A workout plan is one that helps you achieve your fitness goals through a consistent effort in training. Ideally, you’d want to be consistent on weekly basis where results are gradually evident.
Your body weight fluctuates on a daily basis and this is something that comes with how you train too. When you’re lifting heavy weights, you build muscle and this can add weight. When you’ve had a high cardio day trying to lose fat, your body will lose a lot of water and some muscle which will make you lose a bit of weight.
A personal trainer comes with their benefits because they will always help in holding you accountable. A great difference in ensuring you actually go to gym or exercise at all, because you will not be driven all the time.
It is important to equip yourself with what works for you, your body and your schedule. You’ve got no one to blame, but yourself and you don’t want to let yourself down now, do you? Especially after putting all the effort to make yourself a workout plan.
Step 1 Warm Up (5-15 minutes):
Before you start working out, you must warm up to get the blood flowing through your body, enable flexibility and mobility for the exercises that you will be doing.
Your warm up must be long enough for you to get warm, usually between 5 and 15 minutes . Stretch, activate the muscles that you will be training and ensure that you move enough to get warm.
I always do a full body warm up no matter what I am training, that way, your body will be activated for any challenges that occur during your workout that affect the whole body. This will also ensure that you will be recovering from previous sessions that you had done, you hadn’t recovered from yet.
Step 2 Main Exercise (1-2):
The main exercise is the one which sets the tone for the rest of the workout. There should be at least one or two that you do for the session and it is usually a compound exercise working the major muscle group of the session and minor muscles.
Exercises like bench press for chest, squats or deadlift for legs, military press for shoulders and bent over rows for back. The next freebie will be involving these exercises as core exercises for strength training program.
Step 3 Accessory Exercises (3-5):
These are more concentrated exercises that focus on the muscle group that you plan to workout on the day. Since they are the focus on the session, look to incorporate between 3 to 5 exercises that will ensure you sufficiently activate and work them out.
Step 4 Finisher (1-3):
The finisher is the part of the workout that will ensure that you do better with the following workouts of the same and other muscle groups.
You can go into strengthening your core with core exercises, increase your metabolic rate with a short high intensity workouts (HIIT) or just cool down with a walk or light jog and stretch your muscles, specifically the ones you’ve trained. You can do one to three of these finishers to ensure that you will be at your best in the next workout.
What Are Your Fitness Goals And How They Affect Your Workout Plan
You must be able to easily identify your goals and be able to measure the progress towards them in a specific time period. This ensures that you’re training with intention to prevent boredom and lack of progress.
Simple fitness goals must be achievable, meaning that you can mark them off as completed and you can look back, be proud and driven to do more.
You may want to lose fat and get lean or you’re trying to build muscle. These goals require completely different approaches with fat loss requiring you to be in a calorie deficit (eating less calories than you burn) and building major muscle requires you to be in a calorie surplus (consuming more calories than you burn).
Workout Plan for Fat Loss vs Muscle Gain
Fat loss may require you to increase the intensity of your workouts, this will ensure that you burn more calories. Fat loss may also require you to do a bit more cardio that will be more intense.
Muscle building will be a slightly different approach as you’re trying to ensure that majority of the calories that you consume go into fueling the muscles that you’re trying to build, lifting heavy weights. This will need you to save majority of your energy just for that. The cardio may still be there, but with a more slow and steady approach if you want lean muscle growth.
The exercises may not change, but the way you perform each of them will be different and the order in which your workouts are done will also be different.
Your goals don’t have to be about fat loss or muscle gain either and this is an important point. There are greater goals than that, such as just being happy about your body and working out because you want to show it more love than before.
It is important that you identify and maintain goals that are achievable and sustainable. This means that 10 years from now you should still be reaping the rewards of the decisions and actions that you took towards your health and fitness now.
When Do You Need A Personal Trainer?
A personal trainer is someone that trains you in-person or online through the knowledge and experience that they have gained in months and years. They have the ability to assess your starting point to get you where you want to be in health and fitness.
They become the difference you need when you don’t have time to do the research and planning on your own. You may not be driven enough to follow a plan on your own. Maybe you just need someone more qualified than you who will help you bridge the gap that you have been trying to for the longest time.
The energy and help you need to achieve your fitness goals faster than you would’ve alone. I am on the journey of completing my personal training course and would love to help you achieve, please feel free to email me – oyisa@fitnessastradition.com or subscribe to the FAT Community to receive exclusive content that will help you achieve your goals!
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