When you head into the gym, do you have a programme? Do you know exactly what exercises you are going to do, how many sets and reps you’re going to perform, what weights you’ll be using? No? Why not! If you were cooking a meal you’d have a recipe to follow or if you were travelling around a new country you’d have a map. Hell, if you want to catch a train you’d most likely plan your journey using a timetable so why not plan your workouts?

Training without a programme is like starting a business without a business plan – you might succeed but, if you do, it’ll be down to dumb luck rather than skill. Training is hard enough – all those hours of sweating and straining when you could be relaxing watching TV at home. If you are going to make the effort to turn up and workout out, surely you want to get the most from your workouts?!

Training plans and programmes can range from simple whole body workouts to split routines to complex periodised plans that progressively work towards a specific goal. To write a plan, you first need to decide on your training goals…

Muscular endurance
Hypertrophy (bodybuilding)
Strength
Power

Each of the training objectives has an associated training method that will lead you toward your goals – this is because of something called the SAID principle. SAID stands for Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands and basically means that when it comes to training, your body adapts to what you do. Want strength? Lift heavy! Want power? Lift fast! Want endurance? Do high reps! Want hypertrophy? Use plenty of volume! Each training goal has a specific rep scheme attached to it and whilst these rep schemes aren’t set in stone, they are a good place to start.

Endurance – 15-20 reps with 30 to 60 second rests between sets
Hypertrophy (bodybuilding) – 6 to 12 reps with 60 to 90 second rests between sets
Strength – 1-5 reps with 3-5 minute rests between sets
Power – 1-5 reps (performed at maximum speed) with 3-5 minute rests between sets

Volume (the number of sets and exercises performed per workout) is dependent on your training history and fitness level and advanced trainees are likely to perform more sets and exercises per workout than a beginner.

Planning your workout week

You have a number of choices when it comes to planning your week and because there are so many, you’ll often hear about how one method is better than another. The truth is they all work and it’s really a matter of personal preference. Chances are, the one that you like best slots nicely into your lifestyle and works well based on the number of days a week you can train and how long you have to work out. Periodically it’s worth trying other weekly training plans for variety but we’ll talk more about that in the next part.

In part 2 of this series, we look at how you can divide your training throughout the week…

Your options

There are 2 approaches when it comes to planning your training week – whole body workouts and split routines. Whole body workouts do just what it says on the tin – train all of your major muscles in a single workout. Exercises are selected that offer the most “bang for your buck” like squats, bench presses and rows as you don’t have a lot of time to do a huge number of exercises. Here is an example of a typical whole body workout…

1. Barbell back squats
2. Barbell bench press
3. Seated cable rows
4. Leg curl machine
5. Dumbbell shoulder press
6. Lat pull downs
7. Lying EZ tricep extensions
8. Bicep cable curls
9. Stability ball ab crunches
10. Back extensions

Note the order of the exercises; similar exercises are kept apart from each other and follow a loose legs/push/pull sequence with arms and core exercises at the end.

This workout would most likely be repeated 2-3 times per week on non-consecutive days and lends its self to those wanting general muscular endurance and all round fitness. As good as this workout is, if you keep doing the same reps, sets and exercises you’ll eventually plateau and stop making progress. To keep your workouts (and your fitness levels) progressing, you can change a number of factors in your workouts. These are called the training variables and include…

Increase your weights – small regular increases win every time and will make you stronger
Increase the number of sets your perform per exercise – more work = greater benefits
Perform more reps – adding a rep a week whilst keeping the weights the same is a great progression
Reduce your rest time between sets – knock off 5 seconds a week to increase the intensity of your workouts
Choose different exercises – bored of the chest press machine? Try the bench press
Change the order of your exercises – if you always do legs last, try putting them first in your workout
Use more complex exercises – squats are harder than leg presses, chin ups are harder than lat pull downs
Incorporate a training system like drop sets or supersets into your programme for variety
Use a Swiss ball, medicine ball, Bosu or TRX to spice up your workout

After a while (many months and maybe even years) you may may find that they simply can’t fit all of the work you want to perform into a single workout. When this happens, the next choice for programme design is likely to be a split routine. Split routines break your body down into various parts which are trained on different days of the week. This has the advantage of allowing a greater volume of work to be done for a particular muscle or set of muscles that would be possible with the whole body system outlined above.

There are numerous options you can choose from when it comes to split routines, a few of which are outlined below, but it’s important to know that whichever one you choose, missing a single workout can unbalance your whole training week AND your physique so make sure that you can stick to whatever split routine you select.

In the final part of this series, we’ll provide you with example split routines…

In the final part of this 3-part series, we procvide you with 5 split-routine options to help you plan your workout week

1)      Upper/Lower body split.
Simply divide your body in half and train your legs on Monday, your upper body on Wednesday and your legs again on Friday. The following week reverse your body parts so that over the 2 week period, every muscle group gets equal attention. This is a good method for those new to split routines. By way of progression, you can perform the upper/lower body split and train each half twice a week (Monday = lower body, Tuesday = upper body, Thursday = lower body, Friday = upper body). This increase in frequency can be beneficial for some trainees.

2)      3 Way Split.
This is a body part spilt where on Monday, you perform exercises for your chest and triceps, back and biceps get trained on Wednesdays and legs and shoulders are worked on Fridays. Rest over the weekend and start over on Monday by repeating the cycle.

3)      4 Way Split.
This routine breaks down the body into even smaller groups which means workouts can be shorter or you can get a lot of work done in the same time. On Monday perform exercises for your chest, on Tuesday train your back, rest on Wednesday, train your legs on Thursday and on Friday focus on shoulder and arms.

4)      4 way functional split.

This system ensures that all muscle groups are given equal attention in terms of volume and is ideal for anyone wanting to ensure their muscles remain “balanced”. Monday train hip dominant exercises such as dead lifts and back extensions, on Tuesday focus on vertical pushes and pulls i.e. shoulder presses and lat pull downs, Thursday concentrate on quad dominant leg exercises such as squats and leg extensions and Friday focus on horizontal pushes and pulls i.e. bench presses and seated rows.

5)      Power lifting split.

Monday squats and assistance exercises, Wednesday bench press and assistance exercises, Friday dead lift and assistance exercises. This routine is especially good for those wishing to focus on strength either for power lifting or sports.

Once you have decided on which split routine you want to follow – one of the above or one of your own devising – you can start plugging in exercises into your programme. Again, there are lots of options to choose from but as a general rule of thumb, select 2-3 exercises per large muscle groups and 1-2 for smaller muscle groups and choose a variety of exercises to work your muscles different ways e.g. for chest you may start off with flat bench press, perform incline dumbbell flies next and finish up with dips. Rotate your exercises every 6-8 weeks to avoid getting into a training rut but don’t change things so often that your workouts aren’t consistent. Remember to change the training variables from time to time to keep your workouts fresh.

Planning your training week may take you some time but, once you have a plan and you stick to it you can record and measure your progress from one week to the next. Make sure you regularly increase the weights or do more reps to keep forcing your muscles to adapt and new levels of fitness and strength are all yours!