Key Principles in Creating Your Own Workouts and Living a Fit Life

Creating your own workouts is similar to the proverbial "give a person a fish and they'll eat for a day; teach a person to fish, they'll eat for a lifetime."

In college and even after college I became known as the go-to guy to get a workout. Friends and family routinely asked me to create workouts for them. I love creating workouts for people. I enjoy learning about their goals and helping them reach those goals.

But, once you know how to create and structure your own workouts, you'll always be able to create fantastic workouts and progress your fitness ... whatever your fitness goals. However, you need to learn the basics first by using proven workouts and actually doing them.

Where do you start with designing your workouts?

You start where everybody starts, and that's using workouts provided to you and/or that you buy or learn from personal trainers. The workouts I give away for free (see the end of the article) are varied and can help you achieve any fitness goal.

Once you use the workouts and understand what works for you and your fitness goals, you can deconstruct the workouts so that you can create your own. This big-picture approach works for all types of fitness including building muscle, burning fat, running, yoga routines, bodyweight-only workouts.

I worked with personal trainers for years when I started working out. When I got into yoga, I attended hundreds of classes, took private lessons and bought loads of books , DVDs and joined an online yoga video club. When I started running (fairly recently), I read about running and various running training programs.

All of this learning took more than 15 years. I still buy all kinds of workout programs, books , talk to personal trainers ... I'm always learning fitness.

Next ... Determine your fitness goal(s)

Workouts are designed to achieve a goal. It may be building muscle mass. It may be losing weight or getting rid of unwanted fat. It may be running a marathon. It may be becoming more flexible. It may be (as it is for me), a combination of these goals.

In order to create the right workout for you, you must identify your main goals. Don't be surprised if your goals change over time. Mine certainly have. Let's use my present goals as an example.

Presently, I'm in a muscle building phase. I took some time off from the gym recently because my wife and I had our first child. He was colicky for 5 months, which meant our lives were in turmoil. I hated not working out, but home demands required it. However, now that our son is much more manageable, I've returned to the gym with a vengeance and am eager to add muscle mass.

But, I have a long-term plan. I don't like being too bulky, so once I add some mass, I'll ramp up my cardio, lower my rep count and reduce my caloric intake to get lean.

All the while, I'll continue stretching . Stretching is incredibly important to me because it prevents injury and I feel much better. Therefore, no matter my primary fitness goal (get bigger, leaner or improve cardio performance such as running), stretching (I like yoga ) is part of my regimen.

Since I know my present goals for the next 3 months ( add muscle mass), my workout is a mass-building regimen with an emphasis on plenty of weight lifting.

I'm a believer and practice well-rounded fitness that includes 3 elements:

Resistance training
Cardio
Stretching

Almost every workout regimen I design for myself includes all three. What changes from regimen to regimen is the focus or emphasis. Right now I dedicate 60% of my workout time to resistance training. However, in 3 months I may flip it to 40% and dedicate more time to cardio. Stretching usually takes up 10 to 15% of my fitness time, unless I get into a yoga kick (which happens when I need a resistance training break).

Understand the fundamentals

In order to design your workouts, you need to know the fundamentals. Each discipline has fundamentals. For weight lifting there are fundamental exercises, set volume/order and rep count. For cardio, there are fundamental principles depending on your goal (burning fat, increasing VO2 max, etc.). For stretching , there are fundamental types of stretches (forward bends, backbends, twists, inversions and strength-improving poses).

The best way to learn the fundamentals, is to workout. There's nothing like doing something to learn something. Once you learn the fundamentals in any particular discipline, you can start tweaking existing workout programs or design from scratch.

Never stop learning

Once you get to the point where you can design your own workouts, it's important to never stop learning. I probably buy or request or seek out new workouts every week. I read other fitness websites, magazines and buy workout/fitness regimens regularly. I speak with personal trainers at my gym. I observe what other people are doing in the gym.

Ruts are not good

I know some people do the same exercises for years. If that works for them, great. It doesn't work for me. I need to mix it up. I love variety. My goals change. I prefer a well-rounded fitness approach than a narrow fitness approach. That's just me.

Don't jump around too often (metaphorically speaking)

Many people starting to work out, want results fast and therefore jump around to different workouts every week. This isn't very good. You need to see a workout regimen through in order to achieve desired results. Most workout regimens are 2 to 6 months and should be completed.

Changing your workout need not be monumental

You don't have to change your workouts from primarily weight lifting to primarily cardio. If building muscle is primary goal and remains your primary goal, stick with a focus on weight lifting. However, you can chance the exercises, set volume/order and rep count to incorporate change and variety.

The same goes with cardio. You can change from primarily running to adding 30% cycling into your routine. Or add swimming. The point is changing your workouts need not be a massive shift or monumental change.

The most important point is ...

to actually workout consistently. Even if you get busy, try to get 10 or 20 minutes in a day. When I couldn't go to the gym for several months, I did mini-stretch routines at home. I walked outside often ( walking our infant son in the stroller was one thing that stopped the crying for 30 minutes). I did what I could and it helped. I did gain some unwanted weight (healthy meals took a bit of a backseat as we were in survival mode), but I'm back on track and will be back in peak form in no time.

Whatever you do, don't ...

Regret missing workouts, falling off of your diet or leaving the gym early. Regret is a waste of energy. It's one of those emotions that sabotage many people. It's horrendously negative. Many people who fall into a regret rut, stop working out or blow off their diet because the momentum was lost.

Instead, if you take a break or a detour, view it as a well-needed break or detour. That's okay. Just get back into your regimen as soon as you can. I've had many breaks and detours over the 15 plus years I've been into fitness. The key is that I always returned fairly quickly and the result is long-term health. Had I stopped when I was 22 because I took a few months off, I'd be in a terrible state of health. It's the long-term consistency that's key.