Planning your movements

 Greetings, welcome to another one of my health and fitness posts. On this one I'm going to give you the basics of structuring an exercise routine, now you might be wondering 'Why do I need to make a routine, can't I just do whatever?' the answer is no you can't just do whatever, consistency is key to effectiveness and routines help us in keeping that consistency. 

Without further ado, let's get into it.

OH NO! WHERE DO I START? HOW DOES END?

Calm down, your fine. All good exercise routines start with a warmup and end in a cooldown. What are those you ask? Well, a warmup is a set of light activity exercises meant to prepare your body for the more strenuous activity of the 'body' of the routine by increasing heart rate and loosening the muscles.  What is the point you may ask? the point is to reduce or all out avoid injury, examples of warmup exercises are - jumping jacks, mountain climbers and jogging. WARNING! - static stretching is not a warmup, you are pulling on a cold muscle and could cause injury. Cooldowns do the opposite of warmups as they are meant to return your body to a state of rest or near rest, basically its meant to relax us after the workout and this is done by through a period of exercise gradually becoming gentler. Examples of cooldowns are usually jogging which slows into a walk, or static stretches, yes you read that right, static stretching is best used as a cooldown, or even better as its own routine.

WHAT DO I DO BETWEEN WARMUPS AND COOLDOWNS?

Well in between the warmup and cooldown is the workout itself, structuring your workout is actually pretty simple, follow along now.

Step 1 - Determine your goal: You have to know why you're working out, is it for sport? do you want six pack and abs? or do you want a big barrel chest and mountain-like shoulders? Knowing why you're working out and what you want out of it is crucial because it will help you create a goal specific plan, after all a track runner trains differently that a body builder. 

Step 2 - Determine your split: what this means is determine what days of the week you're going to work out, WARNING! no matter what the internet or social media tells you, you cannot work out 7 days a week. you will get injured. Beginners should work out 3-4 days a week, intermediate 4 -5 days and advanced athletes can go up to 6 days, but you'll notice even some pros don't work out that much and remember to add rest days into your routine as well.

Step 3 - Choose your exercises: there is a plethora of exercises to choose from so you're probably going to need some help on this one. Make sure you have around 1 - 2 compound exercises per day, compound basically means its training more than one muscle, examples being squats, deadlifts and pushups, and 4 to 6 isolated exercises, which focuses on certain muscle groups.

Step 4 - Calculate your reps and sets: this ties back in to determining your goal, so im going to break it down.

1-6 reps for strength

6-12 reps for muscle growth

More than 15 repetitions to build endurance

2-3 sets will help build muscular endurance (12 to 20+ reps)

3-6 sets will build muscular hypertrophy (6 to 12 reps)

3-5 sets will build muscular power (3 to 5 reps)

2-6 sets will build muscular strength (less than 6 reps)

Now this is just a general guide to help you understand structuring better, as I've always said, do not blindly follow others, do your own research and find what works for you. Before I end this, I have some important advice that I hope you take seriously. 1 - always stay hydrated when exercising. 2 - be aware of the weather and make preparations. 3 - make sure the are you exercise in is safe.

Thats all from me

IMPULSE