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Fuel Your Body: Ensure adequate intake of nutritious foods, particularly iron and calcium, to support bone health and energy levels. Food is also incredibly important for recovery!
Congratulations on your recovery. I hope this helps get you back on your feet and feeling stronger.
Yes to everything that @taylortooswift said.
My advice to you as a female is make sure you are fueling enough. It can be particularly difficult for females to properly fuel due to societal pressure. Eat good food (meat, eggs, fruit, potatoes, oats etc.) and be sure to eat plenty of it. If you don’t give your body enough nutritious fuel you won’t be able to build.
Body weights and walking should be plenty to get you started.
Good luck on your journey! This place is a pretty good resource for assistance as you move forward.
Have you been medically approved to resume physical activity?
Might be prudent to clarify what was the surgery for . Was it for a injury or dealing with a chronic condition.
What do you like doing, or would like to see yourself doing? Finding some enjoyment in the process is pretty key.
Also @QuadQueen for a potentially delicate nutrition situation
1000000% agree
This is gold here. You Are Your Own Gym is a really good book I used to run during my college summers since I didn’t have access to a gym. There’s stuff in there your grandma could do and there’s stuff in there high level powerlifters would struggle with.
Some more details could be useful here. Namely age (13 vs 19 would change some things), athletic background, and most importantly what have you been cleared for medically? Hard to give clear guidance if we don’t know what kind of state you’re currently in.
Some general guidelines though:
- train movements. There are 7 you should care about. Horizontal push, vertical push, horizontal pull, vertical pull, squat, hinge, lunge
- You can train all of these with a variety of tools. Barbells, bodyweight, DBs, KBs, various machines.
- a general list that may be useful, presented in a somewhat beginner to advanced
- Horizontal push: Pushups. Dips. Machine chest press. Db bench press. Barbell bench press.
- Vertical push: handstand push ups. KB overhead press. Machine overhead press. Db overhead press. Barbell overhead press.
- Horizontal pull: ring rows, cable rows, db rows, barbell rows
- Vertical pull: pull-ups, chin ups, lat pulldowns, various machines
- Squat: BW squat, goblet squat, pendulum squat, hack squat, barbell squat
- Lunge: walking lunge, Bulgarian split squat, step ups, various front foot elevated various
- Hinge: DB RDL, barbell RDL, good mornings, 45 degree back raise, deadlift
This is not all encompassing. Nor should you spend a lifetime ONLY training these movements. But they should make up the bulk of your training.
Depending on your status, I’d probably start things out by training you as a total beginner. In that case, my recommendation is to train Full Body, 3x a week.
I would pick one exercise from each movement category. Personally, I’d suggest the easier ones I recommended, as you can train them easier without worrying about learning more difficult technique. I would go to the gym, and lift the weights for 3 sets of 8. Use some lighter weights as you warm up. Then keep the same weight for all 3 sets of 8. Focus on controlling each rep, try to think of this as “practicing strength.” Try to add weight to each exercise as often as you can. Never add more than 5lbs at once. You may feel like you could add more, but trust me that just continually adding 5lbs will catch up to you faster than you think.
I would end each workout with 20-30 minutes of cardio. You don’t have to run 5 miles, Incline treadmill walking, stair master, or the bike are all fine, just make sure you get your heart rate up a bit.
An example plan would be going in and doing:
- goblet squat: 3x8
- DB RDL: 3x8
- Walking Lunge: 3x8
- Machine press: 3x8
- Cable row: 3x8
- Seated DB press: 3x8
- Lat pulldown: 3x8
And then repeating this 3x a week.
(Note, the reps don’t really matter. Say instead of 3x8 you wanted to do 3x10, or 3x6, or 4x6, whatever. It’s fine. Just pick something and stick with it so you have a baseline to compare too, you can worry about rep schemes later on a more conclusive program)
Follow this 3x a week full body plan for at least 12 weeks. At that point, if you were consistent, you’ve likely added some strength, maybe some size, and gotten your body just in general used to physical training multiple times a week. These 12 weeks aren’t making you an Olympian or anything. What they are doing is building a base of General Physical Preparedness that will allow you to move onto move structure, challenging programs.
At that point, there are so many good options that it’s sort of just up to what interests you. 531, Tactical barbell, juggernaut, cube method. Or heck, CrossFit, hyrox, obstacle course training, lot of different options you can do.
And listen to everything @QuadQueen says lol
Hey sweetie! I don’t have a ton of time to put together a super long answer for you right now, and there is a ton of great advice here already. Before you start anything though, please make sure that your surgeon and/or doctor know what you are planning to do. Before I make any specific nutrition recommendations for you, I’d like to know a bit more about your background before your surgery in terms of diet, weight status and exercise routine. Also, if you’re willing to let us know what type of surgery you had and where you’re at in the recovery process, that would be super helpful. I don’t want to super overwhelm you or trigger an unhealthy food/exercise obsession with any advice that I give and I don’t want you to feel awkward or embarrassed about sharing all the details here if you aren’t comfortable with that.
Other pieces of information that would be helpful for me to help you with the food stuff (I’m a dietitian!) would be a detailed food journal (at least 3 days worth), what your eating/weight and activity levels were prior to the surgery, and what your specific goals are in terms of muscle/weight gain are.
If you’re not comfortable getting into all of that here, let me know and I will give you my email address and we can connect that way or talk on the phone. Know that I and this entire community are here to help and support you however we can. Just let us know where you’re at and what you need! 
Depending on where you’re starting from, any activity upright on your feet will help you gain muscle and bone density.
Don’t expect it to come back as quickly as it went. Being bedridden or in a weightless environment like space is devastating for muscle mass, and it takes a surprisingly long time to recover. You have an advantage being young. Be patient!
Another drive by… i guess.
I like to think she has just taken the advice given and is putting it to good use.
Had a friend in college ask me to write her a lifting plan. She had never lifted before, so I wrote her a super basic 3x a week full body deal.
3 years later, we were stationed together, and I ended up renting out a spare bedroom to her. She asked if she could use my home gym, then asked if she should update her lifting plan at all. I asked her what she was doing, and this gal had been faithfully following my beginner program for 3 years! I felt kind of bad about it haha, but god damn could she crush some goblet squats by that point