If you want to get fit and healthy the last thing you want to do is fork out money you do not have to pay for a trainer. Sure, they can help you, but if you put time and effort in, you can easily make a work-out routine just as good, without the cost.
You want to have your Perfect Body Me, and you can get there easily enough by making your own work-out routine. But, figuring it out can be hard if you have no knowledge in how to do so.
There are several things to consider as you build your perfect workout routine.
We have noted down everything you want to consider as you put together your work out routine to get the best out of it.
Picking Work Days/ Rest Days
The first thing you want to do is decide on which days you will work out and when you will rest. You want to keep this consistent otherwise you can easily lose your progress or end up faltering in your goals.
Take a look at your weekly schedule and consider when are the times that you will best be able to consistently fit in your workouts. Any workout routine would be useless if you aren’t able to do it.
It can easily get sidelined if you do not progress, aren’t motivated, or if you get injured, you’ll miss your goals.
Start out by noting whether you want to rest or workout on each day of the week.
Some will like to do workouts from Tuesday through Saturday and then have Sunday free for themselves, and Mondays to cope with the start of a new work week.
So, pick the days of the week you will train, you want around 4-5 days per week of workouts and 2-3 of rest. Pick a time of day in which you will do it, and set goals to ensure you always do.
Adding Recovery Days But Staying Active
So now you have your plan of which day is for what, now you want to pick days for your active recovery. This is what helps you to bounce back from intense training. This could be yoga, swimming, a walk, or other similar low-intensity activities.
You have this type of day to keep you active, improving your motion but also to repair muscles and keep up the habit of being active.
Each of these will be good for a different thing, walks and swimming are low intensity but will keep you de-stressed and calm, but will ensure your heart stays pumping. Myofascial releases are great for recovery, and yoga can be a bit of both!
Reducing Injury But Enhancing Consistency
Doing repeat activities can be great, but you want to reduce the chances of injury. This is why you want to minimize workouts that have the same pattern.
This means avoiding the same times, distance, loads and reps. Doing the same things on repeat easily leads to injuries as you damage your muscles and beat your joints up.
Give yourself range. Have leg days, arm days and core days. Switch it up so that you aren’t focusing too hard on one body part all the time to reduce injury in that body part.
Doing too much of the same will do more damage than good, and besides, having a range of activities stops it from getting boring, it keeps it interesting, and you may get excited for what comes next. So it also keeps you motivated as well.
It’s win-win!
Increasing Intensity
Remember that you can’t stay at the same level forever or you will stagnate. You need to be making consistent progress as you workout. Your workouts have to get harder over time, but not too quickly.
If you try to increase the intensity of your workouts too soon, you are only going to injure yourself.
You want to train consistently for a good four to six weeks at one difficulty before you up the ante. Listen to your body, when you start to find that you are finding your current workouts easier, add a little more, but do not ramp it up too fast.
If you are not recovering from your workouts very well, and struggle to tackle the next workout, you may have overdone it.
You cannot really fit in intensity building into your schedule, but you can schedule times to review your progress and see if you are ready to up the intensity.