The Workout
You did it! The heck with the excuses, today is your day. You’ve decided it’s time to reap the awesome benefits of working out, everyone else seems to be why not you too? But, you walk into the gym and whoa, there’s a lot of stuff in here, and what the heck is that thing for? Never fear! This article should provide you with a roadmap to designing your own workouts!
First let's break down our workout into the major components. The order in which we do things does matter so pay attention.
General Warm Up/Movement Prep
Specific Warm Up
The Lifts
Finisher
Cooldown
Celebrate Victory
1. General Warm Up/Movement Prep
When we first walk into the gym, our body isn’t necessarily in it’s highest state of readiness. It may be early morning, or maybe we just finished our workday. Either way, we have to start moving and grooving to get everything working right, but we don’t want to jump right into our heaviest/hardest work. We use a general warm up to get the blood flowing and heat up our body, to help lubricate our joints, to help lower our risk of injury and to help enhance our performance. The general warm up we use at RISE I call walking warm-ups and they are aimed to incorporate balance, stability, and mobility all into the warm-up
Walking Warm Up
Do each drill at a normal cadence for 8-10 yards
Walking Butt Kicks
Walking High Knees
Straight Leg Forward Kick
Hip Rotation (Doggy Door/Baby Gate)
Single Leg Deadlift Walk (The Balance Walk)
Lunge with Rotation to Forward Knee
Arm Circles (stationary or walking)
Arm Swings (stationary or walking)
This is just an example of what we do at RISE but the movements can be chosen and tailored to fit an individual’s needs. Got a bummy knee? Wall sits, bulldogs, TKE’s, butt kicks. Hips not feeling right? Booty bands, bridges, light KB swings. Shoulders being insubordinate? Execution . . . Just kidding! Arm circles, band pull apart, face pulls, scaption, light pressing. There is no right or wrong, just remember this is a warm up, we don’t want to run ourselves into the ground before our main work so pick lighter weights, use moderate rep ranges and when you feel good we move on to our next part.
**Bonus** Another cool method for warming up would be to pick about 3-4 movements, preferably compounds. With each movement pick about 50-60% of the weight you would normally use. Do each movement as a vertical circuit for 12-15 reps. For example, dumbbell bench into lat pulldown into air squat into kettlebell swing then rest. Repeat 2-3, it’s okay to sweat but if you feel the warm-up hampering your performance the weight is too heavy or the reps are too high.
2. Specific Warm Up
The specific warm up is just a lighter, perceptually easier version of the main workout. Some people may refer to this phase as “warm up” sets. With running, walk a little bit first, then bring it up to a light jog and when your body feels ready (2-10 minutes generally speaking) you can begin to pace as desired. When you are lifting a barbell, you always start with an empty bar. I do not care if you bench 50 or 500, you are starting with an empty bar and building up to the work sets (usually intervals of 20-90 lbs are used depending on max load). With dumbbells, if working in a relatively lighter range (5-15 lbs for most people) you may skip this part but if the dumbbells are getting heavy, I would recommend working up similar to how we do with a barbell. The benefits from a specific warm up include better form, better performance, and injury reduction.
3. The Lifts
Entree time let's eat up! This is what you got out of bed for. This is the fun part. There is no one best way to workout, any time we combine consistency with hard work we are going to have a positive outcome. The main factors to be aware of are the levels of enjoyment, the challenge, and the reward. It is very important you enjoy what you are doing in the gym. It doesn’t have to be the most fun you’ve ever had (although it can be!) it should be something you look forward to. That makes it easier to show up. The workout must be challenging, if we are not giving our body a reason to change it won’t. We have to be able to feel it’s benefits. In the beginning it may be more mental, the feeling of accomplishment after pushing one’s self. After a few weeks/months (this is a long process but that's part of the beauty) you should be feeling the activities of daily living getting a little bit easier.
Ok, so we all know there are 8 billion different ways to exercise out there and we’ve all been bombarded by the magazines and the infomercials. Again, there really isn’t a right or wrong way per say but there are definitely efficient and inefficient workouts. Here is a template that will help break things down a little bit but there will be an upcoming article on a few different goal-based templates. (Link if I can learn the internet in the future)
Full Body Circuit Functional Patterns
Pattern Exercise
Push Push-Up, Bench
Pull DB Row, TRX Row
Push Shoulder Press
Pull Lat Pulldown, Pull-up
Squat Air Squat, Goblet Squat
Hinge Deadlift, RDL, Single Leg Deadlift
Step Step Up, Lunge, Split Squat, Side Step
Rotate Russian Twist, Put it on the Shelf, Digger
The number of sets (how many you do) and reps (how many times you do it) will vary based on goals and experience but generally speaking 3-5 sets of 6-20 reps will work. You want to be using a combination of weight and rep range that makes it quite difficult to finish. If you’ve completed the set thinking you can do 15 more, you’ve got more work to do, keep going. If you’ve completed the set thinking you can do 2 more, you’ve earned your rest.
4. Finisher
Carpe Diem friends you are almost there! Now, we are onto the finisher! Dun, dun, dun. With the finisher you have a few different options but I am going to highlight 3.
Cardio Sprint
These don’t have to be actual sprints, although they could be. I tend to pick the battle ropes, air bike, or sled a lot for this. We want something extreme in effort and short in duration. The tabata interval (20 on 10 off 8 rds) is awesome here. 30-60 seconds of 100% effort followed by 30-120 seconds of rest for roughly 4-6 rounds would suffice.
Cardio Long
A very common question people have involves the timing of cardio. Before or after, am I right? I do understand some people like to start with cardio and while you will not spontaneously combust if you choose to do that, you are jeopardizing some progress. When lifting heavy weights, we want to be able to utilize all of our energy. If you just ran 4 miles, the legs are not going to quite have the energy for your squats, leading to decreased performance, decreased overload, and decreased muscle and strength gains. We also utilize glycogen (stored energy in the form of a carbohydrate) during exercise. Lifting is a glycolytic event, meaning it uses that glycogen as its main fuel source. Long distance running, while using glycogen, is a mainly oxidative (different system) event. TL:DR (Too long didn't read) Our running will hurt our lifting but our lifting doesn’t hurt our cardio
**Exception** If you are running for a goal and not just trying to burn calories, I would recommend running on different days than you lift or at least allow some time in between. A heavy squat session will negatively affect your run times.
Burnouts
No, not my clique in high school (sorry guys), burnouts are a great way to squeeze the last little bit out of a workout. I would not recommend these on every movement but we can pick a body part we want to work on or one that we have already fatigued on the workout and use a light weight and do super high rep sets to absolute failure. This is not for the faint of heart and make sure you are working within your means. Let’s get an example. Today, I did my functional movement circuit but the back of my arms have really been bothering me. If this flapping doesn’t stop people will be hurt. I know there is no such thing as spot reduction, but I also know I can spot enhance so I’m going to smash these triceps. I know I can safely perform tricep pushdowns to failure so I pick those (as I was thinking I just pictured skullcrushers to failure and I remembered they are called skullcrushers for a reason). I pick a light to moderate weight and I get to work. I did my first set, 35 reps pretty impressive I’d say. I walk around for about 30 seconds and yell at the corner of the room to assert dominance and I go again, 17 reps, yikes. The shouting and pacing continue and I go in for one more, 8 reps. At the point I can’t bend my arms, driving home seems laughable. I won. With the burnouts, aim for 30-50 reps. The amount of sets you need will depend but when the rep number drops significantly or you can no longer perform the movement you are good.
5. Cooldown
WE MADE IT! Fight or flight activated. Threat perceived and conquered. Mission flippin accomplished (Tom Cruise ain’t got nothing on us). But, before we hit the showers and conquer the world, we have to get back to normal and get this recovery things started. When we exercise we really tap into the nervous system, in particular the sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight/excitement). We are happy that we can call upon this system when we need it, but we need to be able to rest and recover too. That’s where the cooldown comes in. There isn’t a particular cooldown method that will increase your gains tenfold, but these methods should help you feel better and energized after the workout.
Walk. A light brisk pace of about 5-10 minutes. This is a stroll through the park type of speed not a buy the last Tickle Me Elmo or get this elbow type of speed.
Breathe. Deep diaphragmatic breathing is one of the few ways we have to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, our relaxation station. Place your hand below your belly button for a physical cue. Breathe through the belly for an audio cue. Imagine the belly inflating and deflating for a visual cue.
Stretch. Some static stretching always feels good after a workout. Regardless of what you worked out today. Stretch the whole body. I like starting from the head and working my way down, first doing all the stretches in a standing position before I lower to the floor. A 5-10 minute yoga routine would also be awesome here.
You can use all three methods here or just pick and choose. I like to be conscious of breathing while I’m stretching so it kind of accomplishes two things at once.
6. Celebrate Victory
We’ve conquered the dragon. We’ve saved the princess (haha Bowser I win again). We’ve restored order to the Force. But don’t get too comfortable, for tomorrow (or 1-2 days), we go again!
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