Notes
SMART Goals
How much time to devote for exercises
Weight loss
Muscle Growth
Compound exercises
Isolation exercise
Workout plateau
Lifting for strength and power
Lifting for increasing the size of muscles and strength
Lifting for muscle endurance
Core exercises
Determinate your starting point
Goals
- Write down your goals that you are trying to accomplish
- These goals will shape how you build your workout
- You can use SMART goals
- Specific - State what you want to accomplish
- Measurable - You need some metric to measure your body composition
- Attainable - They should be realistically attainable
- Relevant - They need to relate to your interests, needs, likes and abilities. Goals have to be generated by me only. It has to benefit you!
- Timely - It needs a timeline for completion. For example, loosing 5kg in a month.
How much time to devote
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You don’t have to have long sessions. Even 30/45 minutes will be enough
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You don’t have to do all exercises at once. You can do 3x10minute exercises and it will be as effective as 30 minutes workout during one session.
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realistic rate for weight loss is 0.5-1% of body weight per week.
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realistic rate for muscle gain is 0.25-0.5% of body weight per week
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The best workout is the one you stick with
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Compound exercise is a type of exercise that recruits multiple muscles at the same time. They improve aerobic endurance, muscular fitness and flexibility
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isolation exercise is a type of exercise that isolates the muscle and only exercises one. They are also great if you want to target specific muscle, because you don’t feel the muscle working.
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Compound and Isolation exercises have time and place in a training program.
Examples of compound exercises
- Quads – squats, lunges, one-legged squats, box jumps.
- Butt and Hamstrings – deadlifts, hip raises, straight leg deadlifts, good mornings, step-ups.
- Push (chest, shoulders, and triceps) – overhead press, bench press, incline dumbbell press, push-ups, dips.
- Pull (back, biceps, and forearms) – chin-ups, pull-ups, bodyweight rows, bent-over rows.
Pick one exercise from each category above for your workout, and you’ll work almost every single muscle in your body.
- You have to make some changes after a few weeks or months. Otherwise, you will hit a workout plateau
- squats, pull-ups, dips and deadlifts will, to some extend, work out your core as well, but if you really want to, you should add core exercises at the end of your program so thet you are not tiring out those muscles before doing other big lifts.
How many Sets and reps to do
- 5-15 reps per set
But it all depends on the goal
- If you are looking to burn fat and build muscles, keep the number of repetitions between 8-15 per set
- If you can do 15 reps without an issue, increase the weight
- If you want to focus on the size of your muscles, you have to do less reps per set (6-12)
- keep the rest between 1min to 1.5 minutes
- If you want to build the strength and power of muscles, you have to increase the weight and reduce the reps down to 5 max. You also want to have 1.5 up to 2 minutes rest
Rules
- Reps in the 1-5 range build super dense muscle and strength (called myofibrillar hypertrophy).
- Reps in the 6-12 range build a somewhat equal amount of muscular strength and muscular size (this is called sarcoplasmic hypertrophy). [35|35]
- Reps in the 12+ range build muscular endurance.
Sets
- 2-5 sets per exercise
- Higher reps with lower weight go closer to the lower end
- Lower reps and heavier weights, go closer to the higher end
You should keep your TOTAL workout number of sets for all exercises in the 10-20 set range with 5-15 reps per set
Rest
- 1-3 Reps (lifting heavy for strength/power): Rest for 3 to 5 minutes between sets.
- 4-7 Reps (lifting for strength): Rest for 2 to 3 minutes between sets.
- 8-12 Reps (lifting for size/strength): Rest for 1 to 2 minutes between sets.
- 13 Reps+ (lifting for endurance): Rest long enough to recover to allow you to do the next long-ass set!
How much weight should I lift
- Lift enough so that you can get through the set but not too much so you have no energy left at the end
- You should increase your weight when you can do two reps (or more) over your set goal
- You should increase your weight by
- 1-2kg upper body exercises
- 2-4kg lower body exercises
If you only use body weight, you have to make it more difficult. if you get past 20 reps and you are not tired, you have to mix things up
How to create supersets and circuit training workouts
- A highly effective framework for training
- Getting a cardiovascular workout by consistently moving from exercise to exercise
- You exercise different muscles back to back, giving each muscle group a chance to recover
- Increases the amount of calories burned in post workout window
- It is similar to crossfit
Supersets
Doing two exercises in a row for two different muscle groups
Example
- Performing a set of squats
- Waiting one minute
- Performing a set of dumbbell presses
- Waiting one minute
- Then doing your next set of squats
it is essentially exercising two different groups of muscles and one is resting while you are exercising the other one.
Circuit training
It is doing one set for every exercises, one after the other, without stopping.
There is no rest in between exercises
You repeat the process and do it 3-5 rounds
How often should I exercise
- 2-3 full body workouts per week are a good start
- Giving 48h to recover for your muscles, you will get stronger and will avoid injuries