Jacked Fitness

How to do Your Programming

Workout Frequency

First of all is your frequency, this is a very important part of your training. You should have at least one rest day. Your rest day or days are as important as your lifting or workout days when you have the right intensity. How much you should train depends on the intensity of your workout as well as your level which will effect your recovery time. When you're just beginning or around the intermediate level, stick to one workout a day, three to five days a week. If you're more advanced you could go five or more days a week, and or workout more than once a day. These numbers are assuming that you're working hard every workout.  Remember that rest is important. Keeping that in mind I actually workout every day, but I don't kill myself every day, I'll have one or sometimes two days where I just have an easy workout or work on a specific skill, such as a muscle up or have an easy workout on a specific muscle I'd like to work more on, such as trapezius. I like this system and I think that with it I see maximum results.The main point of this paragraph is to show you that rest is important, show you what a good layout to your gym schedule should be, and show you what I like to do for workout frequency.

Designating Days

Chest Day, Leg, Arm day, we've all heard these terms but how do you incorporate these into your workout. It's important to have balance in your workout and not just come into the gym and curl every day. There are multiple ways to hit everything you need to in your workouts. It's important though to know exactly what you want to hit in the gym before you go you want to get the most out of your workout. First of all are full body workouts, I do these sometimes. They're good for hitting a lot of muscle groups, they're very flexible, and you can get a good range of movements and hit a broad range of muscles. However I don't feel that these are the most effective workouts and I would try to stick to focusing on one or two muscle groups. So, having a designated day for each muscle group, I love this strategy you can really hit the different the muscle groups and really stimulate growth. This also allows for the different muscle groups to have time to rest. Lastly you can break up your workouts in push and pull exercises, this is good for working certain muscles while giving other muscles a rest, this also allows you to balance your pushing exercises with your pulling exercises. I like to combine the push pull and the different muscle group training ideas together and I think that this allows for some of the best results. I'll do arm and back pulling exercises one day and pushing arm and chest exercises the next. I'll also do some push or pull days and some days designated for certain muscle groups. This doesn't mean that I don't also have some full body days. It works best and I think that you will see the best results when you combine these three.

The Workout

You know what day you want to train and you know what muscle you're training, now comes the final step the actual workout. A workout should really I think have four areas when you're working for that perfect physique or elite level fitness. (I'm going to refer to "lifting" a lot in this section but for me that doesn't solely refer to weights, it can also refer to bodyweight exercises) A quick lifting warmup, a lifting session, a quick lifting cool down, and I believe a cardio section. Your warmup should consist of some stretching and some light lifting just to get you blood flowing. (ex. a few pushups or some air squats, or a light bench) This quick warmup is really essential for avoiding injury and getting the most out of your workout session. There are different ways to go about your lifting session. You can do multiple sets of the same exercise or you can superset different exercises. When doing the same exercise for multiple sets you can really focus on that one exercise and the the muscle group that it's working. For the best results with this approach you should do at least three sets this is really optimal and you probably won't activate the muscle enough if you do less than three. for the superset approach you perform one set of one exercise and move onto another exercise without rest in between. You then finish your superset, which could be two or three or any number of exercises, you wait 1-2 minutes then you do the set again, this could go on for really any number of times. You should just pick a set number that works for you. You can superset any exercises for any muscle groups, they can be the same or different, you could superset a high rep bodyweight exercise with a lower rep weight exercise for the same muscle group (ex. Bench Press and Pushups) or two totally different muscle group exercises (ex. dips and squats). Arnold Schwarzeneggar recommends supersetting pushing exercises with pulling exercises (ex. Bench Press and Pullups) and I really agree with him I love this method and I love supersetting in general. It's a great way to maximize the efficiency of your workout, maximize muscle stimulation, and gives you cardio benefits. As far as rep numbers go you should try to keep it in the golden range of 8-12, I personally like 10. These numbers allow you to make good strength gains, could growth, and good muscle stimulation while making sure you aren't doing much damage to the tendons and ligaments. Higher reps will allow you to also make some strength gains, but will really help with muscular endurance. If you're doing bodyweight exercises like pushups, and can do 50, but you want to hit that 8-12 rep range try adding some explosion to them. So instead of doing normal pushups do clapping or superman pushups. There are countless variation on many of your standard calisthenics exercises. Now onto the cool down your cool down should resemble your warmup, some stretching, light lifting, and a foam roller rollout. A good cool down can prevent tightness and lactic acid buildup. a cardio component is also very essential when looking to get the results that you're probably looking for. Even just performing ten minutes of cardio before, during, or after your lifting, helps with cardiovascular health and endurance, plus is great for fat loss, and has plenty of other health benefits. The heart is the most important muscle in the body. Doing some cardio greatly increases your athleticism and will help you achieve your goal physique. Any exercise can be cardio if you do it at a high enough frequency and for a long enough period. That's really the basics for planning your workout.

I hope now that you know more about workout programming and have a better idea how to plan your workouts and remember

Keep on the Grind