How To Write Your Own Workouts

IF you have a body, you’re an athlete.

No matter your history, no matter your pain, no matter your lack of function or dysfunction.

We’re all familiar with how much a support group helps with achieving a goal. It’s amazing to have help with accountability and all of the in-betweens that life throws at us throughout our journey.

That being said, independence provides a cumulative effect that puts you more in the driver seat.

People love to make fitness confusing, so let’s see how we make it simple for you.

Often times we fall victim of “the more I sweat, the better the workout” or “the more sore I am, the better the workout".”

If this is you, it brings me joy to tell you that you do NOT need to be completely spent at the end of every workout.

A common metric that differentiates a good coach from a great coach is the ability to achieve the same results, with less stress. Anyone can make you sweat.

So… What constitutes a “workout”?

At its core, any workout is basically just a stimulus. So ask yourself, what’s the desired stimulus?

If you’ve never worked out, or it’s been more than six months since you last worked out, a fantastic place to start is walking around your block. Even if you workout regularly you can work up a great sweat over the course of 20-30mins. Total time elapsed is not a good measure of a good workout either.

Listen to your body

If you wake up the following morning feeling spry and ready to rock and roll, try adding an extra set or slightly more time the next time you perform the same or similar movement or workout.

Consistency Is Key

If you progress 1% each day you’ll be breaking world records within a few years. You’re way better off doing simple workouts 2-3 days each week for 12 weeks straight rather than 1 or 2 hard workouts every now and then.

Putting Pen to Paper

Step 1: Timeline

Determine how long you want to workout. This could be as long or as short as you’d like. the term “Workout” is subjective. Make time for it. This is you investing in your health. It can be equally as important as anything else you add to you calendar.

Step 2: Pick a Stimulus

What’s your desired stimulus? This is completely subjective but should be something you enjoy doing. Examples of this would be things like full-body exercises, isolation exercises, movement / mobility, or even single modalities like running, biking, or even burpees (gross).

Step 3: Warm-Up

Equally as important to the workout is the warm-up. If you remember the last time you got winded walking up the stairs, it wasn’t because you are out of shape, it’s because your body isn’t ready for work. Do it a favor and give it a little heads up. This should take no longer than 10 minutes and is as simple as getting your heart rate up, and moving your body.

Step 4: “The Workout”

This is the meat and potatoes. There is a wide variety of options here so let’s dig into a few. *Keep in mind, sometimes a warm-up and a cooldown without any “workout” is plenty of a workout if that’s where you’re at.

Traditional sets and reps: Select the exercises you’d like to do and perform a set amount of repetitions for a set amount of sets. This is great for isolation and compound movements you’d like to progress and get better at.
For example: Bicep Curls and Tricep Extensions for 3 sets of 15 repetitions for each set.
EMOM or “Every Minute on the Minute”: Determine what you’d like to accomplish and work towards completing that within the time and any time leftover is considered rest. This is a great way to manage rest, and accumulate a lot of work during a defined time.
For example: I want to do 15 bicep curls and 15 tricep extensions every 2 minutes for 6 minutes. Let’s say you get done after 1 minute and 20 seconds, you get to rest for 40 seconds until two minutes and then you complete another set. This is great to manage your rest time.
AMRAP or “As Many Rounds or Reps as Possible”: Similar to EMOM but without any rest associated.
For Example: I want to do 15 bicep curls and 15 tricep extensions for 6 minutes. You set a clock and get after it for the entire 6 minutes while resting as needed.

Lastly, a simple cool-down that mirrors the warm-up that allows your body to eliminate waste you’ve accumulated and get you on your way to feeling better. The only goal of a cool down is to continue to move at a very low intensity for at least 5 minutes before stopping completely.

Timeline → What you’re Doing → Warm-Up → Workout

Putting It All Together

The goal here is to have a wide variety of dots that you connect in your own unique way. Following this section will be a few example workouts you can use for inspiration, or as a starting point to progress from in your own unique way.

This is by no means an exhaustive list. There are an infinite amount of options available to you if you’re willing to get creative or ask for help.

Timeline:

10, 20, 30, 45, 60, 90 minutes… Pick your poison, but make time for yourself!

Modalities:

Single, Isolation, Compound Movements, Movement, etc...

Warm-Up

Heart Rate Examples: High Knees, Butt Kicks, 1-2min Jog, Jumping Jacks, Burpees, Mountain Climbers, Any cardio machines available

Simple Rotation Examples: Standing rotations, Russian Twists, Windmills, Knee Falls, Side Lying T-Spine

Workout

Single Modality: Basically doing the same thing for the entire workout like running, walking, biking, burpees, etc...

Intervals: Work / rest ratios designed to allow you to go faster with rest included.
For example, 40-second jog, 20-second walk for 15 minutes

Sprints: A great way to add intensity while keeping workouts short

For example, one 60 meter sprint every 2 minutes for 20 minutes

Tabata: A traditional 20s “on” followed by 10s “off” for 8 rounds totaling 4 minutes

For example: burpees, sprints, jumping jacks, anything.

Isolation: A more traditional way to target specific muscles or groups of muscles. The best way to do this is work opposite muscle groups that work together like biceps and triceps. Other examples include chest + back, and hamstrings + quadriceps.

This can also include an “upper-body” only day, versus a “lower-body” only day. The textbook answer is 48 hours of rest will be sufficient for your body to recover, although there is much debate around this topic it’s a good baseline to start from. The exception to this would be your core muscles as it (textbook answer) recovers more quickly.

Compound Movements Are just exercises involving multiple joints.

Examples of these are traditionally considered “full-body” movements like squats, deadlifts, burpees, Turkish getups, etc…
These account for the most “bang for your buck” as far as time goes.

Movement and “flow” are synonymous to me and are all the rage these days

The most traditional example would be yoga movements. For a wonderful resource check out How To Practice Yoga on instagram.
For a less traditional movement practice, check out the following resources
- Animal Flow is a great bodyweight movement practice involving six core components that you can incorporate into your workouts.
- Onnit Academy takes advantage of minimal equipment like sandbags, steel maces, kettlebells, and more.
- Gymnastic Bodies takes advantage of traditional gymnastics components redesigned for the everyday athlete of all skill levels.

Workout Examples

Additional PDF

20 Minutes
Running intervals
40s on, 20s off

20 Minutes
Walk

20 Minute E2MOM
Every 2 minutes complete the following
15 Box Jumps
30 Mountain Climbers
7 Burpees

30 Minutes
6 sets of the following:
10 Pushups
10 Situps
10 Squats

40 Minutes
4 sets of the following:
15 DB Deadlift
15 DB Shoulder Press
15 DB Curls
15 Russian Twist
-then-
4 sets of the following
15 DB Row
15 DB Bench Press
15 DB Tricep Extensions
15 Straight Leg Raises