Freebie proven ways to build your own brilliant workout

In this age, it has never been easier to do it yourself. Never before more information on fitness and nutrition has been available. The hard part becomes to pick the right information and find out what works best for you. I personally have run three marathons, lost 15kg in half a year successfully and increased my back squat by 30kg in 3 months from 140kg to 170kg. These are not stellar things and others have been doing them before which tells you if I can do it, you can do it too. Here are the things I have learned so far:

Influencing factors

To build your own workout routine you need to take a couple of things into consideration before you even start. Not everyone is created equal and lives in the same circumstances. This impacts the choices you can and want to make for your exercise regime. These influences include:

• Biology
• Habits
• Age
• Diet
• Available time

Biology is the hand you have been dealt by your ancestors. You might have a slow metabolism which translates to you even only thinking about carbs leading to putting on weight. If you are one of the lucky people who have a fast metabolism, good for you. It will be easier for you to lose weight. Same applies to the production of adrenaline and testosterone, bone and skeletal structure, general body size and proportions of length between different limbs. Some of these are more suited to do certain exercises others will leave you gasping for air for something which your peers deem to be a piece of cake. The best thing to do about the genetic hand you have been dealt is to get over with it and not use it as an excuse. There are people without legs and arms swimming in the Paralympics. If they can manage to stay afloat and even compete what right do you have to complain. Go out there and do something.

Habits are the next thing which needs changing and depending on which kind of habits you have it will make it easier or harder for you to get to the gym. If your parents paid attention to dieting, let you do a certain hobby related to physical activity in your teenage years and showed patience and consistency themselves chances are higher that you picked this up and ran with it. Don’t expect to change all your routines overnight. That won’t happen. I have a terrible habit of eating four slices of Jam toast after dinner when I get peckish. Another one is to dive into the sweets stash at work whenever some idiot asks me stupid questions which he or she could perfectly have googled themselves. Change it one habit at a time and unfortunately the more habits you have which make you unhealthy and bigger than you want to be, the longer this will take.

Age is also a factor to be considered. There is the obvious one of natural age. The older you get the less your body wants to stay alive. Sounds brutal but this is an inbuilt failsafe by nature with mammals and most other living things that crawl around. The sooner you make your peace with this the better. In terms of working out, it is great if you start early in your life because in your teenage years up to your thirties your body is a lot more forthcoming with helping you out. You produce more hormones which make you grow, the ligaments in your knees seem to twist and turn in all kinds of exciting directions without ripping and once you find your passion you can spend hours on it without being distracted or getting a migraine. Not so much when you get older. Your body stops producing growth hormones and you need a lot more stimulus to convince it otherwise. Your nervous system fires slower and makes the fibres twitch slower. This leads to less force being produced which makes the training harder… you get the gist of it. Training helps to slow the ageing process down. That you will get less bang for the buck the older you get.

Another age to consider is your training age which is often overlooked. If you spent a decade treating your body like a heap of trash and did not train during your teenage years, you have a lot to catch up on. So, don’t beat yourself up about that your twin brother who kept training during his twenties instead of drinking and slouching on the couch gets better results from the same exercises than you do. This is because he has ten years more of experience in the gym under his belt. Get active and clock up some hours and soon you will see results) most times after a month of following a consistent program and diet).

Diet is another factor to consider, usually the one between sabotaging yourself and making progress. If you train five times a week like me but also wonder why you are not getting ripped while you eat four slices of toast with jam each evening, then you are daft. Daft indeed to say the least. Running a marathon whilst sticking a nail into your foot every 10km does not necessarily help you running faster. The fuel you put into your body makes all the difference. If you stick to it, you will lose weight. When I stuck to my diet when I was preparing for judo tournaments I always felt energetic and ready to rock when the time came. When I stuffed my face with snickers bars, even though I was athletic, I felt sluggish and less explosive.

Finally, you have to consider the time in the day that is available to you to train. The older you get the more responsibilities you usually have which take time out of the day in which you cannot train. Your wife, children, job, boss, the washing, dogs, cats, house, carpet, kitchen all need attention and cleaning to a certain degree (yes even your boss, even though he/she ignores it from time to time).

Questions to ask yourself

Once you determined how much time in the day you can spend on training, how well you might respond to certain exercises and got over yourself in terms of “I have bad genetics” which is like a lifeguard who complains he cannot swim because of his swimming trunks (yeah I know you smart guys will say “but what if he has stones in them. That will definitely drag him down”) it is time to put something together. Questions to consider here:

• Does it work for you?
• Is it safe for you?
• Is it making you healthier?

In terms of whether something is working for you, it is important to have SMART goals and to track whether you are progressing towards your goal. At first, you set out your weight loss, strength, measurement or general good feel goal. Then you break it down over time. Once time and goal are taken care of you measure whether you are progressing month by month or week by week depending on your goal set.

In terms of safety use some common sense. There is always a progressing to bigger better things and this takes time. If you step into the gym for the first time and want to fly through the air like a Chinese gymnast and lift weights like an Iraqi Olympian chances are pretty high that you will hurt yourself. Master the movements bit bz bit and climb that mountain one leg at a time. If you want to sprint up in a day it is likely that you will fail due to lack of oxygen or frostbite.

If you are not an athlete who competes, the main goal of the exercise is usually health. Track that too. Are you feeling more energetic in the day after exercise? Can you get up the stairs and lift up your children without your back being hurt or being out of breath? If you don’t compete and the exercise you do makes you worse in terms of health you are doing something wrong.

How much time can you devote

Based on your daily commitments you got to plan when and how much exercise you can fit into a day. Usually, consistency beats mad all out one off sprints. So, if you can devote half an hour each day of the week that is better than going to the gym once for 3.5-hour session.

Where will you work out

You don’t necessarily need a gym membership to reach your goals and stay healthy. In my case, a pair of runners and some good gear to go with it to get out and do my marathon training was enough. (The fact that I just booked the damn thing might also have helped). This way I lost 15kg in half year. It was a coach to 42km effort but there was no gym membership involved. That came later.

What exercises should you do

That is one of the best pieces of advice. You should understand your program and find it easy to follow it at any stage. If it becomes too complex for you and you cannot do the movements or don’t understand the science behind it, leave it. As a beginning runner, the focus is to get out there and move. If you already think about negative splits, race pace, heart rate training and nutrition during a long-distance race but you have not even completed a 5k race you made things too complex.

What applies to running is also true in the world of lifting. Work with less complex movements first and work your way from there to more complex ones. The barbell squat and other free weight exercises including the barbell are usually on the more complex side of things. You can progress to them via using kettlebells, dumbbells and technique bars first, depending on your fitness level and mobility

Make sure that you work out your quads, butt and hamstrings and chest at least once a week. To achieve this, use push as well as pull motions to get fitter. Good combos are:

• Bench Press & Bent over rows
• Pull ups and dips
• Squats and Glute Ham raises
• Bicep curl and skullcrushers

For all the exercises, it is also good to vary the execution from time to time. Close grip bench presses, wide grip bench presses, Sumo deadlifts & conventional deadlift, kettlebells instead of dumbbells, dumbbells instead of barbells; you get the idea. This will build a more rounded approach to strength and keep things more interesting for you. I personally incorporated not enough variety and therefore have to suffer the consequences of being a one trick pony and work my way back up from there.

How many sets should you do

Usually, you should 3 – 5 sets of a certain exercise and about 15 – 25 sets per workout. It varies per program but if you wanted to build your own this is what you can go for. Anything more than that is usually overkill and not challenging enough. You either must work on the load you are doing, the way that you are performing the exercise or take less rest between sets.  

How many repetitions should you do

Again, it depends on what you want to achieve. The repetition schemes per set I work most with and which seem to have survived the test of time are

• 8 – 12 reps with 50% to 60% of your one repetition max
• 3 – 5 reps with 60% – 80% of your one repetition max
• 1 – 3 reps with 80% – 95% of your one repetition maximum

As a general rule of thumb, I like for all of these calculations to work with 90% of my true maximum on each lift. This is more likely to help with positive reinforcement and decreases the injury risk while still getting the same gains.

How long should you wait between sets

The heavier the load that you are moving the more rest you need between sets. Here is a little guidance on what kind of rest times I work with:

• 1 – 3 reps = 3 – 5 minutes of rest
• 4 – 7 reps = 2 -3 minutes of rest
• 8 - 12 reps = 1 to 2 minutes of rest

To make the most of your time in the gym it is wise to fill your rest time with a non-related exercise. For example get your pull ups for the day in when you are resting between sets on the squat. This way you make sure you use your time most effectively and efficiently.  

How long should you exercise

If you challenge yourself, have a good plan and focus on getting shit done in the gym you should take no longer than an hour a day. I can pack my warm up, stretching, main workout and accessory into this slot of time by using active rest and not looking at my phone for too long but get under the bar and do something. Of course, you can spend two hours in the gym each day if that is how you earn money or if you are a student/teenager. If you have bills to pay and a wife that probably won’t fly though.

Keep track of everything

The last thing which is very important is to track everything you do and measure it in terms of success. Do you get better? Can you lift more? Can you hold your breath for longer? Whatever it is, keep a written record of it and improve.

Conclusion

It is easy to build your own workout and make it your own if you stick with these simple principles. Often you will find personal trainers who will not pay enough attention to detail so try to find a gym near you which takes their stuff serious. Once you have a good coach, listen to them, especially when you do not like what you are hearing and what is being prescribed.

Further reading

• 12 practical tips for fitness coaches to be healthier
• As a man thinketh for fitness coaches
• Best apps for fitness coaches
• Choose yourself for fitness coaches
• Deep work for fitness coaches
• Finish for fitness coaches
• Grit for fitness coaches
• How fitness coaches get mindfulness easily
• How fitness coaches get unlimited power for their clients
• Mastery for fitness coaches
• Rework for fitness coaches
• The ONE Thing for fitness coaches
• The power of now for fitness coaches
• The power of positive thinking for fitness coaches
• The power of thinking big for fitness coaches