﻿hey there I'm Staci and I am a coach here at Nerd Fitness
today I'm going to be talking about building your own workout and
specifically I'm going to be going over a methodology that I use when building
workouts for my clients now it might seem complicated at first
but once we learn a few of the basic principles
you'll know how to do it too so let's jump right in
now we might be wondering what's the best workout plan for me
the first thing that we need to ask ourselves are actually a few different
questions and the first one is really going to be
what are my goals so for example are you trying to
lose weight are you trying to build muscle are you
going for your first 5k or maybe your first push-up or pull-up
now whatever your goals are it's always good to write them down
so we are aware of what we are trying to accomplish
our body adapts specifically to the demands that we put on it so we want to
make sure that the exercises and the workouts that we are doing
are going to be the ones that help the most
now if you're trying to lose weight you're going to want to pick tough
exercises that use a lot of energy and if you're trying to build muscle
we're going to want to work increasingly challenging exercises that really tax
our muscles
and then if you want to work towards your first push-up or pull-up
you better be doing some easier variations of those
in order to help get you there so next we have to ask ourselves
how much time can i exercise each week because knowing how much time we have
is going to further help shape our workouts now if you're able to work out
more often throughout the week you'll be able to include
a larger variety of exercises in your workouts
so I'll often put different exercises in the second workout of the week to give
some variety and build some strength in different ways
if you're not working at as often it's better to kind of keep to a smaller
group of exercises that we repeat frequently
in order to get better at them faster another important question is how long
do i have to work out so do we have an hour 30 minutes or maybe even less than
that if we don't have a lot of time to work
out we're naturally going to have to pick fewer exercises and
therefore we should make them more challenging exercises to make the
most use out of our time so lastly we need to ask where are we
going to work out are we going to work out at a gym
do we want to get our workouts in at home is maybe there may be a
park nearby that we can get our workouts in there
so knowing where we're going to be doing the majority of our workouts will help
us figure out what equipment we have available
if any and then you know what exercises are possible to have in our plan
so by now if you've been following along we should know what our goals are
how often we can work out how long those workouts can be and also
where we will be doing those workouts and the answers to all of these
questions are going to change how your workout
looks however for beginner just getting started
there's going to be a lot of things in common so let's
look at some of those similarities
now for someone just getting started out i'd actually recommend that we
work as many muscle groups in one workout as
possible so instead of monday being chest day and thursday day
leg day we'll look at working out the entire body
every single time we work out so this full body workout will be quite
challenging to start and will help us improve in a
shorter amount of time so we'll build this full body workout
with a lot of compound exercises now a compound exercise is one
where multiple joints and muscle groups are used
especially to move around so for example if we look at a push-up
we're using our chest shoulder and triceps in order to
move and to make that push-up movement happen
now this is opposed to something like a chest fly which primarily works the
chest and only moves through the shoulder joint
that means if we were going to do a chest fly we would need to do
another movement to specifically focus on the triceps
in order to do everything that the push-up does
now there's a time and place for these types of movements and these types of
workouts
but breaking things up this way is not the most efficient way to do things
especially when you are just starting out or
if we only have very limited time to work
out [Music]
it can also help to think about compound exercises in terms of movement that your
body does naturally so we've got pushing and pulling for our
upper body then we've got squatting stepping
picking things up off of the ground for our lower body so if we're looking
at our pushing muscles which is going to be the chest
shoulder and triceps we are going to want to include things like the push-up
bench press overhead press or dips if we look at our pulling muscles which
is going to be our back biceps and forearms
we can do things like dumbbell or body weight rows
chin-ups and pull-ups now for lower body if we want to focus
on the front side of the legs which will be our quads
we will want to think about including things like a squat
step up or lunge if we want to think about the back of the legs so more of
our glutes and our hamstrings we do things like
deadlifts kettlebell swings or back extensions lastly including
something like a static hold even though it's not a movement per se
can be really beneficial especially for beginners so we'll look at something
like a plank or a side plank which will really help
build strength in the core and the lower back if you can get in at least one
pushing exercise one pulling exercise and one lower body
exercise you're gonna get in a pretty solid full body workout
now if you're able to work out multiple times throughout the week then you can
pick another push pull and lower body exercise to create a
second workout then what you'll do is just
alternate between those two workouts and that would be your training program
and then as you get stronger we look for ways to make those workouts more
challenging over time
so now we know what to do but how much of it should we be doing
we cover more about sets and reps in another video
but if you're just starting off then let's keep things super
simple and look to complete about three sets
of each exercise with a total number of reps
being around 10 to 20. now if you can't do that many reps right now
no worries that's totally fine just do what you can and focus on increasing
that work over time whether it's increasing the number of
reps that you do or increasing the amount of weight that you are lifting
now if you want a little more guidance just keep watching because what we are
going to do next is go over the beginner body weight workout that a lot of people
have used
to get started how that's formatted and how we can modify that for
our individual needs [Music]
I generally recommend a full body workout two to three times a week
we'll give ourselves at least 48 hours to rest and recover between
those workouts now this strategy gives you enough
work to adapt and to grow back stronger while also giving you plenty of time to
rest and recover while keeping things simple
now on the days that you are not working out really you can do any fun activity
that you enjoy so you could do some light yoga play
ultimate with your friends go for a nice long walk or you could
even play video games really whatever you want it should just
be a light activity that gets you ready for your next workout
now at the start of this video we asked you to look at how many times a week you
would be able to work out and if the answer to that is one that's
totally fine we will work with what you have available
if you can add a second day then you know you'll start to see some
progression happen a little faster but don't let
those details keep you from starting working out once a week still gives you
a ton of benefits over not working out at all
i've had a ton of clients see success with only one workout a week especially
when they're first starting out you know a really good workout once a week
coupled with some nutritional changes is plenty for
a beginner to start really seeing changes and making progress
now if we're struggling to fit that one workout into our calendar each week
it might be helpful to reflect back at the questions that we answered when we
first came in so looking at you know
how often how long
and where do we want to get our workout in so if we're struggling getting in a
longer workout once a week maybe we start off with a shorter one um
that you know we definitely have time for
and it's only 10 to 15 minutes versus say 45 minutes to an hour
in addition say we had planned on getting our workouts in at the gym and
we just can't seem to get there maybe we start off working out at home
and build up to get that habit in place before we start to think about trying to
fit in things like the gym and all of these extras the
most important thing here is going to be what you will
consistently do because consistency is what brings
progress [Music]
all right so let's leave you with a workout that you can do
today at home with no equipment at all it's called our beginner body weight
workout and i will link to the full workout article
in the description below in this workout you'll do
three sets three times through of 20 bodyweight squats
10 push-ups 10 lunges per leg 10 rows per arm a 15 second front plank
and then 30 jumping jacks now if you can get through that
three times great if you can only get through once
or part of that round that's totally fine too
just do the best that you can today and then the next time you do it try to
improve
on either the number of reps that you did the number of rounds that you did
or the difficulty of the exercises that you did
now if you're unable to do one of the recommended exercises just look for a
similar movement for example if we look at those 10
push-ups I know that the majority of my clients
come in not being able to do a single push-up so 10 can be really
scary to kind of look at right but instead what we're going to do is i just
have them do it from a countertop or a wall
or some sort of elevated surface so that we can still get in that same movement
without having that same level of difficulty and we will work on
increasing that difficulty over time as they get stronger
another example here is those jumping jacks if high impact movements don't
work for you or say you live in an apartment
on a higher floor just do step jacks where you're stepping instead of jumping
if the number of reps look too high like say those 20 squats or those 10 lunges
just reduce the number of reps so say you'll start out doing
5 10 and then increase the total number of reps
over time now the beginner body weight workout uses those compound exercises
that we talked about so it hits every single muscle group in
your body and some variation of it is a great place to start with your training
so there you have it remember when we're looking at building a workout we want to
start with looking at what our goals are what our available time is and where we
will be getting our workout in look to start with full body workouts
using compound exercises those exercises they use multiple
muscles at the same time like squats push-ups and rows you can
also think of those compound exercises as movement patterns
and how the body naturally functions so get a pushing movement a pulling
movement and a leg movement and really you're
well off hit up each of these exercises for three
rounds of 10 to 20 reps each and aim to complete
these full body workouts one to three times per week
with all of this information though the most important thing is to
just get started so don't overthink it get in the work and go have fun
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