How to plan your workout - Part 1

Don't know where to start? No worries, this will guide you plan your journey

Before you get your muscle pumped, wait! There are few things to know prior to your training session. First things first. You must first find out what your training goal is, as this will impact the rest of your training program. It's quite different to train for fat loss and muscle retention from to train for muscle gain. So you have to decide what your goal is.

Goal setting - What would you like to change the most?

The most useful tip for determining your initial goal is asking yourself this question: "What is it that you'd like to change the most?" It is the factor that will drive you through hard training sessions. In the context of the people whom this article is written for, followings will settle your first step.

• Is it the amount of body fat you have?

• Is it the amount of muscle mass you have?

• Is it a lack of muscle endurance?

• Is it a muscular imbalance?

• Is it a lack of flexibility?

• Is it having poor cardiovascular fitness?

• Do you simply want to look better naked?

Forest : Goal

Once you found out what you'd like to change, think of this as your long-term final goal and then set little 'stepping' goals between you now and you in the end. This is because your goal is most likely something big like lose 20 kg or gain 10 kg of muscle, which might sound daunting and have frustrated you already. For this long-term goal, you might set a time frame for a year or two. It's an entire forest you want to conquest.

Little areas of forest : Few Checkpoints

Now let's break entire forest into several areas so that we can conquest one by one. It's easier to manage and plan ahead for path we want to take. For example, you might plan to lose weight at a rate of 2 kg for every 6 months. You could go as far as to set an actual goal weight to reach within that time frame.

Single tree : Daily plan

We now want to pass through trees one by one to go from one area to a different area. It's the time for you to plan details so that you can focus on day by day and week by week. For example, your plan might be eating less calorie of 200kcals daily and training 3 times a week with a focus on burning fat.

Little advice

My advice to readers is to think though and pick one goal and stick with it at least six months. If you try out many things in short period of time and change your mind too much you’ll make minimal progress towards several goals in the time one plan would have taken you to make outstanding progress towards one goal.

Take the time to focus on what it is you want to achieve and then take some more time to carefully plan out your goals. We've seen many people starting out their workout without doing this, and they stop doing it few weeks later. We don't want you to be in that category. Also, be realistic on expectations and time frames when planning ahead.

If you do this work up front, then you won't be frustrated not seeing results few months down the road. You are the guy from the picture above thinking ahead how to conquest your fitness journey. Remember, ask yourself, “What is it that you'd like to change the most?” and start there.

Conclusion

Craft a big picture around the thing you'd like to change before breaking it into increasingly more manageable and achievable steps with your medium and short-term goals.

• Decide what your want

• Figure out what you need to do to achieve this

• Set a long-term goal

• Break your long-term goal into medium-term goals that show clear progression

• Set short-term goals to help guide your day to day and week to week action

Let's go for it!