How To Make A Custom Workout Plan

Do you have some fitness goals set that you just can’t find a way to reach? This is something that millions of people struggle with around the world, but thankfully, you can easily snap yourself out of it and get the results that you are looking for.

Whether you have been going to the gym for years and are looking to get into bodybuilding, or you are deciding to take your health more seriously, having a custom workout plan can help you achieve everything that you want and more. 

As a person who is extremely passionate about fitness, I feel it's important to push yourself and strive for greatness no matter where you are at.

As I’ve said, the simple act of deciding to push yourself is admirable, regardless of where you are at and don’t let anyone make you feel uncomfortable about going to the gym or working out from wherever.

The important thing is that you develop your own custom workout plan and you achieve the goals that you have always dreamt of. I am going to give you some tips and advice on how you can make a workout plan that works for you.

What Are Your Goals?

The first question you are going to have to ask yourself is what are your goals. You can’t begin to work towards something if you don’t know what you want. If you want to be successful with your workouts, you should follow my tips on how to create goals.

Dream Big

The first thing you want to do is dream big. Don’t be afraid to set a goal that will take a few years to achieve.

You don’t want to create a goal that you are going to crush in a few days or even a week or so because then you are going to lose motivation and stop working as hard.

There will be bumps along the way with a big goal, but there are a few small strategies that we can use to keep you on track.

Set Small Milestones

Having that one big dream in the gym or in regards to your fitness level is great, but you are going to need some small milestones here and there to give you a boost to keep working.

If your goal will take you months or even a year or two to achieve, it can be easy to lose sight of what you are working towards and fall back down into complacency. Bodybuilders and regular people alike suffer from this type of mental fatigue.

If you want to overcome that, I strongly recommend setting small milestones and goals that you can achieve every few days or so. What do these look like?

If you are looking to lose 100lbs for example, a small goal would be to lose 10lbs. Once you have burned those 10lbs, aim for another 10. These small milestones will keep your motivation up and allow you to track progress.

Studies have shown that accomplishing your goals releases chemicals like serotonin in the brain that help to keep you happy and provide you with motivation. Therefore, having small goals lined up throughout your whole goal is a great way to keep yourself on track.

Determine An Outcome

Now that we’ve figured out how to set goals and work towards a healthier lifestyle, it is time to ask ourselves what we really want out of these workouts:

Knowing what you are trying to accomplish can help you achieve it. These goals will also shape your workouts as each one requires a different program.

Once you have spent your time figuring out exactly what you are looking to achieve, you can now go about creating your workout program and working towards a healthier and better you.

How Much Time Can You Give To Your Fitness?

The next thing we are going to have to determine is how much time we have to devote to our exercise and fitness. You don’t have to worry if you are busy and can’t workout every day.

The fact that you can give even an hour or two in the week is a great start towards reaching your goals. One of the biggest things I notice is people quit on their dreams and goals because they think they have to dedicate several hours every day to achieve them.

This is not true and if you are just getting into working out, you’ll be burnt out if you attempt to do something like that. 

Some people will tell you it’s not possible, but you can easily get an intense workout done in 30 minutes. You don’t have to sacrifice two hours at the gym every day to achieve your dreams.

The important thing here is that we are pushing to efficiency in our exercises. In those 30 minutes that we are going to be working out, we are going to have to work hard and really push ourselves.

Where Are You Going to Workout?

I do understand that the gym can be a little intimidating at first, especially for those who are new to fitness, so feel free to workout from the comfort of your home if that means you are going to work that much harder.

The amount of time you have to workout will also determine where you should be working out.

f you can only allocate 30 minutes towards exercising, it doesn’t make sense to drive to the gym as that will be chewing up a lot of time. 

Instead, you can use your home or a local park for your training.

To quickly recap, we’ve now gone over how to create your goals, determining how much time you can train for, and finally where you are going to be working out. Now that we have done all of that, it is time to jump into things and learn how to create your own custom workout plan.

The Importance of a Warmup

No matter what you are planning on doing for a workout, you should definitely start your exercising out with a warmup. This doesn’t have to be anything long or major and only needs to be five minutes or so.

The importance of a warmup is that it will get your heart pumping, your blood flowing, and will begin to activate your muscles. This can greatly reduce the risk of injury. Myself and all the experts strongly recommend doing a quick five minute cardio warmup before you increase the difficulty.

What Exercises Should I Be Doing?

Ideally, your workout routine will cover these four muscle groups. Now we are going to take a look into a few workout plans that can help accommodate your goals and train all of your muscles.

Full Body Workouts

These are ideal if you aren’t able to workout everyday or workout for too long. Doing a full body workout means you are going to be working each of the major muscle groups and pushing yourself. A typical full body workout at the gym can look like this:

This is an easy workout to complete if you are at the gym and shouldn’t take too much time. With a full body workout, you are going to want to be giving your body at least one day of rest if not two after doing something like this.

Therefore, a full body workout is best suited for someone who is only able to go to the gym a couple of times a week and therefore must train as many things as possible.

Let’s say you are able to go to the gym several times a week however. Here is an example of what you can do if you can dedicate more time to the gym and your workouts.

Push Days

This is a whole workout that is just dedicated towards your chest and triceps. Just like with the full body workout, you can expect to do exercises such as a chest press, a tricep pulldown, and many more.

A good push day will typically have three exercises for your triceps, and three exercises for your chest. You can throw in shoulders here as well, but I like to save them for another day.

Pull Days

This is going to be similar to the push day, except you are going to be doing three major exercises for your back, and three major exercises for your biceps.

Legs and Shoulders

Just like the other two days, you should be doing three exercises for your legs and three for your shoulders. This will help to really increase your muscles while not overworking them.

You might be looking at this and wondering where the core exercises are. I personally recommend doing some core exercises everyday with your warmup if you are going to be doing this type of split. Crunches and planks beforehand will help tighten your core while also help kickstart your heart.

With these three workouts, typically you are going to be going to the gym five times a week alternating your days. You can expect a standard split to look like this:

This is a great system that is followed by thousands of people who workout and it will help you get the results that you are looking for. Let’s take it a step further and discuss how to do the exercises.

Sets, Reps, and Rest Time

How many sets and reps you are going to be doing is going to be based on what your goals are. If you are looking to powerlift and build a ton of muscle, you should be looking to lift heavy, but have a small amount of reps.

When it comes to rest time, you should be taking several minutes as you want to get yourself back to your peak form as best as you can.

On the flipside, if you are looking to burn fat and get your heart rate up, you should be doing a high amount of reps with each set.

For rest time here, you are going to want to only take a minute or so as you don’t want your heart rate to slow down. By constantly working and moving, you are going to be burning a lot of calories.

Determining Your Weights

If you can do several more, it means your weight is too low, if you can’t reach your rep limit, it means your weight is too high.

It will take a bit of time to find the right weights, but once you do, you’ll be able to start seeing progress.

End With Cardio

Once you’ve completed all your exercises, it is now time to hit the treadmill, the track, or some type of machine to get some cardio in if you have the time to do so.

Because your heart rate is already elevated, all of the cardio that you are doing here is going to help burn off extra calories, therefore helping you burn away all the fat.

That’s all there is to it when building a workout plan. Give yourself a pat on the back for completing each day and take pride in the progress that you are making.

With the right mindset and work ethic, you can achieve anything and get as strong and as healthy as you want. Never let anyone gatekeep gyms and exercise from you either.

As a person who strives to be as healthy as they can, it makes me happy to see people working towards the same goals.