How To Build Your Own Workout Routine

Designing a workout plan can be intimidating and easy to overcomplicate. After all, there are an infinite number of exercises and strategies to choose from, but the truth is: you don't need a personal trainer to have a custom, intelligent, well-designed workout program. This guide will equip you to create one for yourself.

Lay Out Your Objectives

The first step in designing your routine is to determine your fitness goals. Do you want to fit into a certain pair of jeans? Do you want to complete a triathlon? Figure out what you're trying to accomplish and write it down.

Figure Out a Schedule

Ask yourself when you're free to workout and how much time you want to dedicate to working out. Keep in mind that consistency is the number one driver of results when it comes to working out. If you can do an hour a day, that's great! But maybe you work full time or take care of a family, so 30 minutes twice a week is all you can commit. Either way, this is important to decide before you plan your workouts because the less time you commit, the more efficient your workouts need to be in order to hit your objectives.

Pick something you can stick to. The best routine in the world is worthless if you don't do it. If you don't think your goals will be motivating enough to stick to your schedule, try setting up fail-safe measures to keep yourself on track. Here are some methods for preventing motivation loss.

Another important factor when coming up with your schedule is factoring adequate rest days. In general, 5 days of working out and 2 days of rest is ideal. There's a lot that goes into choosing the intensity level and types of exercises, but for now, just choose which days you'll be training and which days you'll rest each week.

At this point, you should have something like this:

Where Will You Workout?

This step will help you determine your training options. Do you have access to a gym? Do you have equipment at home? Do you want to workout outside at the park or in a local swimming pool? No option is better than another, but you can better address your objectives with your 'where' in mind.

Assign General Fitness Categories to each workout day

Don't worry about the specific movements you'll do. Think about your fitness objectives and what type of exercise will address those objectives. Examples of exercise genres you could use are endurance, strength, balance, or flexibility. It's possible that all of your objectives are strength related, so you will work on strength for every workout day. However, if you have goals that tap into different categories of fitness, it's a good idea to dedicate each workout to only one.

Here's what your plan may look like at this point:

Assign Specific Activities to Each Workout day

Now is the time that you take into account the amount of time you have, where you'll be exercising, and your fitness objectives to program specific workouts. Sit down at the beginning of each month and dedicate time to creating a wide variety of workouts. There's nothing like doing the same thing over and over to hit the point of burnout. Choose several different movements that take advantage of the time block and location while focusing on the fitness category you've specified. If you're having a hard time getting creative. Look up workouts that fit your program (ex: 1 hour at home strength workout).

Here's what the plan should look like now.

Adjust Monthly

In order to keep making progress, you must create new goals as you begin to achieve you initial goals, and adjust your workouts to ensure they remain challenging. It's quite possible that at the end of the month, you haven't reached your goals yet, and you feel that your workouts are still sufficiently challenging. That's okay! The idea is to set aside a time to reflect on your progress and make any necessary changes at the end of each month. Most likely, you'll need to increase the weight, volume, or relative intensity of the workout to ramp up the challenge.

Extra Tips

We recommend you monitor your progress and record milestones. It is not only a key motivation tool, but a helpful guide as you approach your month-end program adjustments.

Share your program with friends and have them share theirs with you. This can be helpful for accountability and hopefully give you cool new ideas of workouts you can incorporate in your plan.

Check out the rest of the Pantheon Blog for articles on how to start running, how to start strength training, how to start an at-home yoga practice, and many more fitness resources.