How to create a total body workout routine.
Work with what you have.
As we move into the fall and winter season, I usually back off my miles and look to gain more body strength. In a couple weeks, while technically I can still ride, biking in the freezing cold becomes more work than it’s worth. Running is still great in the cold weather, but I like to give my body a break on the miles to heal up a little bit before the spring campaigns.
Many times, I’ll come out of the fall race season nursing some sort of volume-related injury. It’s a good season to step back a little and let my body heal. For me, It’s just a nice cadence. It’s not just physical. If I have been loading up the miles or the intensity for a fall race I’ll be mentally burnt out on training as well.
Take a break? Yes, but not really. I’m not the kind of person who can sit on the couch and watch my waistline expand from inactivity. I still need to do something. That something is typically more strength work.
If I could get to a gym, I could use their weights or maybe even get into the pool for some laps. But this year, in the apocalypse, it’s just not a viable option for me. That leaves me with having to make up my own workout routines with limited space and equipment.
It turns out that this is not as big a hurdle as you would think. Even when I am training heavily I’m still doing core work on the off days. I have an existing routine that I can expand. And, before the world came to an end, I was a heavy business travel guy, so I have many routines that can be done very simply on a hotel room floor without any equipment.
At home I do have some equipment. I have a Swedish ball, which is one of those inflatable, big, bouncy things. I think mine is the larger one, maybe 52 or 75 cm. This is a very versatile piece of equipment. It is light, portable and can be used as a platform for many core exercises. Anything that requires a bench can be done on the Swedish ball.
I also have one set of fifteen pound dumbbells and a set of 10 pound dumbbells. In the apocalypse there is a shortage of dumbbells, but I had these already. They aren’t heavy enough to do any real weight lifting, but they are a good compromise weight for me that I can do most of the exercises and just flex the reps up and down to make up for it.
For instance If I have a workout that calls for a bench press I can use the Swedish ball and the fifteen pound dumbbells. It’s not enough weight but I can do a lot of reps to make up for it and the ball works your core stability muscles as well. It’s not perfect but you get some benefit.
I picked up a set of rubber tube stretchy things. They aren’t much use because the resistance is very low. But they can be used for some routines that require that light resistance band. A lot of the hip strengthening exercises use rubber resistance bands.
I also have a yoga mat which is helpful. It makes things like planks a bit more comnfortable and keeps the majority of the dog hair off me.
The mat also creates a sense of place. That’s the big missing psychological piece to doing your own remote workouts. It’s hard to get motivated to walk into your den or living room for a workout on the floor. When you have the mat, you can roll that out and it gives a bit of psychological anchor to the workout. Plus, and probably obviously, it’s good for yoga.
The question then becomes how to create a workout routine that you can get some benefit out of? You don’t want to just do random exercises. To gain strength and muscle you need to have a method to your madness.
As with everything else it’s stress and response. You work a muscle group then let it recover. You don’t’ want to stress the same muscle groups multiple days in a row or you won’t as much get benefit.
How do you figure out which exercises you should be doing? There are hundreds of exercise you can choose from. How do organize? How do you create a nice cadence?
First thing you want to do is to look at the major muscle groups.
For simplicity sake, get a notebook or a piece of paper and write the following groups down.
- Chest
- Back
- Arms
- Legs
- Shoulders
- Abs
- Other
That give you six muscle groups to hit. If you’re working out 3 days a week you can do two major groups in each work out. For example the following are complimentary:
Day one: Chest and Back
Day two: Arms and Shoulders
Day three: Legs and Abs
Next thing you do is to find all the exercises that you can do that fit the equipment you have and put them into one of these six muscle groupings. Let’s say you do pushups. What muscle group would that be? Well, although a good pushup works several muscle groups in the core the major group is chest.
How about a squat? Yup, that’s legs.
If you get stuck, just google it. Try “Top Ten Chest Exercises” – you will find everything you need with instructional videos. The videos, by the way are very important. If you’re new to weights or core work form is quite important, especially for back exercises.
Now what do you have? You’ve got six or seven muscle group categories, each with 5-10 exercises or variants. Now what?
Now you just choose two or three from the appropriate category. Today is Day one, I’m doing chest and back. For chest I might choose dumbbell press on the Swedish ball, dumbbell fly, and pushups. Add 3 back exercises from the back exercise list.
You’ve got yourself a workout. Do three sets. Meaning you’ll do each of the three exercises three times. Do whatever number of repetitions match your fitness, or, alternatively do 30 seconds or a minute.
What does it look like now?
One set might be, and this is just a random choice here, you would configure your own… Start. 20 reps bench press, 15 reps fly, 20 pushups, 15 reps standing fly, 15 reps standing row, 15 reps single arm row, 60 second plank – that’s one set. Each exercise might take 2 minutes total for 10-15 minutes per set. Take a minute rest, get a sip pf water and repeat two more times.
You just created your own personal workout.
Next time you can choose different exercises or variant from your list for those muscle groups to keep it interesting. That’s it. Easy Peasy.
If you’re starting from scratch I would recommend easing into it. For the first week just do one set, then two then three. Start light so you learn the motions. Then by the third or fourth week you can really hit it hard and get a great workout.
That’s it. Go forth and get strong.