So your thinking about starting a workout routine, or you thinking about creating a new workout. Well, you have come to the right place. This article will teach you how to choose your goals and how to build a basic exercise plan. As a beginner, you can do any kind of exercise routine and make progress, but after about 3 months you will see your results diminish. If you want to avoid stagnation and over training, you should then construct a progressive workout plan. We will discuss how to choose your goals and the basics of building a progressive exercise routine starting with a solid foundation. Most people start out by going gungho, only to burn out or get injured. I highly recommend you read this article and start out slowly. This will help you to start off correctly and avoid to pitfalls of every new weightlifter.

     The first think you must do when beginning a workout routine, is to figure out what your goals are. In addition you need to figure out why you are beginning an exercise routine as well. If you are doing it because someone else is telling you to, then you will be heading for disaster. You must want to become physically fit and want to exercise to be successful. Now with that out of the way, we can get down to business.

     Start out by figuring out what your main goals are. Are you after getting more muscle, getting leaner, getting stronger, etc. Write down what your goals are. You will find that your goals may change as your become more advanced, and that is a good thing. Now that you have your goals in mind, we are ready to begin to create the actual training program. The goal of the exercise program we are going to create is to build a solid foundation, you must still keep your long term goals in mind.

     The following table is a general rule for rep ranges:

     The table is a basic guide and should not be taken literally for there are many different ways to increase hypertrophy. For example, you can increase hypertrophy by performing many sets of 5 reps, and depending on your genetics, you may not see any results training at 8 - 15 reps, yet you may see better muscle growth from 3 reps. As a beginner you should concentrate on rep ranges from 15 - 5. When you finish your last rep you should feel like you still have 1 to 2 reps left in you.

   For every beginner, you must start out by building a solid foundation. You need at the least one if not two solid years of training to build a solid foundation. This gives your ligaments and tendons a chance to strengthen, since ligaments and tendons tend to take longer to become strengthened when compared to muscle. This does not mean you will do the same routine for 1 to 2 years, but rather you will concentrate on building a solid foundation. After you build your solid foundation, you can then begin to get more specific in your training. You will also have this time to find your little niche in the training world. You will also learn your body type and how your body responds to different types of training. 

     A few things you must remember are that you need to change your routine a least every 6 weeks. Now, there are many ways to change a routine. You can change your routine by, 

• Increasing sets

• Decreasing rest between sets

• Increasing your rep speed

• Increasing you number reps

• Decreasing your number of reps

• Changing the exercise 

• etc.

This gives you plenty of flexibility in how to add variety into your training. In addition to keeping your progress moving forward, variety makes exercising fun.

    Next we need to figure out how many days you want to dedicate to your training. The ideal routine would contain at least four training days a week. You never want to work the same muscle two days in a row. You can choose to have either a split routine or a full body routine.  Below are examples of a full body routine and a split body routine. You can arrange the days any way you like, as long as you do not work the same muscles two days in a row. Should should figure out now the days you plan on exercising.

Full Body Routine:

Split Routine:

     Either routine is ok for the beginner, but as you get more advance, you will want to switch to the split routine. Below is an example of a workout program for a beginner This is called a foundation building macrocycle. A macrocycle is a year or longer training plan. After you gain a good foundation, you can then start to get into a more intermediate workout program. As you will see, the following program slowly progresses in intensity and volume. Although the first few months will seem easy, it will slowly get harder as your body and routine progress. The goal is to let your body slowly progress with the exercise routine. This is the basics of periodization. The following routine will concentrate on getting you familiar with exercise, hypertrophy of the muscles, and strength endurance.

First 6 Weeks

• Choose one exercise per body part.
• Do 1 Set per exercise.
• Do 15 Reps per exercise set.

Second 6 Weeks

Keep the same routine but change the following:

• Add a second set per exercise. Now you are doing 2 sets per exercise.
• Change your reps from 15 to 12

Third 6 Weeks

Make the following changes to your routine:

• Change your reps from 12 to 10

Fourth 6 Weeks

Make the following changes to your routine:

• Add the third set per exercise. Now you are doing 3 sets per exercise.

Fifth 6 Weeks

Make the following changes to your routine:

• Change your reps from 10 to 8

Sixth 6 Weeks

Make the following changes to your routine:

• Change your reps from 8 to 5

Seventh 6 Weeks

Make the following changes to your routine:

• Change all your exercises for each muscle group
• Change reps from 5 to 12 reps and start cycle over

As you can start to see, you have limitless possibilities on changing your workouts. In addition, you can see how the routine slowly progresses from a very simple and low intensity routine to a more complex and higher intensity routine.  This allows your body to slowly adapt to your workouts and keeps it slowly progressing. When you change your reps from 8 back to 2, you should see that you can now do more weight with 12 reps then when you first started. You are keeping track of your workouts right? Keeping a log? If not, stay tuned my article on keeping a workout log. We have almost covered a years worth of foundation training. You must remember that embarking on a weightlifting lifestyle should be a lifelong commitment, and you should begin the correct way. Start slow and ensure yourself of long term progress and injury free training. Good luck, and when you are done with your foundation training, you can start an intermediate training plan that is more goal specific. After you finish your foundation training, you can move up to the West Coast Routine.

End Notes:

• Start out easy
• Decrease reps as you progress
• Change routine at least every six weeks

Do you have a suggestion or a topic for an article? Let us know and we will write one.

Click here to visit U.S. Border Control and learn about America's immigration crisis.