Social media is a fantastic place to find training inspiration, but sometimes it’s hard to filter out the nonsense and find the good stuff.

Although Instagram workouts look shiny and appealing, this type of sporadic training isn’t useful for anyone who is training with a goal in mind. Planning a workout can be difficult and time consuming, so we’ve put together some sample training plans to inspire you during your next training phase.

The Benefits of Following a Training Plan

Practice Makes Perfect

If you want to get better in anything in life then you need to practise, over and over again. The same goes for training. If you want to improve in strength training, then you need to focus on executing the technique before increasing the load. Because of this, it’s necessary to follow the same plan for a prolonged period so you have the chance to improve your technique.

Progressive Overload

This is the principle of increasing the stress placed on the musculoskeletal system to stop plateauing. Now it might seem counterintuitive to repeat the same plan over an extended period, but without doing the same workouts you won’t be giving your body the chance to progress. You can progress your workout by increasing the weight lifted, increasing the number of repetitions or sets.

Take the Thought Out of Training

One of the hardest things for many people when it comes to training is figuring out what to do. Without a plan, you could spend more time faffing around in the gym than doing exercise. When you’ve got a programme, you know exactly what to expect and can walk into the gym with confidence.

Plan Layout

In front of each exercise you will see a letter followed by a number, these indicate which exercises you complete together as a superset or triset. For example, if both exercises have an ‘A’ in front of them, you complete one immediately after the other without taking a break before moving onto the next set.

Example Strength Training Programme

This strength training template focuses on the ‘big three’ lifts in powerlifting; squats, deadlifts and bench press. The week has been divided into three sessions, each focusing on one main lift and increasing strength. Along with this there are several accessory lifts that will complement your main exercises.

Example Hypertrophy Training Programme

The workout has been designed to increase muscle size with a mixture of compound and single-joint exercises. Most of the workouts include supersets and tri sets to maximise the amount of work completed during your training session.

Example Weight Loss Training Programme

This weight loss training programme will help you build muscle whilst burning fat at the same time. The training consists of full body workouts so that you’re training your whole body a minimum of three times per week. The workouts should be completed with minimum rest to increase the intensity. Low intensity steady state cardio has been included at the end of the workouts to increase your exercise output.

Example General Fitness Training Programme

The general fitness template has been designed for anyone that wants to maintain a high level of fitness in everyday life. This is a bread-and-butter training plan that focuses on increasing strength in big compound movements, with some higher intensity workouts to get your heart rate up and increase fitness levels. There is a combination of strength, hypertrophy and functional style training.

These are example training plans that give you an idea of how to train for a variety of different goals. This isn’t a blanket plan and it’s certainly not for everyone. You can try out these workouts, or use them as inspiration to design your own plan. They will need to be adapted and scaled to suit you as an individual and your experience level. 

No matter what your goal, the most important thing to take from this is that consistency is essential if you want to get results. We’ve given samples of a minimum of 3 workouts per week, any less and your training won’t be as effective. And remember, you’ve got to stick at it. You need to complete the same programme for anything between 4-8 weeks in order for progress to be made. But, no matter how much you enjoy working out, it is also important to make sure that you never skip rest day.

Ready to get started? We’ve created a printable training plan template for you to print and write your own training programme.

Written by guest author Eryn Barber.

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Tags: Misc > Lifestyle