I write this article as I am travelling to china. The airplane and the waitingtime is great for creativity. This started out as a text to explain, but grew into a text that explains and give you a free workout plan. Try it out, you should be able to find the workouts simply by googleing them. I have a few of them on my youtube account.
How should you do it?
This will be aimed for the people that go to a gym to exercise, but the foundation will be the same if you do your workout at home, doesn’t matter if use weights or your own bodyweight.
These aspects could change depending on what your priorities are, what your goal is and for what reason you workout. However, even if you have other priorities, these guidelines I will put forth are still a great way of looking at a workout.
We used to think about muscles, and still do.
We do chest, we do back, we do biceps, quads etc… But that is really simplifying the body system in a way that is kind of stupid… well, unless your sole goal with your workout is to gain bigger muscles. Which is important for a bodybuilder, specially if you have been at it for many years. But me, being a coach, looking at the bigger picture and having a holistic and longevity mindset… Focusing on muscles are the wrong entry point in how your workout regime should be based.
Why is that wrong?
Wrong might be the wrong word… But I would say it’s not the best way, not the optimal way. Because starting from that angle means you start from the top, you aim for size before you have the ability of properly using your muscles and having them fully functioning. That is like painting the walls of a house before you have built the foundation. That is like hanging paintings on the wall before you have completed the walls… sure, you can do it, but at some point you will need to take them down so that you can finish the wall… and if you don't finish the wall in time you might get intruders or having some bad weather soaking your house.
So, how do u build a strong foundation?
First, we need to learn how the body can move, because before we understand movement, we cant understand how to properly exercise. We don’t just list weights, we move them from A to B, and we want to be as efficient and as skillfull in that path as we are able to be. Doesn’t matter if you can lift a heavy weight if you can’t properly move it. Our body has 7 different moving patters, and these can get simplified into 3 differnt movements for engaging your entire body.
- Pushing - Benchpress, pushup, dips
- Pulling - Barbell bent over row, Pull-up
- Squatting - Backsquat, frontsquat, overheadsquat
- Hinge - Deadlift, kettlebell swing
- Lunging - Lunges
- Rotation / anti-rotation - 3 point plank, unilateral movement
- Lokomotion - running, walking
If we want to simplify it for strength training, we can focus on: Squat, Push, Pull
Squatting involves all the lower body joints, and will focus on these areas of the body.
Same goes for hinge, lunge and lokomotion. Sure, they are involved in different ways, and there are gains to be made from all these foundational movements. So a good coach will make sure your workout regime covers all these movements. But to make it simple enough to understand you just need to make sure you get these 3 movements in. If you do a squat, look at the joints on the foot, knee and hip… Then do a lunge and you will notice that the lunge (front leg) well look the same as the legs while squatting. And by that simple observation you can understand that the lower body muscles are involved in a similar way. The difference being the second leg in the lunge, so yes, it has a different effect on you. So you might do wise to make sure you cover hinge, squat and lunge every week, mby every session…
Pulling involves the back of your body and the anterior side of your arms (front side).
So if you do a pulling movement you will therefore train the entire back and of course your bicep. During all your pulling and pushing movements, the elbow is the king. The elbow will be the center of every movement, and your goal should be to move the elbow as much as possible in a nice manner. What I mean by that is if you do a pullup, your goal should not be to get your chin as high as possible, but rather your elbows as far down and back as possible. If you manage to do that, your chin will be above the bar. The difference being the intention is on the elbows and the back, not on the chin. The chin is just what happens if you are strong and efficient enough to properly execute the movement. The same goes for the barbell bent over row, it’s not the bar that should go as close to your chest as possible, it’s your elbows that should go as far behind your body as possible. Focusing on the elbows will result in your scapulas to contract and the back will be properly involved… I however see many people in the gym that is not understanding these basics. Just look at the movement and pull it apart and figure out what the purpose of that movement is. It’s rather simple if you make it simple.
Pushing is the opposite of the pulling, it will involve your chest and posterior side of the arms.
In reality, it involves the anterior side of the body, except the posterior side of the arms. Which means chest and shoulders… Shoulders are not only involved in overhead presses or lateral dumbbell raises. Again on the elbow, if you do a benchpress you want the elbows to go as far down as you can, and then press it out… don’t do half reps, please. There is a time and place for halfreps, but there aint for most people. That is simply because most people are not here to perform in sports, most people doesn’t have a decade or two of continuous experience using the muscles properly. If you are in a certain sport, doing half reps could be of help. If you do not have the mobility or stability to properly execute full range of motion, there might be a better exercise to focus on, or use a lighter weight. If you have changed exercise and use a lighter weight… then there is a time and place for these half-reps.
Even if a pushing movement focus on the chest, shoulders and triceps.
A pushing movement will involve the muscles of the opposite side of the body, they rely on each other for stability and to properly execute a movement. Take the arms for example, the biceps job is the bend the elbow and the triceps job is the extend the elbow. You can’t deactivate that function, but of course they are more and less active in some movements. If you think you are smarter than your body, which most likely is millions of years old… good luck mate.
What am I trying to stat?
To set a workout plan you should properly involve all these movements, and of course. Going in with the idea of focusing on muscles will involve the movements, but the intention behind the workout is not to create a better movement pattern. And creating a better movement pattern will most likely be of a great importance for your health and longevity. The first doesn’t mean you are lacking the second, they can go hand in hand, but the purpose and the intention of an exercise is what will rule the outcome.
An example of a workout program for a week
This example will be for a person that goes to the gym 3x a week, you could continue with this until you no longer improve, or change it up before that. For a proper periodization for optimal results I need more details of your life and so forth. But this will be a good example of how it could look and what you could do. This is not how it has to be, but it is how it could be.
Day 1 - Function - Focus on stability, mobility and movement.
A) Bulgarian split squats (RFESS) - 3x10 per leg - 2 RIR
B) 1 legged romanian deadlift - 3x10 per leg - 2 RIR
C) Half-kneeling kettlebell bottom up press - 3x8 per arm - 2 RIR
D) Sideplank with rotation - 3x10 per side
E) Turkish get-up - 3x10 per side - 2 RIR
F) Walking lunges - 3x20 - 1 RIR
Day 2 - Heavy workout, time to build some strength
A) Pull-ups - complete 30 in as many sets as it takes. (If you can do 10 in a set, add weight)
B) Dips - Complete 45 in as many sets as it takes. (If you can do 15 in a set, add weight)
C) Backsquat - 5x5 - 2 RIR
D) Deadlift - 5x5 - 2 RIR
E) Benchpress - 5x5 - 2 RIR
F) Farmers walk - 3x20m - Heavy weight
Day 3 - Volume - Time to get bigger
A) Facepulls - 3x15 - 5 RIR
B) Dumbell bench press - 4x12 -1 RIR
C) Dumbell row - 4x12 - 1 RIR
D)Single arm dumbell overhead press - 4x8 - 3 RIR
E) Lat pulldown - 4x12 - 1 RIR
F) Row and reach - 4x12 - 1 RIR
G) Push and pull - 4x12 - 1 RIR
H) Pallof press - 4x15 - 1 RIR
Between each day I recommend you to do some kind of active recovery.
What I mean by that is to do some kind of activity that will let you move. Could be playing with your kids, going for a walk, a swim, biking, climbing or something else you enjoy doing. As it is meant to be a recovery session you should not go all out, but rather just move and have fun.
Fit the 3 workout days in to your schedule as you see fit, the rest of the days are active recovery.
Each day is a full body session and that is simply because there is a lot of data that suggest that training a certain set of muscles 2x per week is way more optimal than once per week, and most likely 3x is better than 2x. You could do these exercises 6x on a week, just keep rolling them. What you have to change then is to use a lower weight. As the volume (amount of work you do) will be way higher with 2x the amount of workouts. There is no point in going 100% on each workout. The less frequent you workout, the harder you should go. Therefor, the more frequent you workout, the easier you should go. However, for the workout to still be a workout you need to challenge yourself.
RIR means Reps in remaining.
That simply means, by the end of the set, you should feel that you could do as many reps as it is mentioned. so (3x10 - 2 RIR) means that when you have finished 10 repetition of that exercise, you should feel like you could have done 12. If you feel like you could have done 15, it was to light. If you only could do 8, it was to heavy. A great way to set the weight according to how your body feels today. However, it comes with a risk, if you are a person that likes to be comfortable… you might say to yourself “yeah, I could only do 2 more” but in reality you could easily have done 8 more reps.
If you like I could do more texts like this, I love writing and sharing what I know.
I also offer onlinecoaching charging in crypto, I have not properly set up my website for english market yet, but I am getting there. You can find more on https://coachbjork.com/. But I will keep putting out free content for everyone to use. I can add programs and explainations like this for you all to learn more.
Best regards
Coach Bjork
https://coachbjork.com/