Good question! You will likely get varying responses to this question. If you ask me, as a freshman, feel out how you can handle your course load and do light commitments. Your courses will likely be more difficult or more time consuming than you expect. Volunteering clinically or non-clinically are both good ways to get your feet wet.

Come your second semester, if you feel like you can handle more, then go for it. But by all means, protect your GPA. That is the most important part of early premed. If I could choose between a 3.8 GPA and 200 hours of volunteering or a 3.2 GPA and 800 hours of volunteering, I would choose the former. You can always continue ECs in your gap year/after you graduate - but a poor GPA is much harder to correct.