Characteristics of a Good Fitness Workout Plan

The problem most of us face while taking the first step toward exercising is to find a good fitness workout plan. Many of us just start off with imitating whatever others are performing, whereas many others, being fortunate enough, have friends who regularly workout, can follow them along to the gym. Some download fitness apps and a few consult the physical health trainer.

In all these situations, generally, we have no idea why we are performing a certain exercise and how it integrates to our overall fitness workout plan. This lack of knowledge makes it very difficult for us to evaluate whether the fitness workout plan we are following is really optimal for us. The whole industry of physical health trainers and personal trainer apps has come into existence because we do not want to go through the headache of figuring out the most suitable workouts. This is a valid approach, however, just as you want to make sure that your doctor knows his or her stuff well, you should also make sure that your personal trainer or any personal trainer app is providing you the best service.

The sure-shot way to do that is to have a better understanding of what makes a good workout plan. So let us learn what are the characteristics of a good fitness workout plan and is your trainer really providing you one.

It looks Difficult but not too Difficult

The top priority of a bad personal trainer is not to help you become fit, but to make you feel good about yourself and your workouts. Remember, we only get better through hardships. Therefore, a good fitness workout plan is the one that is difficult for you to perform. It should stretch you beyond your comfort zone.

This is really a big problem for a personal trainer, as he or she has to push you hard during your workouts while ensuring that you enjoy your workouts so that you do not get discouraged and come back for future sessions. Here is my advice to you, if you do not feel like you are getting out of breath at the end of your workout or you do not feel sore for the next few days after your workout session, then fire your personal trainer and look for a new fitness workout plan.

Be careful though, your fitness workout plan should not be too difficult for you as well. If it is too difficult then you will just not be able to perform it and will lose interest. Moreover, there is much higher chance of developing an injury. So, a good fitness workout plan must be just slightly beyond your limits, so that it pushes you hard, but is still achievable.

It is Balanced

A balanced fitness workout plan equally targets all the major muscle groups in your body. Due to the influence of popular media, most men focus mostly on their upper-body, while most women focus on their lower-body. This is why most men will be seen doing bicep curls while women will be seen doing hip abductions. Whenever you see such a behavior understand that a well-balanced skinny body looks far better than an unbalanced body with a few big muscles here and there. Picture a guy with big arms and skinny legs or a girl with an unusually large butt in proportion to rest of her body. It looks funny and it is not very good for your overall posture. Such muscle imbalance will cause pain and injury to your body.

One of the best ways to make sure that you are targeting all your muscles groups is to make sure that your fitness workout plan includes all the major functional movements of the human body. Major functional movements of human body include pushing, pulling, squatting, bending and twisting. Make sure that your fitness workout plan includes all these movements.

It Improves all Components of Fitness

There are five major components of fitness: Strength, Endurance, Cardio, Flexibility, and Agility. A good fitness workout plan must benefit you in all these categories. Not just one or two. It should build your strength and endurance, make your heart strong, improve your flexibility and make you agile. Always make sure that you are stretching before and after your workouts. Your fitness workout plan must have at least two cardiovascular sessions and a variety of exercises with different sets and reps scheme to improve your strength, endurance and agility. Do not worry too much about your aesthetics, as it will automatically improve as you improve your overall fitness in all its components.

It Changes with Progress

If you are following a good fitness workout plan, then you will make progress very quickly. You will get stronger, faster and quicker in all the areas of fitness. At this point of time, your existing fitness workout plan will no longer be challenging. In order to challenge you then, the fitness workout plan has to be changed and made difficult for your body again. My recommendation is never to perform the same set of exercises for more than 8–12 weeks. Ideally your workout plan should change every 4–6 weeks.

It is Customized for Your Needs and Goals

Everybody is physiologically different, and therefore, everyone has different fitness goals. It means that a fitness workout plan that worked wonders for your friend might not quite be as awesome for you and vice versa. Although it is quite difficult to predict what might work for you and what might not. There are general guidelines that can be followed as a starting point. If you are interested in becoming strong then your fitness workout plan should involve really heavy weights for small reps.

On the other hand, if you want to maximize your muscle gain, then you should lift moderate weights for moderate reps. And if you are interested in improving your endurance then you should lift light weights for a high number of repetitions. There are many more such customizations that can be done to a fitness workout plan. Always mention your fitness goals clearly to your personal trainer or a fitness app so that preparation of a fitness workout plan that is ideally suited for your fitness goals becomes easy.

However, do not expect to get everything right at the first time. Remember, these guidelines can always be used as the starting point. The only accurate way to find out what works and what doesn’t is through trial error approach. Always keep experimenting with your fitness workout plan and keep a notice of what works and what doesn’t.

A fitness workout plan design is quite complicated and covering everything in a single article is quite difficult. Here I have tried to give you just a gist of it. I hope that this should give you some idea on how to evaluate your fitness workout plan.