Men's Health > Workouts > Workout Plan

Effective Workout Plans

There are literally dozens of reasons why a person starts exercise with the most popular reason being to lose weight. Regardless of the reason, it best to start with a workout plan.

Physical activity is a way to fine tune the human body. It enables us to perform at optimal levels and helps us to meet our daily stressful demands.

It is important to remember than individual levels of fitness vary from person to person. It is influenced by sex, age, genetics, personal habits, exercise and diet.

Before developing a workout plan, you need to decide your goals. It could be to lose weight, to gain muscle mass, increase endurance, or to become healthier overall. Whichever you choose, you should tailor your workout plan to meet these needs.

You exercise plan should contain a warm-up session, cardiovascular exercises, weight training, and a cool-down session. How long, how hard and how often you exercise will depend on your current fitness level. As a general rule, you should space your workouts throughout the week and avoid consecutive days of hard exercise.

The warm-up should last between 5 and 10 minutes of walking, slow jogging and other low intensity movements which stimulate blood flow. A good warm-up session will help reduce pain and injury during your exercise program. Cold joints, tendons and muscles are more susceptible to injury. Warm-up sessions also help to raise the heart rate to prepare the body for physical exertion, help speed up nerve impulses so reflexes are enhanced, reduce muscle tension, increase blood flow, and increase flexibility and joint mobility.

The warm-up should last between 5 and 10 minutes of walking, slow jogging and other low intensity movements which stimulate blood flow. A good warm-up session will help reduce pain and injury during your exercise program. Cold joints, tendons and muscles are more susceptible to injury. Warm-up sessions also help to raise the heart rate to prepare the body for physical exertion, help speed up nerve impulses so reflexes are enhanced, reduce muscle tension, increase blood flow, and increase flexibility and joint mobility.

Cardiovascular Exercises

Cardiovascular training is an important complement to any workout program. In addition to getting your heart pumping and your blood circulating, cardio exercise can help you burn calories and fat to help your muscles appear more defined.

Cardiovascular exercises should be performed 3 to 4 times per week and each session should last at least 30 minutes. In order for the session to be productive, the duration of exercise should be continuous. Do not stop during the middle of a cardio workout unless it is absolutely necessary. Some popular cardio exercises include: brisk walking, jogging, cycling, swimming, rope jumping, cross country skiing and rowing.

One thing to remember about cardio workouts is that for the first 20 minutes you are only burning glucose. It is not until after the first 20 minutes that your body starts to burn the stored fat. That is why it is important to get your workouts to a minimum of 30 minutes per session.

During your cardio workout, you should periodically take your pulse. Ideally, your pulse should be no more than 70% of your maximum heart rate. To calculate your target heart rate, subtract your age from 220 and multiply it by .70. This is your target heart rate. You should periodically check your heart rate to ensure you are exercising effectively.

Muscluar Strength

Weight training has numerous benefits which include reducing stress, improving your energy levels, improving your overall health, increase strength, helps to prevent injuries and helps to control your weight.

Workout routines vary by individuals. Some like to work out using a “push/pull” method. This means that on Mondays and Thursdays they will use all the muscles that “pull” or move the bones away from their body. This includes deadlifts, lat rows, bicep curls, standing tricep kick-backs, and dumbbell pull-overs. On Tuesdays and Fridays they will work all the muscles that “push” or move the bones into their body. These include squats, lunges, chest press, overhead press, bent-over tricep kick-backs.

Another routine could work the chest, abs, triceps and hamstrings on Mondays and Thursday and working the back, abs, biceps, calves, and shoulders on Tuesdays and Fridays.

Everyone, at some point, has to start at the beginning. It’s better to start slow with low weights and build up than to start heavy weights and take a chance on pulling a muscle. The important thing to remember is find an exercise which your muscles will respond to.

The Cool Down

The cool down period should last 5 to 10 minutes and include slow walking, stretching, and low impact exercises. The health benefits associated with a cool-down include: reduce risk of injury, improve flexibility, it gently returns the heart rate, breathing and blood pressure to normal, and helps to remove lactic acid from muscle tissue. You should end your cool-down routine with light stretching.

Today, there is a growing interest on looking food, feeling good and living longer. Scientific evidence shows that developing a workout plan and sticking to it can help you to achieve this.

Drew Voight