By John Valentik, MS, CSCS, NASM-PES, CES

Paige had a great idea for this week’s blog post, and it’s something I can overlook because of writing thousands of programs at this point in my career. Designing an exercise program can seem daunting, and the amount of information out there is completely overwhelming, to say the least. I’m going to cover some basic principles as well as considerations depending on your lifestyle and goals.

Why are you exercising? This is a great starting point to ask yourself. The answer may be general health and wellness, or it may involve something more specific, like looking better for vacation, preparing for a race or event, lifting a certain amount of weight, or even hiking a mountain! Once you identify the why behind your fitness goals, you can start to look a more of the nuts and bolts to a program. Here are a few places to start.

• Weekly Frequency: Remember, this is generalizing without knowing the specifics of your goals. If you are exercising 1-3x per week, starting off with a total body focus would be ideal. If you’re aiming for 4 or more, splitting the routine and muscles groups makes more sense. There needs to be a balance of aiming to exercise each muscle group twice per week while also allowing for adequate recovery.
• Strike a Balance: If you have general fitness goals, aim to strike a balance between muscle groups. This means there should be a mix of upper body, lower body, and core exercises. Taken further, you should be including pushing patterns, pulling patterns, as well as the front side of legs (quads), and backside of legs (hamstrings and glutes). Since we as a population spend so much time sitting already, for most it’s wise to have a little more pulling in a program than pushing, as this assists with maintaining a more upright posture.
• Cater to your Needs: Consider your own fitness level and orthopedic status. If you have a bad shoulder or poor mobility in your hips, then you should be selecting exercises that are friendly on those areas as opposed to harmful. For example, Olympic bar bench press and back squats are extremely demanding on the body from a mobility standpoint and can exacerbate issues if one isn’t cautious. Dumbbell bench press and goblet squats might more sense in these cases.

So, what are the nuts and bolts? There are thousands upon thousands of exercises out there. I could write a blog post on each until the end of time. To better understand the human body, consider this fact. The overwhelming majority of people, from toddlers to retirees, complete the following movements. I will include some example exercises in each area. Use this list as a guide to ensure you aren’t ignoring some basic fundamental movements. If you play a sport or even work in a specific job setting, you may spend more time than most in some situations, so keep this in mind as well.

• Push: Whether you’re pushing a door open or bench pressing 200 pounds. Examples: pushup, bench press, overhead press, tubing press, triceps pushdown.
• Pull: Pulling your trash out of the garbage can or pulling yourself up in a chin-up. Examples: pulldown, cable row, tubing row, dumbbell bent over row, pullover, bicep curl.
• Squat: Squatting to use the toilet or squatting 250 pounds. Examples: body weight squat, goblet squat, front squat, back squat, hack squat, safety bar squat
• Hinge: Hinging to pick up a grandchild or deadlifting 300 pounds. Examples: kettlebell deadlift, hex-bar deadlift, Olympic bar deadlift, Romanian deadlift, single leg deadlift.
• Step or Lunge: Heading up a flight of stairs or side lunging with dumbbells. Examples: Forward step-ups, lateral step-ups, press-ups, forward/reverse lunge, side lunge, transverse lunge, crossover lunge.
• Carry: Carrying groceries or carrying 50 pound dumbbells. Examples: farmer carries, suitcase carries, bottom-up carries, offset carries, overhead carries.
• Rotate: Rotating to put a dish in the dishwasher or rotating to throw a medicine ball. Examples: Lateral scoop toss, diagonal medicine ball chops, 1/2 kneeling chops and lifts, pivot pass with medicine ball.
• Locomote: Playing with the kids in the back yard or doing sprints in a team sport or track. Examples: heel/toe walk, skips, shuffles, cariocas, high knees, butt kickers, a-skips, b-skips, c-skips, bounding, running.

As you’re hopefully starting to see, the options are endless. The most important variables are finding suitable exercises for you and your goals and then following through with this routine on a consistent basis. I will write on the concept of progressive overload at another date but gradually increase your intensity over time by adding weight, reps, or sets, though not all of these at ones. You can also reference my hypertrophy training article for some more specifics on reps, sets, and rest times.

To finish, here is a very bare-bones program to follow to get started!

• Movement Prep: Include stretches to areas that are tight and activating areas that are underutilized (often core and glutes). Aim to gradually increase heart rate and body temperature as you move through prep. This can be done with some with body weight, tubing, or some basic locomotion drills as mentioned above.
• Body of Workout.
  • Complete 3 Rounds cycling through the four exercises.
    • Elevated Pushups for 10-15x
    • Pulldown or Tubing Bent Over Row 10-15x
    • Doorway Squats for 10-15x
    • Tubing Torso Rotations 20:20x
  • Complete 3 Rounds cycling through the four exercises.
    • Alternating Overhead Press 20x
    • Tubing Rows for 15-20x
    • Alternating Reverse Lunge 20x
    • Farmer Carries 20 yd x 2
• Cooldown: Perform some general stretches covering the major muscle groups. Give yourself a pat on the back!