Today I wanted to give you all a few tips on how to create your workouts and gym programs.
Let’s start in the gym. It’s good to create a general rule of running a program for a minimum of 3 weeks, maximum of 6 before upgrading. Notice I say upgrading rather then changing, why?... because if you have set yourself a goal of getting your squat stronger for example you will need some form of squat in order to progress. You wouldn’t try to increase your speed over 250 meters on a rowing machine, then change from rowing to running after 4 weeks.
The first thing we all need to do is establish a goal. If that goal is overall strength I would target a minimum of 2 sessions a week with the main bulk of the workouts using compound exercises, why? you get more bang for your buck. Using compound exercises uses more muscles at once building more total strength and is more time efficient then doing single joint exercises. Your thinking squat and deadlift variation for lower body, pressing and pulling variation for upper. Lets use the examples of
Goblet squat
Kb deadlift
Db bench press
Pulldown neutral grip to start.
I would add a little core work and shoulder stability work for the assisting exercises but lets keep it simple for now, I can cover this in another post.
In a previous post I talked about the different progressions we can make in a gym, if you missed it do not fear, you can follow the link if you missed it. But lets quickly revisit those.
1 increase reps
2 increase sets
3 increase time under tension
4 decrease rest time
5 increase intensity or load in other words
6 increase the amount of sessions that you do in a week
You could add a 7th which would be to increase the complexity of an exercise. For example a back loaded squat is a progression of a goblet squat, even if the load is similar. For this post lets focus on points 1,2,5 and 7.
So lets say you have designed your workout and you set yourself a goal of getting to 12 reps on each exercise by week 4, start with a weight you can do for 8 and once you get to 12 you could move on to progression 2 which is adding a set and seeing if you can do 12 for that set as well. If not build up over the weeks until you get to 12 on the extra set, then you can up the weight.
Once you up the weight spend another 4-6 weeks upping the reps at the new weight, then you can change the complexity of some of the exercises and start the process again. Examples of changing the complexity of the exercises I previously mentioned are - goblet squat- bar box squat
-db bench-barbell bench press
-kb deadlift-straight bardeadlift
-neutral grip pulldown-wide grip pulldown.
Remember it doesn’t have to be exactly that, there a loaaaaads of variations so spending some time doing a little research on this is a really good use of time.
But back to the program design I have effectively given you around 16-24 weeks of programs using a really simple design and simple progressions, you don’t have to include loads of complex exercises and program formats, doing the basic movements patterns well, while steadily progressing them, often gets people the best results.
for exercise tips follow the link to my channel to the squat/deadlift tutorial and more
That’s it for now, see you next time.