What You Need to Know About Your Fitness Success?

Good personal trainers don’t just randomly pick a training routine for their clients, or just make stuff up at moments notice and switch it around every time they see their client. Today’s post is about your training plan. You need to create a plan, execute the plan and change the plan according to your goals!Fitness woman with dumbbell

Plan Your Training

Very few people care about training, they care about results, but not about the actual training plan. That is where we health nuts and fitness professionals come into play (also called personal trainers, coaches, etc.). So if you don’t have a trainer are you lost on your journey? No, because I am going to give you some tips that can help get some more structure into your training. You have to ask yourself the following questions:

  1. What are your goals?
  2. How much time are you willing to commit to those goals realistically?
  3. What are your challenges?

Putting It Together

I can write a whole book about training planning but I will try to keep it short and to the point. Every training plan should be changed after about 4 weeks. You always seek to improve your weight lifted, or resistance used.

Weight (Fat) Loss

If you are trying to lose weight this is for you:

  1. Lift weights 2-3 days a week for at least 30-45 min (excluding chatting with a friend a the gym)
    1. Sets: 2-4 work sets depending on experience
    2. Repetitions: 5-12 to build some muscle mass
    3. Active rest intervals about 60-90s depending on complexity of movements
    4. Option 1: active rest intervals filled with mobility, stability drills or just simply resting
    5. Option 2: active rest intervals filled with cardiovascular elements reduces resting, speeds up fatigue onset
  2. HIIT
    1. Intervals of 20s-4 min length with active rest intervals (easy walking, etc.) of 30s to 2 min. The longer the recovery is the more you go back to baseline. Interval samples would be: 1 min/2 min RI, 30s/60s RI, 2 min/1 min RI, etc. You would do anywhere from 4-10 sets depending on fitness level. The longer the intervals the less sets usually. HIIT should be done after about 30 min including warm up and cooldown.

Muscle Gain

  1. Resistance Training 3-4 (5) days/week for at least 30-45 min (preferably 60-75 min). Again this does not include hours of chatting with others.
    1. 2-4 work sets depending on experience
    2. Depending on experience lift 5-10 repetitions. Some power exercises at the beginning of the training can be beneficial for muscle fiber recruitment.
    3. active rest intervals about 90-180s depending on complexity of movements
    4. Active rest intervals filled with mobility, stability drills or just simply resting
  2. Cardiovascular Training is optional other than for health benefits. Too much can reduce the effect of the training (keep to <35 min) and it should never be done prior to the lifting if done at the same day.

Sport Specific Training

  1. Resistance Training is very dependent on the sport as well as the season. The advice given above is already very general. Each sport has concrete demands in regards to power, strength, conditioning and mobility. It would go too far to dive deeply into all of the various sports in this blog post.

Executing Your Plan

Well, a good plan is worth not even the paper or computer it is written on if it is not applied. Don’t fret if you miss a training session. Consistency is the key. If you get in 85-90% of your training, you are golden. Performance changes on a daily basis. On some days you will be able to lift more, be faster, last longer than others. Again if you are in the 85-90% capacity level of your performance you will see improvements. Know when to take a break! No matter how well developed a training plan is, you might find yourself fatigued and not motivated. Taking a day or two break will probably save you from injury and overtraining. A training that lasts 2 hours or longer is rarely worth it. Fatigue at this point has reached a critical level. The risk for injury rises. Train smarter not harder or longer!

Changing Your Plan

Your training should be changed on a frequent basis. Your changes should be based on what you have been doing in your previous training, follow progressions and regressions of your exercises and modalities, and ultimately should be oriented towards your goals. Changing your plan should include exercises, sets, repetitions, rest intervals, etc.   I hope this article has been helpful. Please let me know if you have any questions, I would love to help.   Michael

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