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It’s no secret that everyone trains differently when they go to the gym. Some athletes train to get strong and others train to stay functional. With different types of training come different structures of workouts. Some athletes will spend an hour at the gym and do a total of 4 exercises and 20 reps of each exercise, and some will be in the gym for the same amount of time and do 6 exercises and 40 reps in each exercise. It all depends on what the goal is. If you are wondering how to structure that part of your workout, then you can look at my last article “Sets and Reps,” detailing the way to structure the number of sets and reps you would do in a workout.
Now, when you walk into a room full of machines and free weights, where should you start and where should you end? I am going to give you the way I, MYSELF, would structure a workout.
I begin every workout with a dynamic warm-up. A dynamic warm-up would be stretching and warming up your body to prepare for the exercise that is going to be done. This is different than the most popular form of stretching which is static stretching. Static stretching is stretching the body part you want to stretch farther than its range of motion and holding it for a couple of seconds. A good example of dynamic warmups would be doing air squats before doing barbell squats with heavier weights. This warmup can take anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes depending on when your body feels ready.
I like to put the hardest exercise of the day towards the front of the workout to decrease the chances of gassing out before doing the main part of the workout. An example could be doing a heavy bench press on upper body day or could be doing deadlifts or squats which are compound movements on a leg day that may incorporate your entire body.
Then once I surpass the most challenging part of my workout and complete the biggest/hardest exercise, I like to move into accessory muscles, whether it be with free weights or with machines. Working accessory muscles can contribute to strengthening your bigger lifts going forward. Accessory muscles are the muscles that help move the weight when you are doing bigger lifts. A good example of this would be training my triceps to help me do better lifts while I’m bench pressing. A bench press uses the chest muscles as the main muscle moving the weight up. The accessory muscles would be your triceps, shoulders, core, and other smaller muscles. Working on those secondary muscles individually could in turn help the main mover when doing heavier lifts.
This website is a great resource for structuring your workouts and sets and reps.
