What are the 3 most important factors to consider when putting together a workout?

Now that many of us have begun to wind down for Christmas, we may have decided to focus our efforts on the New Year and begin to plan about what workout routine we want to follow. For some of us, this may include creating our own for the first time! Of course, you could simply take a programme off the internet, however they are extremely broad and are not personalised to the individual.

If you have never created a programme for yourself, there are a few things you should consider before you create your plan:

1. Availability

The first thing to consider is how much time per week you can REALISTICALLY commit to exercise. We all like the idea of working out 6 times a week. Unfortunately, most people have full-time jobs, families and other commitments that might prevent them from keeping to this commitment. So, evaluate your schedule and identify an appropriate number of days a week to working out; I would suggest for you to actually commit to LESS days than what you think! It’s better for your morale to be able to commit to 3 days a week for a number of weeks before introducing a 4th day. If you schedule too many days and begin to miss workouts, you are setting yourself up for failure from the get go.

Also think about the actual days themselves. If you have kids, it’s likely you will be able to commit to weekends. Maybe you need to work out in the mornings or can’t do Thursdays because of another social commitment. Be sure to feed all of this into your plan.

2. Goals

Now that you have decided the number of days you are going to work out, now it’s time to think about what your actual goals are. Do you want to build strength? Or perhaps your focus is to pack on muscle? Or, you might just want to be healthier! Well, before you can begin understanding the content of each workout you need to decide what you want to achieve. Your goals will decide the types of exercise, the number of sets, the intensity, the number of reps etc. Your goals are your foundation of any workout.

3. Preference

No matter what, you need to enjoy your workout plan. If you are an experienced lifter, you may already know what exercises you prefer doing and which ones to stay away from. Include this in your thinking. Of course, there needs to be some flexibility and your preference should align with your goals! But there may be small things you may need want to include in your plan such as conditioning work after resistance training, or you enjoy including body weight movements. Definitely stick these into your plan!

4. Experience

Experience plays a huge part into your workout plan. If, in the past, you are used to training 2 days a week and you suddenly double this to 4 times a week then you are at serious risk of overtraining. Or maybe you’ve never squatted more than once a week? It may be a bad idea to begin squatting 3 times a week at a high intensity. Don’t throw yourself into an advanced program full of complicated variations of lifts, or super high volume like pro-bodybuilders if you know you’ve been training for 6 months; programme based on your experience!

5. Injuries

Finally, considering injuries is something I have had to personally do the past 3 months. It seems pretty obvious but there’s no point in scheduling heavy squats into your leg days if you have on-going knee issues. Or maybe your shoulder twinges during dumbbell presses? Don’t include anything into your plan that is going to further aggravate any injuries. There may even be a time where you need to not only working around the injury, but actually program around rehabbing the injury. Perhaps, 50% of your workout will be focused on rehab exercises, stretching and mobility work.

Injuries are a show stopper- at least they can be. Don’t try to ignore that they exist in your workout plans otherwise you WILL make them work. Be smart and ensure you give acknowledge your injury and programme accordingly.

Hopefully, these 5 considerations will help you become more mindful when planning your workouts for the New Year! Remember, consistency is the key here. A plan that is only 50% optimal but followed consistently 100% is better than a plan that is 100% optimal but only followed 50% of the time!

Thank you SO much for reading this article❤️Please continue to follow my journey and be sure to hit that clap button👏

Whenever I talk to people about their exercise routines, inevitably, they tell me what exercises they are doing. What most people don’t realize is that exercise selection is actually only the fourth most important variable in exercise program design.

What? The actual exercises are not that important in an exercise program? Yep, you heard me right. Exercise selection isn’t that important.

The single most important variable is your progression model. After that, it’s intensity. After that, it’s volume. And only the fourth most important variable is the exercises themselves.

Original source: here.

What do I mean by all that? What does “progression model”, “intensity” and “volume” all mean? That’s what we’ll cover in this article – essentially – what factors should be considered when designing a personal fitness program and why. This is for you whether you’re designing your own programs, or if you’re a personal trainer, designing for clients. And if you want to just skip all the theory, and have a proper program designed for you, feel free to fill out this questionnaire, to see if you qualify to work with us.

Progression Model

Above all other variables, this one is king. Because exercise should be progressive. You may be a complete beginner right now, but the body responds to exercise consistently, predictably, and if you’re a beginner, quickly (within 1-3 days). So yes, you can get stronger literally workout-to-workout at first (your first 1-3 months of exercise).

And if you do the exact same sets, repetitions and weights after 2 weeks of starting a program, you are shortchanging your results.

A person with all the wrong exercises, but with an appropriate progression will make far better progress than another person with all the right exercises, but no progression. Of course, ideally, we have both: proper progression, and correct exercises.

What are different ways to make progress? The most obvious is to increase the repetitions, or increase the weight. But there are other methods of progression:

1. Increase the number of sets
2. Decrease the rest periods in between sets/exercises
3. Use more complex exercises
4. Do the reps faster
5. Do the reps slower (yes, both faster and slower are progressions for different reasons)
6. Use a greater range of motion

And different progressions will have different physiological effects on the body. Here’s how they break down:

• Increasing weights increases strength
• Increasing reps increases muscular endurance
• Increasing sets also increases muscular endurance
• Decreasing the rest periods between sets/exercises increases cardiovascular endurance
• Using more complex exercises improves coordination
• Doing the reps faster increases speed and power
• Doing the reps slower increases muscular endurance
• Increasing range of motion increases flexibility

As you can tell, selecting a proper progression model takes some thought and consideration in terms of what you want to improve. And if you’re looking at the above list like a menu, and thinking “I want everything” (strength, endurance, coordination, power, flexibility, etc.), you’ll get nowhere. I would just pick your 1-2 top priorities, and stick with those progressions.

For our fat loss clients, here’s a typical progression that I might use for a hypothetical exercise:

Workout 1: 10 pounds, 15 reps

Workout 2: 10 pounds, 16 reps

Workout 3: 10 pounds, 17 reps

Workout 4: 10 pounds, 18 reps

Workout 5: 10 pounds, 19 reps

Workout 6: 10 pounds, 20 reps

Workout 7: 12 pounds, 15 reps

Workout 8: 12 pounds, 16 reps

…you get the idea.

And that may be a typical fat loss progression. But I want to point out 2 things:

1. This is typical. You specifically may not be typical.
2. This is our progression for fat loss. If your goals don’t include fat loss, a different progression may be more appropriate.

Intensity

When I refer to intensity, I don’t necessarily mean effort. The sport science definition of intensity is the percentage of your maximum strength that you’re working at. That is, if the most amount of weight you can lift for 1 repetition is 100 pounds, 80 pounds represents 80% intensity. 50 pounds represents 50% intensity. You get the idea.

Intensity is the second most important variable when it comes to exercise program design, because it has the second biggest impact on your results. Additionally, intensity will influence your decision for variables lower down on the priority scale. For example, if you select 90% intensity, you know your volume (which will be explained in the next section) will need to be lower than if you selected 50% intensity. At 90% intensity, you may only be able to do 2-5 reps. At 50% intensity, you might do over 30.

And different goals necessitate different intensities.

• If your goal is strength and power, you may want to use 80% intensity or higher
• If your goal is toning, and muscle mass, you may want to use about 60-80%
• If your goal is muscular endurance, you may want to use less than 70% intensity (yes, there’s overlap with muscle mass)

Volume

The sport science definition of volume is sets x reps x weight. So if you’re doing 3 sets of 10 reps, with 100 pounds, your volume is 3000 pounds for that exercise.

But in conventional gym lingo, the weight is taken out, and volume just refers to sets and reps.

Volume has the third biggest impact on your results.

Basically, after having selected the appropriate progression, and the intensity, volume just falls into place. In a nutshell, you can’t do many reps at a high intensity, so intensity and volume are inversely related. That is, the higher the intensity, the lower the volume.

• If the intensity you selected was 80% or higher, you might do that for maybe 3 sets of 3, or 5 sets of 5, or somewhere in between, but you likely wouldn’t be able to exceed 5-6 reps per set, because the weight is just too heavy.
• If the intensity you selected was 60-80%, you could probably do 6-20 reps per set. So your volume would be higher.
• If the volume you selected was under 60%, you could probably do 20 or more reps per set, so your volume has the potential to be high.

Exercise Selection

Finally comes the least important part of a program: the actual exercises. The exercises simply determine which muscle is working. You can stress different parts of a muscle, but that’s basically it.

Just look at the material above. If all you know is which exercises a person is doing, you don’t know:

• Whether they are working on strength, endurance, flexibility or power
• Whether they are going to make progress
• Whether they have sufficient volume and intensity to reach their goals

…and more.

Of course, that’s not to say that exercise selection is not important – it is, but it’s not the single most important variable.

As you can tell, there’s quite a bit to exercise programming, so hopefully this article helps you put together your own programs. But if you want it done by a professional, so you don’t wonder whether you’re doing it right or not, feel free to fill out this form to see if you qualify to work with us.

When designing a resistance training program for either yourself or clients, there are many considerations that need be taken into account before you hit the gym. Broadly speaking, there are three key components to program design: Environmental factors, needs analysis and program variables/training guidelines. It’s important to identify and consider the elements involved in each of the components to ensure for an effective training session and overall program.

Let’s take a closer look at these components:

Environmental Factors:

This includes external factors such as equipment availability, time of day, time available to train and number of participants. While these might seem like obvious considerations, they are important as they will have an impact on what types of exercises you can include in your program and how many exercises you can perform.

Needs Analysis:

A needs analysis is a way to gather specific information about your client to allow for an individualised program to be created. If you are creating a program for yourself, a needs analysis is still important and will help you select the appropriate exercises, sets and reps to meet your fitness goals. The information that should be considered in the needs analysis includes:

• Goals
• Age
• Gender
• Experience/Fitness level
• Injuries/Health factors

Program Variables/Training Guidelines:

After determining what environmental factors exist and analysing the internal influences involved, the process of actually writing the exercise program can begin. This process can be broken down into the following:

It is important to balance out development of all muscle groups, and as a general rule programs should consist of exercises that include legs, upper body push, upper body pull and core. It is also recommended to make the exercises ‘functional’, which means they assist in preparing the body for everyday activities.

Train larger muscles first, and then move to smaller muscles. This will see compound exercises performed at the beginning of the session and isolated exercises toward the end.

There should be an inverse relationship between weight and the number of repetitions. That is, as the weight increases, the number of reps should decrease, and vice versa. Specific training goals are also important to consider, e.g. 1-6 reps for power and strength goals, 8-12 reps for general strength and 15+ reps for endurance.

Rate of perceived exertion (RPE) is a self-quantified measure of intensity for an activity and should be used to understand load.

There should be an inverse relationship between the number of sets and repetitions. That is, a lower number of repetitions should be combined with a higher number of sets, and vice versa. Similarly to number of repetitions, training goals are important to consider when programming how many sets to complete.

Rest time will depend on both training goals and fitness levels. For power and maximal strength goals, longer periods of rest should be taken (3-10 minutes), for general strength between 30 seconds – 2 minutes and for beginners anywhere between 1 and 2 minutes.  To minimise the down time between sets you can alternate exercises for different parts of the body, for example, a set of for the legs immediately followed by an upper body exercise.

If you would like to learn more about exercise prescription and programming, check out our Cert III & IV in Fitness and expand your knowledge in this area as well as much more!

What are 3 things to consider when creating a workout plan?

What are 3 things that you should consider before you begin to exercise?

What are the 3 main parts of a workout?

What is the 3 important of exercise?