Stop Following Swipe Right Workouts on Instagram
Ok, let me start off by saying there is nothing wrong with those sharing their workout ideas on the gram. And there is nothing wrong if you decide to save some of those workouts for new ideas for yourself.
The problem is those who are constantly searching high and low for new workout ideas on a daily and even weekly basis.
I get that it’s nice to switch things up. However, some people are switching things up with their workouts way more than they should. And they wonder why they are spinning their wheels and not seeing any progress.
I think the following quote really hit home for me when it comes to why you shouldn’t be switching up your workouts so frequently.
“You can’t bake a cake if you keep changing the ingredients.”
This analogy is no different when it comes to changing your body composition. Now maybe your goals are different. Maybe you are strictly focused on performance and constantly challenging your body with different movement patterns. Where losing weight, adding muscle or developing that toned look a lot of people are after is just not something you are focused on. In that case, keep doing what you are doing. If you enjoy your training and are happy with the progress you are seeing when it comes to your performance, keep doing you.
But if you are trying to change your body composition, lose weight and/or add muscle, then switching up your workouts so frequently is probably not the best idea if you want to optimize your results.
Today let’s expand on why you want to avoid switching things up so frequently and go over how you can build your own training program tailored towards your needs.
Now please note that I am not saying we should never make changes to our workouts from time to time. Sometimes I get bored of dumbbell bicep curls and will switch it up by using the cables instead. Or some weeks I feel dumbbell lateral raises and other weeks I don’t as much and will switch to using kettlebells. It’s ok to switch things up from time to time. However, changing things too often can be unnecessary.
Why is that?
Firstly, we have to look at what we are trying to accomplish. And if we are looking to change our body composition like I previously mentioned, our priority in the gym needs to be progressive overload. We have talked about progressive overload on the podcast many times before. But as a reminder, this is the process of lifting more overtime. We need to increase the demands being placed on our bodies by gradually getting stronger over time. This can be accomplished in many ways, such as lifting more weight, doing more sets or reps, increasing your time under tension or even simply improving your form technique by increasing your range of motion for instance.
Hopefully that explanation alone solves the dilemma as to why we don’t want to be switching things up too often. If not, think of it like this. How did Kobe Bryant become the best basketball player in the world? Well, it wasn’t from practicing golf. He practiced nothing but basketball to master his craft.
In order for us to get better and achieve progressive overload with our workouts, we need to practice and maintain consistency with performing the same movement patterns, so we get better and better over time.
For example, if we want to improve our squat technique or our squat strength, how can we do that when we squat one week and then swap them out for a different exercise the following week and we don’t squat again for another month? Practice makes perfect.
Now again, I am not saying you can’t enjoy your workouts and change things up every once in a while. While it’s important to avoid changing your workouts too often, it’s also unrealistic to stick to the same workouts forever. So, how do we do this more efficiently? When is it appropriate to switch things up?
Here are some signs that may indicate it’s time to switch things up
1. When your goals change
So, for example, say you were competing in powerlifting where of course mastering the technique of the back squat, bench and deadlift are a must. But eventually you’ve had enough of competing and want to focus more on bodybuilding. At that point, perfect technique of the back squat may no longer be your goal, where switching things up by focusing on the front squat or landmine squat may now be your new focus.
2. To prevent injury
Say you are noticing some minor pain when you perform conventional deadlifts. To prevent injury, we definitely don’t want to ignore that and power through the pain. Instead, we want to address the issue, where switching things up with a different variation may be best to avoid the risk of injury. Maybe switching things up to a sumo deadlift or maybe an RDL or a rack pull until you get to the root of the problem. Sometimes taking a break and making room to progress with a new variation can be helpful with avoiding injury and coming back to the conventional deadlift might later feel as good as new.
3. When you are experiencing boredom
Keeping things fresh and fun is important when it comes to adhering to a workout program. And while progressive overload is our main goal, it doesn’t mean anything if you are going to skip your workouts because you are getting too bored with the same old same old. So, make sure that adherence isn’t suffering. If it is, then switching things up may be necessary.
You can actually switch things up to be fun and fresh without switching up too many of your go to movement patterns. For example, you can keep all of the same exercises by changing the pairing of them where you originally had a lower body day, where you changed it to a full body day. Even just pairing your go to movements with other go to movements, changing the rep schemes slightly and switching things up that way is a great way to keep things fresh and new without it having to be a complete overhaul with 20 new movements you’ve never done before. This strategy allows you to avoid boredom, keep things fresh and still prioritize progressive overload within your training.
Now let’s shift gears here and talk about how you can build your own training program. There’s much more to it than just pairing a bunch of different lower body exercises together and calling it a leg day. If you want it to be effective, that is.
There is a step-by-step process we want to follow when it comes to building an effective training program for yourself
The first step is completing a needs analysis. This is the evaluation of your needs as an athlete, where we look at your overall goals, what your training status is, what’s your training background and what’s your exercise history. If you are a beginner, I definitely think it’s Ludacris for you to be squatting more than one day a week. Whereas someone who is more advanced, squatting twice a week (depending on the athlete’s goals of course) may be completely necessary.
So, if you aren’t sure where you follow on the spectrum of your training status, a good rule of thumb is that for anyone who has been doing resistance training for 2 months or less is a beginner, anyone from 2-6 months is intermediate and anyone lifting for a year or more is advanced.
Once you’ve completed your needs analysis, it’s time to select the exercises to include in your resistance training program. Before we can do that, we have to understand the different exercise types. There are literally hundreds of resistance training exercises to select from and understanding the types of exercises can help us filter out beneficial exercises from not so beneficial exercises.
There are 4 exercise types we are going to discuss
1. Core exercises
2. Structural exercises
3. Power exercises
4. Assistance exercises
Core exercises are any exercises that recruit one or more large muscle areas and involve two or more primary joints. This is also known as multi-joint exercises. A good example is the bench press.
Structural exercises are core exercises that emphasize loading of the spine, such as a back squat.
Power exercises are structural exercises that are performed very quickly or explosively, such as a power snatch.
Assistance exercises recruit smaller muscle areas and involve only one primary joint, such as the bicep curl. This is also known as single-joint exercises.
Now that we have an understanding of the 4 exercise types, selecting which exercises to include in your program is going to come down to specificity.
For example, say you are a basketball player and are entering into your in season. In this scenario, progressing with more power exercises is going to be more beneficial for the athlete compared to assistance exercises.
Let’s assume that none of us are trying to be a professional athlete. Instead, our biggest goal is to build muscle, change our body composition and just be healthy and feel good. I would argue that power exercises are probably not specific to us in that scenario, unless you want to try and do some Olympic lifting for fun. Otherwise, we likely want to focus more on core exercises, structural exercises with some assistance exercises.
Now that we know which exercise types we are going to focus on, how many exercises should be select for one training day. A good general recommendation is 1-2 core or structural exercises for each major muscle group and 1-3 assistance exercises for each muscle group. I would also not go over 8 exercises in total for a day. The sweet spot seems to be 6 exercises a day if you aren’t wanting to be in the gym longer than 75-90 minutes. Depending on if you are a beginner, I would stick to the lower end of the spectrum and if you are more advanced, I would stick to the higher end of the spectrum.
Let’s go over an example for a leg day of which exercises you should select. As I mentioned previously, we want to select 1-2 core or structural exercises of each major muscle group. So, for legs you have your quads, hamstrings and glutes.
Think for a second here, what are some core or structural exercises for each of these muscle groups?
Would leg extensions be a core exercise for the quads?
Hopefully you said no. Leg extensions only move the knee joint, therefore it is an assistance exercise.
The back squats would be a great structural exercise for the quads and glutes. Two birds one stone with that exercise! Note this is a structural exercise because it loads the spine.
What might be another core/structural exercise for the hamstrings? The Romanian deadlift is a great structural exercise for both the hamstrings and the glutes. Looks like from just those two exercises we have our quads, hamstrings and glutes taken care of when it comes to including 1-2 core or structural exercises.
Now let’s move onto 1-3 assistance exercises for each muscle group. Remember, this is any exercise involving 1 joint moving. We already know the leg extensions isolate the quads. Therefore, it should be obvious that the leg curls are a great assistance exercise for the hamstrings. But what about the glutes? Any type of hip extension movement is going to target the glutes. The RDL targeted the glutes, however it involved more than one joint moving, so it’s not an assistance exercise.
What about the barbell hip thrust? That actually is a single joint movement, which is a great assistance exercise for the glutes.
I would apply this same concept to the rest of your muscle groups as you finish selecting your exercises to include into your program.
It can be tough to determine which exercises are core/structural exercises and which are assistance exercises. I would visit this website https://exrx.net/Lists/Directory
It’s a great resource for not only showcasing how to do an exercise, but it explains which muscle groups are involved, making it easy for you to select exercises that are core, structural and assistance based.
Now that you have completed your exercise selection, it’s time to determine your training frequency. How many training sessions should you and can you train a week?
When a lot of people are first starting out, they think they need to jump into a 6-day training split. But remember we want to prioritize progressive overload, working up to a 6-day even 5-day training split over time is more important than just starting out at that training split. A good rule of thumb again depends on your training status. Where if you are a beginner, training 2-3 days a week is sufficient, once you are more intermediate, you can increase that to 3-4 days a week and as you approach an advanced status, progressing to training 4-6 days a week may be necessary. It’s so important to prioritize quality workouts over quantity.
Now that we know how many days a week we are going to be training, it’s time to decide on your training split and the exercise order. To keep things simple, we will assume we are doing a 4-day split for our examples here.
Most people start out with what is known as a “bro split.” This is where you have a:
1. Day 1: chest and triceps
2. Day 2: legs
3. Day 3: back and biceps
4. Day 4: arms and shoulders
There is nothing wrong with this split if you prefer to stick to the basics like this.
If you decide on this split, you will simply allocate the exercises you selected into these days. So, all of the chest and triceps exercises you selected, you would allocate them into your chest and triceps day.
If you want to get more creative, you can also do:
1. Day 1: upper
2. Day 2: lower
3. Day 3: full body
4. Day 4: full body
This is just one example, there’s a million different ways to create this weekly training split. When you input your selected exercises within these 4 days, you have to get a bit more creative with spacing your exercises out where each day isn’t focused on a specific body part. Instead, I would focus on exercise order. This is where you want to focus on starting your workouts out with your structural exercises, then core exercises and finish off with your assistance exercises.
For example, on your upper day, I wouldn’t start off with push-ups and then your last exercise be bench press. Bench press is more taxing and if you are doing it last, your muscle is already pre-exhausted, where you aren’t going to be able to lift as much and even worse you are exposing yourself to the risk of injury. Instead, your upper body day may look like something like this (keep in mind, we are limiting your total exercises in a day from 6 to no more than 8):
1. Barbell Shoulder Press (structural exercise because it loads the spine)
2. Bench Press (core exercise)
3. Bent over rows (core exercise)
4. Bicep curls (assistance exercise)
5. Push-ups (assistance exercise)
6. Planks (assistance exercise)
If you were to implement the “bro split,” your chest and triceps day may look like something like this:
1. Bench Press (core exercise)
2. Chest Press Machine (core exercise)
3. Cable flies (assistance exercise)
4. Triceps rope extension (assistance exercise)
5. Push-ups (assistance exercise)
Again, it doesn’t matter which training split you select. I would pick whichever option you enjoy more, it’s more important to prioritize the types of exercise efficiently within the training day.
For myself, I enjoy the upper, lower, full body, full body split more than a bro split. And the reason is because I don’t like doing more than a couple of exercises for one muscle group within a session. Hitting 4 chest exercises in one day is exhausting. I would rather hit 2 chest exercises one day and then hit the other 2 another day during the week. I like increasing my frequency by hitting the same muscle group more than once a week. This allows you to reduce soreness, optimize your recovery and actually increase your strength better.
Think about it, by the time I go to do push-ups at the end of the chest day example, my chest is going to be fried. Maybe I’ll be able to do like 6 push-ups. But if I allocate push-ups to my full body day on day 4 and only did one other chest exercise, I’ll likely be able to do way more push-ups because my pec muscles won’t be as fatigued. This strategy isn’t for everyone, but I have found it to be more enjoyable and sustainable for me and my athletes.
Now that we have our training split and exercise order figured out, there are two more steps. Next, we need to assign the number of sets and reps and the last step is assigning the rest periods.
So, looking at the sets and reps to assign to each exercise can be extremely complicated.
Let’s start with sets. Again, this varies based on the individual. But to simplify things here, the number of sets you want to perform are 10-20 sets per muscle group for the week, where a minimum of 2 sets is acceptable for an exercise but I wouldn’t go over 6 sets for a given exercise.
Now looking at the rep count. There are three different rep ranges we need to consider:
1. Low reps
2. Medium reps
3. High reps
Low reps - These range from 1-5 reps
These aren't just for power lifters. A lot of bodybuilders don't think you should utilize low reps because they believe that only high reps activate the slow twitch fibers. This isn't necessarily true. If you are lifting a heavy load, your muscles will recruit the slow fibers. As a result, lifting in a low rep range will yield strength gains, which will result in an increase in the hypertrophic response
Medium reps - These range from about 6-12 reps
This rep range has actually been shown to consistently cause the most overall hypertrophy
High reps - This is anything over 12 reps
High repetitions cause glycogen depletion during the workout, which aids in muscle cellular stretching, which leads to cellular growth.
While high reps have their place, that doesn't mean you want to completely eliminate low and medium reps from your program.
I honestly would recommend using a combination of low, medium AND high reps. Using a combination of the different rep schemes yields different responses and positive training adaptations for optimal muscle growth, regardless of your goals.
Now of course it’s going to depend on which exercise you are performing when it comes to assigning a rep count. Assistance exercises involve one joint and can’t handle extremely heavy loads. For example, you aren’t going to lift super heavy for 1 rep for a bicep curl. Your assistance exercises are primarily going to be performed in a medium and high rep range. Where your core and structural exercises are going to be performed more so in a low and medium rep range.
Now let’s quickly touch on the rest period length and then we will go over an example. When it comes to resting, it’s important to rest as long as you need to so you can perform the second set as safely and efficiently as you can. Don’t make the mistake of assuming you need to keep your heart rate up. Remember we are performing resistance training, where strength is important for achieving progress – not keeping our heart rate up.
A good recommendation when it comes to your rest periods depends on the number of reps you performed. When you perform 1-6 reps, a 2–5-minute rest period is recommended. Any sets performed at 6-12 reps, a 30 second to 1.5-minute rest period is recommended. And lastly, any sets performed at more than 15 reps, a 30 second rest period is sufficient.
And that’s how you build your own training program. Again, it’s ok to switch things up based on the reasons we previously discussed. But you do want to give your program a fair amount of time where you can focus on prioritizing progressive overload.
You can see an example of a training program below. I would encourage you to look at this yourself and try to build your own program based off of everything we discussed today. You can see on the left I started out by listing all of the major muscle groups I wanted to prioritize, then I selected my core, structural and assistance exercises and broke those movements out. After that I decided to do an upper, lower, full body, full body split, where I sprinkled my selected exercises into these days. Then we moved onto to assigning the sets, reps and rest periods for each movement. Then I counted my sets for each muscle group to ensure I was getting the recommended amount of volume for each muscle group, where we want 10-20 sets for each muscle group. You can see in grey the total number of sets for shoulders was 11, chest 10, back 10, quads 14, hamstrings 11 and glutes 13.
Hope this was helpful! Please feel free to share your training program with me for some feedback if needed.
Coach Krysten
thenattyhour@gmail.com