Example workouts

Lets Put all the pieces together and walk through the structure of a training session. This will include

1. Warming up

2. performing the exercises

3. rest in between sets

4. recovery post workout

Warming up

Warming up is a vary important part of a workout to improve performance and reduce the risk of injury.

There are 2 forms of warm up

1. General warm up-Warming the whole body up at the start of a session usually through some low intensity cardio ie. Incline walk on treadmill for 5-10 minutes

2. Exercise specific warm up-This is doing warm up sets on an exercise before doing your working sets.

For example If my working weight for bench press is 100kg I will do warm up sets such as 20kg. 50kg, 70kg, 90kg then 100kg. This gets the muscles ready for your working weights and helps avoid injury.

(Warm up sets should be low intensity and not anywhere near failure, the aim is to prime the body for the working sets not tire out before hand)

Performing the exercises

-I cannot go into technique and form for every exercise but I will give a few general guidelines about it.

1. Control the weight, dont let the weight control you-Avoid using momentum to swing weights up and dont try to lift weights you cannot handle, you should be able to lift it up and lower it with control. The same goes for the opposite however, do not lift excessively slow and controlled. The balance is somewhere in the middle. You want to lift with force and speed on the concentric (the lifting phase) and then control the eccentric (the lowering phase)

2. Lift with Intent-Stay focussed during your sets. Focus on the muscle you are working and your technique when lifting. Focus on what the rest of your body is doing as well. (IE. when your doing bicep curls you should still make an effort to keep your body rigid and balanced and not move around too much as you lift.)

Exercise Order

How do you know which exercises to do first. In general you want to do your most challenging exercise first while you are fresh. These would be your compound exercise like squats, bench press, RDLs etc...

Then do your isolations after towards the tail end of the workout.

If you are training multiple muscle groups on 1 day like legs, it is a good idea to alternate between different muscle groups. For example I might do squats first which trains the quads and glutes so my next exercise should be something more for the hamstrings like an RDL, then Ill go back to a quad/glute exercise and so on.

Rest

rest periods in between sets is important. You want to well recovered to put enough energy into the next set.

A good rule of thumb is 2-3 minutes for most exercises. Some more demanding exercises such as squats and deadlifts that are heavily fatiguing might require more rest like 4-5 minutes.

You do not have to be strict with your rest time. I usually set a timer for 3 minutes and if I feel ready after 2 minutes I will go again, and if I am still catching my breath or feel the burn from the previous set I will rest a bit longer.

Recovery Post Workout

-You usually need about 2-3 days to for your muscles to recover before you can train the same muscles again and you will likely experience muscle soreness. This is a normal phenomenon and will be quite pronounced as a beginner. However this does get better with time.

A common misconception is that you need to be sore afterwards for a workout to be effective. This isn't actually the case. For starters people have different muscles that get more sore than others. I am prone to sore arms after training arms but I rarely get sore shoulders, everyone is a little bit different.

I like to use soreness as a gauge to how hard I trained.

1. If I trained and was not sore at all? It may still have been a good workout but I could have handled a bit more volume

2. If I am just a little bit sore the next day but after 2 days I am fine? I probably trained just the right amount

3. If am really sore and it lasts for 3 days at least? I probably trained too hard and should do less next workout.

Here is an example Upper and Lower body training session for beginners-intermediates

The workouts

Upper-In this workout we train chest, back, shoulders and arms. There are...

• 2 chest exercises (5 sets)

• 1 row exercise (3 sets)

• 1 vertical pull 4 sets)

• 1 shoulder exercise (4 sets)

• 1 bicep and triceps exercise (2 sets each)

This is a chest dominant push day. It is hard 5-6 sets per muscle group in 1 session as this would take too long and you would get tired and reach your limit. Therefore on the 2nd upper body day of the week we would prioritise shoulders and back more with only 1 chest exercise. Arms only have 2 sets each because your arms will get indirectly worked in compound movements (triceps in bench press, biceps in back exercises).

Lower

In this workout we train all the muscle groups of the leg

• 3 quad exercises (7 sets)

• 3 glute exercises (8 sets)

• 2 Hamstring exercises (6 sets)

• 1 calf exercise (4 sets)

It may seem like a lot of sets per muscle group but it is because there is overlap in the muscles trained among the exercises.

For example the squat counts as a glute and quad exercise. The split squat does as well but it more of a glute dominant exercise so will only work the quads a little bit. The RDL works the hamstrings and glutes but will only work the glutes a little bit. Therefore the volume overall isnt actually too high.

It is easier to hit all of the leg in 1 workout compared to upper body.

That said on the 2nd Lower day of the week I would put a hinge exercise first to prioritise it compared to prioritising the squat on this day. I would also change the exercises to have some variation. IE. use a machine squat instead of barbell squat or do a hip thrust instead of split squat.

Key points

-Do not forget progressive overload! Follow the workouts and aim to add either weight or reps over time to drive progress

-Track your weights and reps using your phone or notepad so you can progressively overload methodically

-Pick exercises you enjoy and a split that you enjoy. The samples are just a guideline, feel free to switch it up and try things up to make sure you are having a good time and stay consistent