How To Build Your Own Workout Routine
What should I do for a workout?
I get this email at least once a day, and I’m sorry to say that I don’t have the perfect answer for everybody. Considering that a program should be developed around a person’s biology, age, goals, diet, free time, etc, there’s a lot of factors I can’t get in ten minutes through email.
I can certainly offer up suggestions, but there’s one person that knows what’s best for you: YOU. Developing a workout routine for yourself can be scary, but it’s really not too difficult and kind of fun once you understand the basics.
First of all, what are you doing now. Is it working? Are you safe and is it making you healthier? If so, keep doing it! However, if you’re JUST getting started, you want to mix things up, or you’re ready to start lifting weights (after reading that weight training is the fat-burning prize fight victor), it’s good to understand what goes into a program so you can build one for yourself.
Let’s do this.
Determine Your Situation
How much time can you devote to exercise?
If you can do an hour a day, that’s awesome. If you have a wife, three kids, and two jobs, then maybe you can only do thirty minutes every other day. That’s fine too. Whatever your time commitment is, developing the most efficient workout is crucial. Why spend two hours in a gym when you can get just as much accomplished in 30 minutes?
Where will you work out? At a gym? Using some weights at home? Just body weight exercises?
What Exercises Should I Do?
Keep it simple, stupid.
Unless you’ve been lifting weights for years, I recommend doing a full body routine that you can do two or three times a week. You want a routine that has at least one exercise for your quads (front of your legs), butt and hamstrings (back of your legs), your push muscles, your pull muscles, and your core. Yes, this means you can develop a full body routine that uses only four or five exercises. Hows THAT for efficient?
- Quads – squats, lunges, one legged squats, box jumps.
- Butt and Hamstrings – hip raises, deadlifts, straight leg deadlifts, good mornings, step ups.
- Push (chest, shoulders, and triceps) – overhead press, bench press, incline dumbbell press, push ups, dips.
- Pull (back, biceps, and forearms) – chin ups, pull ups, inverse body weight rows, dumbbell rows.
- Core (abs and lower back) – planks, side planks, exercise ball crunches, mountain climbers, jumping knee tucks, hanging leg raises.
Pick one exercise from each category above for a workout, and you’ll work almost every single muscle in your body. These are just a few examples for what you can do, but you really don’t need to make things more complicated than this.
Add some variety – If you do the same routine, three days a week, for months and months both you and your muscles will get bored. If you do bench presses on Monday, go with shoulder presses on Wednesday and dips on Friday. Squats on Monday? Try lunges on Wednesday and box jumps on Friday. Pick a different exercise each time and your muscles will stay excited (and so will you).
Lastly, your muscles don’t get built in the gym, they get built when you’re resting. Give your muscles 48-72 hours to recover between workouts. A Monday-Wednesday-Friday workout works well to ensure enough time to recover.
