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Time to Rock That Body! Stay on Track with These Workout Planner Templates

Fitness needs commitment. Plan your sweat sessions around your health goals and avoid exhausting repetition with my workout planner templates.

Workout Planning 101: How To Keep a Training Steak

Being in good health is the ultimate goal for most of us. Regular physical activity is crucial for daily well-being and long-term longevity. Science proved that people who exercise at least 150-300 minutes per week reduce their risk of early death by 21%.

Yet, despite knowing all the benefits of exercise, most of us struggle to maintain a regular routine. Let’s rectify that! Grab a free workout planning template from above and start building your daily/weekly training plan.

How to Create a Workout Plan?

To design a potent personal training plan start with your goals: What do you want to achieve? Do you just want to maintain a balanced level of physical activity or secure more specific outcomes (e.g. lose weight, increase upper body strength, or tone up your abdomen)?

Once you figure out your goals, work backward. Research various training regimens and exercise types that would work best for your body type, age, and current physical levels. Working with a personal trainer could help a lot here, though you can also go with one of the popular online workout programs (which are aplenty!).

The key is to choose the type of training you’d enjoy doing. Otherwise, your motivation will likely vanish too soon. For example, if you are not a fan of cardio, try keeping a yoga or stretching routine.

What to Include In Your Workout Plan?

A good workout plan incorporates different types of activities — aerobic, strength training, core exercises, balance training, and stretching. You don’t have to fit all of the above activities into one session, though, but spread them through your weekly workout plan.

When you are just starting out, you should also schedule regular rest days in between your fitness sessions — ideally, every three to five days. You should also take longer breaks after more intensive workout sessions e.g. vigorous cardio or heavy-weight lifting — and trim your breaks between lighter stretching or aerobics sessions.

To help you populate your workout planner template, here are several sample fitness activities you should consider including.

Brief Warm Up

Start every fitness session with a 10-15 minute warm-up. Healthcare professionals recommend having a two-stage warm-up:

  1. General 5-10 minute session of low- to moderate-intensity aerobic exercise. You can do jumping jacks, jog for a bit, or do some stationary cycling.
  2. Secondary 10-minute warm-up with dynamic stretches such as high knees, butt kicks, skipping, shuffling, etc.

This way you can properly warm up your muscles and progressively increase blood flow to better prepare your body for the longer workout session.

Core Exercise for Each Big Muscle Group

The larger muscle groups in our body are the hamstrings, glutes, quadriceps, chest, and back. A well-rounded workout plan includes a set of exercises for each of them. How many reps should you do?

American College of Sports Medicine recommends doing 8-12 reps max if you are just starting out your training routine. Once you cross the 6-month consecutive workout milestone, you can increase your repetition, but do time in some rest periods too!

Extra Exercises for Small Muscle Groups

The smaller muscle groups in our body are the shoulders, triceps, biceps, and calves. Don’t exclude them from your workout plan. You can throw in a couple of small muscle group exercises in between big muscle training or do lighter ones during your rest periods.

Final Stretching Round

Finish every workout with a 10-minute static stretching session. Stretching involves moving a muscle to the end of its range of motion and holding that position for 10-30 seconds or 30-60 seconds. Doing so helps you progressively build up your body strengths and endurance.

The above workout plan shouldn’t take longer than an hour. Training for longer as a beginner can result in discomfort and leave you badly sore on the bed day. Your goal is to avoid that at all costs if you want to maintain a regular workout streak.