Are you finally ready to start taking your health and fitness seriously? Are you attempting to workout for the first time ever? Maybe you were an athlete but haven’t worked out regularly in years. Maybe you’ve always been a runner or a biker, but now want to start strength training. Or maybe you already are strength training, but there has been a change in your daily routine and you need to figure out how to fit the gym back into your new schedule. Finding a workout routine that works for you is one of the biggest factors in determining your success in reaching your fitness goals. Whether you want to lose weight, gain muscle, or just feel better, in order to hit that goal you need to figure out when you can workout.
The first step in creating a workout routine is determining how many days a week you will exercise. You should make this number realistic. I would even go as far to say that you should make this an easy number to hit on a weekly basis. If you are working out for the first time ever, or it has been years since you last worked out, then do not aim for five or six days a week. This is one of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen over the years. It’s easy for the first two or three weeks because you’re excited about the gym and it’s your new biggest priority. But a month in when you miss one workout, you start to feel like it’s falling apart. The next week you miss two workouts, and it all unravels from there. So start with two or three days, and go from there. You can always add extra workout days and upgrade your routine.
While deciding the number of workouts, you should also be thinking about the type of workout. If you are a beginner, then this will mean full body workouts, upper/lower workouts, or push/pull/legs. A push/pull/legs trains push muscles (chest, shoulders, triceps) one day, pull muscles (back, biceps) one day, and legs one day. More advanced lifters training five or six days a week could also use a split routine, where they train a different body part everyday of the week. A full body workout is your best bet if only working out twice a week. Upper/lower is also a good option for twice a week workouts, while push/pull/legs is a great when starting with three days a week.
It has been shown that working out each body part twice a week is most efficient for strength and hypertrophy (growing muscle) gains, so after a couple months you could alter your routine. For instance, start with a push/pull/legs routine working out three times per week. After you become acclimated and muscle soreness is not as big of an issue, you can throw another day into the mix. It then becomes four days a week, and you can switch to an upper/lower routine doing each workout twice. This way you are training both your upper and lower body twice per week, for maximal results.
When it comes to abdominal or core training, there are two general options. You can do a couple of ab exercises after your main workout once or twice per week. Alternatively, you could do a separate day just for abs. Personally, if I find the time for an extra workout during the week then I’ll knock out a quick ab workout. I find that most people can get in a pretty solid core workout in only fifteen or twenty minutes. Training abdominals is not something that I would specifically focus on when just starting out, simply because you can activate your core while performing a lot of movements on your upper and lower training days. There are always ways to focus more or less on core training, which I’ll cover in detail in another post.
These are just some of the options you have when creating a workout routine. I’ve laid out what I feel are the best choices for most beginners. For intermediate or advanced lifters, there are dozens of widely accepted ways to break up your weekly training. Don’t get me wrong, any lifter can see improvement using any of these training routines if implemented correctly. Training routines are simply one factor of many when it comes to manipulating your fitness program to ensure success.
Remember to start small, and build up from there. Working out twice a week is infinitely better than working out zero times a week. Even working out once a week is a great way to get your feet wet. Start with two twenty-minute workouts a week and try to build that up to four forty-minute workouts a week over the course of a few months. Consistency is key. Being consistent will have more of an impact on your success than anything else. It all starts with choosing a routine that fits your lifestyle.