​A good workout routine determine whether you achieve you goal or not. Here you can find the fundamentals to create your workout routine.

Bonus Download: Download our FREE checklist to create your own workout routine. Click here to download!

Goals - Write down the purpose of this workout routine

This is the first step in creating a successful workout routine. The workout routine depends on your goal.

If your goal is to build muscle, you shall have a routine that aims for maximum hypertrophy(muscle growth).

If it is to improve strength - the workout routine changes.

So you have to clearly define your goal.

When i joined gym the my goal is to build muscle as i was skinny. I was weak too.

But my workout routine was a disaster!

Yes disaster.

I have shared it in previous post.

I train 6 days per week with 3 day split. Each body part trained two times per week.

Lot of sets and reps.

I had lifted weights for 1 and half hour, feeling happy when my muscles are filled with blood.

Wow awesome pump.

If i have done this workout once every 3 months or 2 months, it will be awesome. I will get a metabolic push, muscles will be shocked by this workout.

Will be good to give a shock to your muscles.

That helps to break a plateau.

Let's rewrite the routine

My goal at that time is to build muscle and strength( it still remain the same :P)

But my workout routine cause overtraining with those infinite sets and reps.

This happened because of my wrong thought, that if i workout more i will build more muscles.

No progress!

Now you know the importance of goal and a workout that helps you to achieve that.

The wishes that google see daily

● To Build muscle.

● To Lose weight.

● To increase strength

Why i use the term wish?

A goal without an end date is a wish.

People want to lose fat, build muscle, improve strength.

They have a goal and a workout, but how many will achieve their goal.

Fewer number will achieve their goal, because they don't have an end date or the date they want to achieve their goal.

One more thing, you have to be specific with your goal. Being specific means you have to decide how much muscles that you want to add or how much fat you want to lose.

So the wish

Be specific

​

From wish to goal

Don't set unrealistic goals, like adding 30lb muscles in 3 months. These goals will make you lose motivation.

Set small but realistic goals that will motivate you while you achieve them.

Read the goal part above and if you can find one, write down the goal ( with date and; be specific)

Let's move to next part in your workout that depends on how busy or how lazy you are :P.

Find your time -The time you can devote to exercise

You have a goal, yes, a specific goal , now it's time to find out the time to workout.

This doesn't mean that you have to workout for hours if you have that much time like i did during my beginner stage.

I have spare time in evening, so after school i went to gym and lifted, lifted and return home.

If you are on tight schedule you can do a 10 min full body circuit training, that is enough to ramp up your metabolism.

Choose a time duration for your workout.

It can be 10 min to 60 minutes.

Research had shown that your body will be in a catabolic(muscle breakdown) state when your training extends above 60 min.

Try to keep your training inside this time limit.

Write down the time along with your goals.

The training frequency - number of times your muscles get trained in a week

Training frequency is how many times you train each muscles in 7 days. You can train 6 days, 5 days, 4 days, 3 days or even 2 days per week, but it's the frequency of training that you have to focus.

Training frequency depends on your recovery rate, workout intensity and volume.

If you are a person with faster recovery, then training each muscles 3 times/ week will not be a problem.

The other two factors are intensity and volume.

Beginners can choose a higher frequency training, as you will perform low intensity and low volume during beginner state.

As your intensity goes up, you have to change either frequency or volume in order to avoid over training.

When your frequency is fixed, you can either change the intensity or volume to induce muscle growth.

In weight training the intensity refers to the weight lifted. It is the amount of effort produced compared to effort possible.

Volume is product of number of reps, sets and weight lifted in a workout session; it is the amount of work done.

Volume= Reps *Sets *weight

Higher volume workout has been shown to increase hypertrophy. The research has shown some interesting things.

Beginners will get most benefit from low volume sets. As you progress you can increase your volume.

These are top three workout variables that can make or break your workout program.

We have an in depth article on 8 workout variables and how to tune them for supercharging your muscle growth.

Lets look at a training routine

​

Choose the training splits

You have a goal, workout duration and frequency written down.

Now it's time to create an outline for your workout. There are ton of possible combination that you can design.

There are lot of workout routines, search results on google for workout routines will give you 1000’s of workout routines.

I will give you different options and their benefits that can be considered while creating your workout routine.

I am planning to create workout routines that includes the following training splits and will be available for you in near future.

But you don't need to wait for that.

You can create your own workout routine today itself.

Muscles trained once per week

Muscles trained twice per week

Muscles trained three times per week

Full body workout Splits

No need to describe what a full body workout means- you have to hit every muscle part in your body.

The training intensity will be low and thus good for beginners. As they increase their training intensity, they can move over to upper/ lower split or push / pull split training.

Lets look at some exercise for each muscle part.

With full body split you can try any frequency whether it's 6 times, 5 ….1. But it's good to stay within 4.

Upper body / lower body split

While you progress from beginner, you can change the routine to upper/ lower split.

In a full body routine you will work one exercise per body part, while in an upper lower split you can do 2 exercise per body part.

You can use upper lower split to train your body once or twice, or three times per week.

Push pull split:

This split is based on the action you perform while doing workouts.

The exercise that pulls weights towards your body will come under pill workouts.

Pull workouts: all types of rows, biceps curls, shrugs,

The exercise in which you push weights away from your body come under push workouts.

Push workouts: bench press, push ups, dips, squat, leg press, shoulder press

You can use push, pull split to train your body once or twice, or three times per week.

Body part routines

Workout plan based on individual muscles. This routine helps to work your muscles at maximum intensity.

In other routines we cannot hit all muscles at same intensity. For eg: while doing full body routine; chest, quads and back are trained back and forth which can only be trained at a low intensity. You can’t hit all these major muscles in full intensity.Beginners can follow full body routine.

Body part routines will be most beneficial for advanced people.

So now you have a goal, duration of workout, frequency, and training splits. It will now look similar to this,

How many sets to target?

I do 3- 4 sets per exercise (This doesn’t include the warm up sets)

I mean 3-4 working sets, the thing you do to hit your goals whether its strength or muscle building.

Total working sets in a workout can be 15-20. It will reduce the chance for overtraining and helps you to hit each exercise at max intensity.

While in my beginner days i have done 10-15 sets for concentration curls alone. Thinking about a bigger biceps :(. Don't do these kind of mistakes.

Your worksheet:

How many reps to aim for?

Do you want to know the reps performed with those 10-15 sets in my concentration curls?

I have done it until i feel the pain in my biceps.

This type of training will not bring any muscle growth.

You have to set the rep structure based on your goals.

I want to tell you one important thing related to reps. I found this after i have corrected my beginner mistakes and started doing 3-4 sets and 10 reps.

I have seen a progress in the beginning, but after that i feel bored and changed workouts and i hit a plateau.

I don't know what happened, and i thought that i had reached my max.

Because i thought adding more muscle will need steroids.

Now i understand that it is easy to build muscles as a beginner. As we became so called advanced lifters (doing crazy workouts) the process become slower.

It took long time to find out the mistake i was making. Could you guess what the mistake i was making?

My regular bench press was similar to this:

Same weight, same reps week after week, the only change is week.

This routine eliminated my beginner mistakes as there were 10 reps and 4 sets per exercise. But i lost the key thing, progressive overload.

Yes overload:

If you want to add muscles you have to increase the weight you lift. So that your muscles will have the stimulus to grow, your muscles need a reason to grow.

Your body will recruit more muscles to lift heavy load.

Let's make a small change that will help to build more muscles.

How to do progressive overload?

• Increase the weight if you hit 10 reps on your last set in any exercise
•  Next week try to do 10 or 8 or 6 
• If you can do 10 reps, then increase the weight next week
•  If not, try to hit 10 the following week 
• Repeat

My problem solved 🙂

Add reps to your worksheet

​

The rest between sets - based on your Goals

Your energy reserve will recycle during this interval. Various rest periods will affect your lifting.

Rest interval less than 30s will increase your metabolic stress and it is beneficial for muscle growth.

But this can affect your lifts, as you cannot use your full potential.

Longer rest intervals(2+min) will be beneficial to powerlifters and for those who want to break their personal records.

Medium rest interval ( 60-90s)will be good for maximum muscle growth .Major share of your strength will be regained in 60s.

Your worksheet will contain these :

How much weight should be lifted?

Choose a weight that you can’t easily do 10 reps.

How can you find it ?

You can find it while workout. (So leave it blank)

While lifting add more weight if you can do 10 reps with ease. When it's hard for you to hit 10 reps you have find your target weight.

Lets look at my case in the very beginning and let's see bench press

It's really hard to hit 50 kg and as you can see my energy is spend to lift 10, 20, and 30 kg. If i want to grow i will have to lift weights that came around 50 kg ( 40 - 60).

Don’t spend your energy on very low weights, muscle building happens when you lift heavy.

But don't skip warmup sets, otherwise you will end up in injury.

Your working sets must use a weight near to this target weight.

How long should i exercise?

If you are on a busy schedule 10min or 30 min workout is good; as something is better than nothing.

45 min to 1 hour works best

I finish my workout in 60 min. That includes warm-up, workout, stretching and warm down.

Your workout must include warm up exercise, stretching and warm down exercise.

Warm up exercise:

This will prepare your body for workouts. Your heart rate and blood flow will increases. Your joints will be warmed up and will be ready to take the shock while workout. Your body temperature will increase.

Stretching:

Perform stretching after your workout.Do not perform it before warm up as this can weaken your muscles and lead to injury.

Warm down:

Do warm down exercise to bring your body back to resting state. Bring down the heart rate and blood flow back to normal. Warm up exercise when done in a slow pace can warm down. Continue warm down exercise til your heart rate had returned to normal.

Less time more effective training

If you are busy and don't have enough time you can try these workouts. I got this idea from nerdfitness.com. He told about alternate sets and circuits.

Circuit training:

In circuit training you will do one set from each exercise without rest. After completing all exercise you take 1-2 min rest and move on to do another set, complete the circuit with 3-4 sets.

Alternate sets or super sets:

In supersets or alternate sets you will be doing more in less time. You will combine 2 exercise and doing one set from both exercise and then take rest. Repeat 2-3 sets.

Which exercise to select and workout?

Your muscles( mine too) are complex sets of fibers that connects and pulls bones upon stimulus.

In order to hit those muscles and to have an overall development you have to use both multi joint and single joint exercise.

Compound exercise or multi joint exercise uses more muscle groups and thus provide max return to your effort. As it uses more muscle groups, your lifting could improve at a faster pace.

Isolation exercise or single joint exercise target one or two muscle groups, thus effective for lagging muscles.

You must use both in your workout routine.

If your goal is muscle building or strength then give more importance to compound exercise. Even If it is fat loss; compound exercise will do its work because it's your diet will determine whether you are going to lose fat or not.

Choose 2- 3 compound exercise and 1-2 isolation exercise for your workout routine.

Compound exercise will work secondary muscles along with your target muscles. The addition of isolation exercise will kill your target muscles without involving secondary muscles.

For beginners it's better to choose compound workouts over isolation workouts.

Workout routine design

Bonus Download: Get your FREE checklist to build the best workout routine.