Fitness Program Design For Beginners

By Noelle Walker at New Fitness

Today I am discussing how you come up with a decent program for you. Of course it all depends on what your goals are and what time line you have got in mind, meaning when you want to achieve your goal by. There are many different ways to program your workouts. Today I will be focusing on training splits.

TRAINING SPLITS

There are a few common training splits and that just means what muscle groups you will working and on what day. It’s also important to think about when designing your program how many sets you will be doing at how many repetitions and how much rest you will need in between the sets.

Your individual fitness goal or goals will predetermine this.

Two examples of training splits for beginners are: straight up full body workout and Upper/Lower body workout.

FULL BODY WORKOUTS

Full body workouts are very common for beginners and is the easiest to design. All you need to do is come up with one exercise per muscle group and decide how often you are going to do that workout. Keep in mind that you want to leave a rest day in between each full body workout day. It really is when you take your rest day that adaptations and results can occur. Don’t over train! So example of this: Mon, Wed, Fri, is when you will do your full body workout.

2 DAY SPLITS

Upper/Lower body is a common 2 day split. It’s very good for beginners or intermediate. This is also fairly easy to design yourself. All you need to do is come up with two exercises for each upper body muscle group(any muscle group above your waist) and two exercises each for lower body.

You can do this workout more often. This is good for the person who has more days in their schedule to train and want to achieve better results.

The more days you can train(without over training and making sure you get enough rest) the better and quicker results you will get but make sure your body and schedule can allow it.

An example of this is Monday-Upper Body, Tuesday-Lower Body, Wed-Upper Body, Thursday-Lower Body and then take a day rest and start all over again. Or you can design it so you are doing Upper Body on Monday, Lower Body Tuesday, then a day rest and Upper Body Thursday and Lower Body Friday and then start all over again on Sunday or Monday.

SETS REPS AND REST

You will then need to decide how many sets, reps and rest you will need for that workout. If you are trying to build muscle then you would do about 3-4 sets of 8-12 reps with one minute rest in between. If you are trying to cut fat or have more stamina and endurance then you would do 2-3 sets of 15-20 with 30 seconds rest or none at all. If your goal is to get strong as quickly as possible then you would need to do 5-10 sets of 3-5 reps at 2 minutes rest in between sets.

BE CREATIVE

Try and be creative when coming up with exercises so you don’t get too bored. Compound mixed with isolation exercises are good. What do I mean by this? Mix a squat with a leg extension. The first, the Squat is a compound exercise because it works more than one muscle group(Hamstrings, Quads, Glutes, Calves, Adductors, Abductors) and uses more than one joint(hip and knee). The second which is the leg extension is an isolation exercise because it only uses one muscle group(the quads) and only uses the knee joint. This way you have a balanced program.

PROGRESSIVE OVERLOAD

Also when coming up with your program make sure it is only for four weeks. And every week either increase sets, reps and or weight. You need to be progressing and if you do the exact same workout every week you will not get the results you want. Every four weeks come up with a completely different set of exercises. This also helps you get results faster and prevents boredom and plateaus.

So I gave you some ideas on how to design a program yourself. If you have any questions or need help feel free to contact me

Fitness Program Design For Beginners