How to Plan Your Workouts

How you organize your exercises during the workout makes a huge difference in what you get out of the workout. Should you run first? Should you stretch last? How long should you work out for? The answer to these questions is obvious when you know how to plan your workouts.

The Parts of a Workout

The workout is broken into three parts, the warm-up, workout itself, and stretch.

Warm-up

A common mistake that people make when working out is stretching before warming up. I used to do this myself. It was what was taught by my high school sports coaches. But it’s wrong.

When we stretch cold muscles we are potentially creating small tears in our muscles. These small tears may turn into larger tears and result in a noticeable injury. For this reason it is important to warm-up prior to stretching.

It’s actually OK to do your workout without stretching until afterward. According to the National Strength and Conditioning Association, stretching before a workout has no known positive impact on performance and may actually negatively impact performance.

You warm-up should last for about 10 minutes. Do light exercises such as jogging, jumping-jacks, or arm rotations. The goal is to warm-up the muscles that will be used for the workout.

A good warm-up will leave you with a light amount of sweat on your forehead. The warm-up should not be challenging.

Workout

The workout is the central event of your workout plan. Whereas the warm-up and stretch are more concerned with conditioning the muscles, the workout is where the real work happens.

Place your weight lifting exercises first in the workout. Of the weight lifting exercises you should begin with multi-joint exercises such as the back squat, bench press, and pull-up.

After your weight lifting exercises you will do your supplemental exercises. These are exercises such as the arm curl, leg curl, and calf raise. This is also a good time to do your core exercises.

Move on to cardio exercises once you have completed all of your weight lifting exercises. I prefer treadmill intervals of 20 seconds on followed by 10 seconds rest. You decide which cardio exercise works best for you.

Stretch

After your have completed your workout, finish with static stretches. Develop a stretching routine that stretches all of the muscles that were used during your workout. Avoid stretching any cold muscles. Exhale and move slowly into your stretches. Hold them for 30 seconds each.

Planning an Effective Workout

A good workout plan compliments the workout plans of the previous day and following day. It allows you to rest one muscle group while using another.

There is nothing wrong with having a standard warm-up and stretch regimen that you do when you work out. What is important is that you plan your exercises from day to day so that you give the muscle groups 48 hours to heal up.

For example, if you do squats on Monday, do not do any strength training on your legs on Tuesday. You are OK to resume leg strength training on Wednesday.

Plan your exercises in complementary pairs. When you do an exercise, do another exercise that works the muscles in the reverse direction. The best way to remember this is “push-pull.” For example if you do a pull-up, compliment it with an overhead press.

If you have any questions about planning a workout contact me at joshua.j.cormier@gmail.com or visit my website www.ErgaFit.com.

Josh Cormier is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist. He is the owner and chief personal trainer of ErgaFit personal training.