Think Like a Trainer: Building Your Workout Plan

I love what I do. When I first started personal training, I had a passion for fitness that I wanted to explore. Now, years later, that passion for fitness has morphed into something larger: a passion for helping women find the confidence and happiness that fitness has given me.

Part of what I do as a personal trainer is creating personalized workout plans for my clients. My 1 on 1 personal training clients get plans, as do my online personal training clients. I like to walk through the process with them, helping them to understand how the plan connects to their goals.

And I’d like to share that with you, as well, dear reader!

The 5 factors listed below will help you think like a trainer when building a workout plan.

P.s., if the idea of creating your own plan is piqued your interest, click the image below to download my Do It Yourself Weight Loss Workout Blueprint. Homemade plans made easy!

 

Factor #1: Focus

You need to decide what to focus on. Ask yourself these questions: What is my end goal? What do I want to get out of this program? In 3 months, where do I want to be? In 6 months, how do I want to feel?

Do you want to lose body fat? Do you want to get stronger? Do you want to get faster? Do you want to be more flexible?

You have to know where you’re going in order to plan the most efficient way to get there. If you don’t have an end goal, how will you know you’re going in the right direction?

Having a goal helps you in a few ways.

Goals help you push past the excuses. Knowing what you want and why you want it can help motivate you when you are tired, busy, stressed or feeling uninspired.

Goals help you define success. What does success look like to you? If you don’t know, sit down and think about it, write about it until you have something semi-concrete in front of you.

Goals keep you motivated. You don’t live in a constant state of “goals-reached”. Life is the journey, not the end result (face it, the end result will fluctuate, grow and change as you near it, but the journey, right now, is always steadily yours). Goals allow you to celebrate the small wins along the way which helps to keep you motivated.

SMART Goals: setting them, achieving them. << FREE WORKBOOK 

Factor #2: Challenge

Here’s where I believe having a trainer makes it easier. You MUST continuously challenge yourself physically and mentally to make progress. That’s part of my job, to ask you to do things that I KNOW you can do, but that you wouldn’t ask yourself to do, and to help you do those things safely.

That doesn’t mean that you can’t challenge yourself. You can, you just need to have a plan.

Your muscles respond to challenge. If you lift the same weight for the same number of reps day after day, you’re no longer challenging your muscles, and so they stop responding.

Here are a few places that you can make changes to continuously challenge yourself and progress:

Weight. Increasing the amount of weight you lift will challenge your muscles. If you started with 5 pound dumbbells, try 7 pound dumbbells next time. Slowly increase the amount of weight that you challenge yourself with.

Reps. Increasing the volume that you lift is another way to continuously challenge yourself. One way to do that is by changing the number of reps that you lift (usually this change coincides with a decrease or increase in the weight itself). If you always do 10 reps, try doing 12, or 15.

Sets. Adding another set is another way of increasing the volume that you lift. If you always do 3 sets, add a fourth.

Speed. If you do cardio, a good way to continuously challenge your body is to include speed practice in your routine. Sprints require a different reaction from your body’s energy sources and muscle reaction than a slow jog. Doing both will keep your body challenged.

Factor #3: Variety

Doing the same thing over and over again is a great way to burn yourself out mentally and physically. Unless you’re focused on becoming an athlete in a very specific field, doing a variety of exercises is great for general fitness.

Choose exercises and workouts that challenge you, are fun, address your weakness and will help you towards your goal.

If you’re a runner, recognizing the benefits of strength training to your running game will help you keep your workouts varied, goal-oriented and purposeful.

If you’re super in to weight lifting, taking a yoga class once a week or going for a swim will help your muscles to recover, keep you flexible and increase your endurance without affecting your joints.

Here’s an example of what a week of training and cross-training might look like for general weight loss:

Monday: strength training

Tuesday: 3-mile run

Wednesday: Yoga class

Thursday: strength training

Friday: rest

Saturday: HIIT and stretching

Sunday: strength training

Factor #4: Consistency

Do you want results? Like REALLY want results? Then your new best friend is consistency.

Fitness is not about what you do on the one-off day. It’s about what you do EVERY DAY.

The best workout for you is the workout that you will actually do. So when designing your own plan, keep that in mind.

That means keep these elements in mind:

How much time are you willing to spend on this? How many days off are you going to need per week? How many hours can you spend at the gym each time you go? How will you make it work on days that you are busy, tired and unmotivated?

Take action instead of relying on will power.

Schedule your workouts. Like anything else of importance in your life, write it down if you want to remember/make time for it. Open your calendar. Go ahead, I’ll wait…

Schedule time for your workouts. Decide which days make the most sense for you, and at what time. Hold yourself accountable.

Or, pledge your accountability here, on my private facebook page, and I’ll hold you accountable ;o)

Make it a date. Ask a friend to join you for a workout. Tell her you’ll be there, with the workout you designed in hand. Once she’s agreed to meet you there, it’s likely that you won’t leave her hanging.

Reward yourself for consistency. I’m a huge fan of non-food, non-fitness related rewards for reaching goals. Promise yourself a reward: a pedicure, a new pair of jeans, a night out with the girls, if you stay consistent and on track with your plan.

Factor #5: Tracking

Finally, just like you have to know where you’re going to get there, you should know where you’ve been to move on. Track the objective material: reps, sets, weight lifted, as well as the subjective material: how you felt, how you recovered.

Keep a workout journal to:

Know where you’ve been. Where did you start? How far have you come? Knowing that you did 3 sets of 10 squats yesterday helps you to decide: do I squat today? how much? do I do something different?

Know what worked. We all have those workouts that leave us feeling AMAZING. Maybe it was the specific exercises, maybe it was the flow of the workout. Whatever it was, if it worked once, it will probably work again. And it’s nice to have a record of that!

Know what didn’t work. At the same time, some thing just don’t work. If you once tried to squat and dead lift in the same workout and left with a pulled hamstring and zero energy or motivation for 3 days, maaaaaybe try not to repeat that mistake.

Plan what happens next. Your workout journal will give you a clue about what to change, what to progress and what to leave as is for now. It will show you that you’ve been squatting the same 45 pound bar for 3 months now…it’s time to add some weight! It will show you that even though you don’t FEEL like you can sprint for 30 seconds, you did in fact do that just last week so in all likelihood, you still can.

Make It Happen

You can do this. It sounds like a lot, and believe me, it takes time and you’ll make some mistakes.

If you read this and are thinking, “Julia, can’t you just TELL ME what to do”, then click here and let’s get to work (because yes, I can).

If you’re excited to give it a shot, I fully support you!

If you want a bit more, in depth guidance and some samples, click here to get my free DIY Weight Loss Workout Blueprint.

 

Happy building!