Try the defaults until you get the basics. Look at the help file what you can do and what you need. After that you may want to implement seamless navigation between tmux panes and vim splits[0]. It really isn't a must but hey, it is very convenient for starters since they don't have any muscle memory for switching different splits.

After that maybe try to do same with AwesomeWM and that would be the ultimate navigation setup.

[0] https://github.com/christoomey/vim-tmux-navigator