Your first three months with a female coach

For many women starting out, the hard part is not the exercise but the setting: feeling watched, unsure what to wear, not knowing how a machine adjusts. A female coach in a women-only section takes much of that away, so early sessions can go on learning instead of on self-consciousness. You can also ask the questions you might not put to a man, about clothing, the menstrual cycle or how soon after a birth you can return.

How to book one of RPM's female coaches is on the female personal trainer page. Below is what the first three months with one can look like.

• Two coached sessions a week, often shorter than you expect, so you leave wanting more.
• A tour of the section with your coach: where to change, where the water is, which machines you will use.
• Machine set-ups on a leg press, chest press and pulldown, with each seat and pin setting written down for you.
• Bodyweight moves such as a glute bridge, a step-up onto a low box and a push-up with hands on a bench.
• A few minutes on a bike or cross-trainer to warm up, which you will soon do without being told.

By the end of the month you should be able to arrive, change and start your warm-up without help. WHO's 2020 guidelines advise adults who are starting out to begin with small amounts of activity and build up gradually, so a gentle first month is the plan working, not a slow start.

• Dumbbells and kettlebells join the plan: a kettlebell deadlift from a raised block, a one-arm dumbbell row with a hand on the bench, a split squat holding a support, a carry across the floor.
• One coached session and one session alone from a written card, which meets WHO's advice of muscle-strengthening work on two or more days a week.
• Your own log begins, on your phone or on paper, and the coach reads it at the start of each session.
• The first small weight increases, made only when the last reps look as tidy as the first.
• A taste of something else in the section if you are curious, such as a reformer class in the Pilates studio.

• One coached session a week, plus one or two on your own.
• You lead the warm-up and choose the starting weight from your log. The coach watches and steps in only when needed.
• A short retest of the movements from month two, so you can see on paper how far you have come.
• A conversation about what comes next: another coached block, coaching every few weeks, adding classes, or training alone.

A primary teacher who had never trained starts in early September. She books two coached sessions a week, on Sunday and Tuesday after school, because those days have no clubs or meetings. Month one goes to plan, and by October she sets up her machines alone.

Mid-October brings parents' evenings. Her coach keeps the Sunday session and gives her a twenty-minute card for Tuesday, which she manages twice in three weeks. In November she is confident with dumbbells and starts training alone on Tuesdays. Over the winter break she travels, so the coach writes a short bodyweight card. In January she repeats the final week of month two before moving on, rather than picking up where she left off.

Nothing about her term was unusual. What kept it going was a coach who bent the plan around school life instead of starting again each time.

• You can find, set up and use five or six pieces of kit without asking.
• You walked into the section at a busy hour and got on with your session.
• You added weight to an exercise because your log said so, not because someone told you.
• You completed a whole session alone from the card.
• You can say in a sentence why each exercise is in your plan.

Ticking most of these by the end of month three is common, but not universal. If it takes you five months, the plan is still working.

RPM's Ladies section is reserved for women and has its own strength and cardio equipment and the Pilates studio. For a beginner's strength start, Coach Maria, the section's strength and conditioning coach, is the obvious first contact. Giana Suleiman Daqnoush is listed for Pilates and aerobic sessions, Imen Hasnaoui for combat and self-defence, and Asma Jamousi Zadeh for HYROX-style training. Group classes run in both sections on a timetable that changes, so ask the team what is on.

Confirm that your tier covers the Ladies section. Engine adds coached programming and Atelier is organised around one-to-one coaching, with prices shared on enquiry. A free guided tour shows you the section before you commit. For a beginner's plan without the women-only angle, personal training for gym beginners sets out the stages week by week.