How To Make A Workout Routine: Step-By-Step Instructions

You have questions.

Boy oh boy, do you have a lot of ’em!

How many reps should you do to lose weight? How many reps for mass? How many reps in a set? How many sets per exercise? How many exercises a workout? How many days a week should you work out? What exercises should I do? What’s the correct order of exercises?

– you, as I thank myself for writing this to direct you to so I don’t have to answer all of that shit

That hamster wheel in your head need not spin any longer, my friend!!!

Why?!

Because in the next few thousand words I’m going to show you how to make a workout routine to not only help you stop wasting your time in the gym so you can see results but to also, most importantly, save me from ever having to answer any of those questions again because I can now direct people to this resource!

Yeah, win-win situation for us both!!!

What’s Your Goal?

Now, there’s a difference between exercising and training, as explained in that link you should probably definitely click. And as explained in that link you should probably definitely click, training is what we want to do every time we step inside the gym because that’s what’s going to produce the results we’re after.

As a brief review of what’s explained in that link you should probably definitely click, training, according to Mark Rippetoe, is physical activity done with a longer-term goal in mind, the constituent workouts of which are specifically designed to produce that goal.

As we see, training is about determining a destination and planning a detailed way to get there. Because what we intend to do is train, it makes sense that our first step in making a workout routine is to decide on a goal and the method by which we’re going to accomplish it.

So think of a goal.

There are four particular reasons that people pick up weight training:

1) to become stronger

2) to lose body fat

3) to build muscle

4) to improve muscular endurance

Choose one reason and then describe what you hope to accomplish.

None of that vague shit, like “I want to lose weight” or “I just wanna be HYOOGE as fawk, bro!”

Try to think in specifics.

For example, if your ass isn’t big enough to make up for your paper bag worthy face then you’d say something like, “I need to add at least X inches to my dumper by Y date.” That’s measurable, whereas “I just want a big store-bought, Kim Kardashian looking booty” isn’t.

Once you’ve figured out your long-term objective and a realistic time-frame for achieving it, come up with several short-term objectives. They’ll be used to measure progress. Say something to yourself like, “I want to add 2 inches to my crap-box by week 4, 2 more inches by week 8.”

With goal setting and planning out of the way, we’ll proceed to figuring out how you’re going to make any of this shit possible.

When Are You Available To Work Out?

Diet and whatever your goal is go hand-in-hand, with proper nutrition probably accounting for more of your success or failure than lifting does.¹The rough estimate is that nutrition is responsible for 80-90 percent of your fitness goals. But because we’re only concerned with weight training here, we’ll limit our discussion to that specific how.

In order to go about reaching your stated goal, you kinda sorta have to go to the gym on a regular basis.

There’s no way of avoiding this.

Your progress is dependent on working out with consistency. And the best way to be consistent? Well, that’s to have a workout plan that works around your schedule, as your lifestyle, job, and family and social obligations are all going to dictate what level of commitment you can give to your goals and the training needed to achieve them. That being the case, before we can do anything else, this is where we should decide how many days of the week we can get to the gym, with three days the absolute fewest and five the maximum.

Have the days?

Good.

Keep them nearby for future use.

They’ll come in handy pretty soon.

What’s Your Training Approach?

Remember that goal we established as the very first step of creating this workout routine?

Well, this is where that goal is going to be used via the table below to determine the manner in which we train and go about getting our results in the gym, as our objective is what dictates volume and intensity. Respectively, these variables refer to the total amount of work you’ll perform and how heavy the load is that you’ll use on a given exercise.

As was said above, volume is the total amount of work that’s performed. One aspect of it is reps. How many reps, or number of times the motion of an exercise is performed, is provided in the table.²Low reps with heavy poundages stimulate the slow, intermediate, and fast twitch muscle fibers, as well as everything in between. Also stimulated are the actin and myosin filaments, which results in the production of super dense muscle. If your goal is to develop power or become stronger, then you’re going to want to operate in the 1-5 rep range.

Moderate reps with a not too heavy but not too light load are great for stimulating actin and myosin filaments while also increasing the size, or volume, of sarcoplasmic fluid within a muscle cell. If your eyes are on having a more muscular physique than a powerlifter or strength athlete, then the 6-12 rep range is for you. And contrary to popular thought that you should do an infinite number of reps if you’re trying to lose body fat, this moderate rep approach is also perfect for you because muscle has natural thermogenic properties. Muscle is the human body’s fat-burner, so doesn’t it make sense to build that valuable tissue instead of losing it by doing high reps?

High reps with light weight stimulate the slow twitch muscle fibers. Because this approach does next to nothing for strength and muscle gains once past the newbie stage, the +15 rep range should be reserved for those involved in some kind of pursuit where they’re required to sustain exercise for long periods of time. Think rowing, running a 5k, playing soccer, hopping on the bicycle for a century ride, etc. The other aspect of volume is sets, or the number of times you repeat a particular exercise for a number of reps. Regarding that, the amount of sets you choose to perform largely depends on training experience. As a general guideline, beginners should limit themselves to a total of 6 to 8 sets per muscle group while more advanced lifters can perform a total of 10 to 20 sets per muscle group. Use your own discretion here.

Now, there are two common ways to put all of this into practice. One is with straight sets and the other is with pyramid sets. What differentiates the two is that the same weight is used for all sets of a given exercise with the former while the latter involves the weight and reps changing with each set. For example, if you were to employ a 4×12 rep scheme for straight sets on the bench press, then you would try to get 12 reps with 225 lbs each of the 4 sets. Conversely, a pyramid set consisting of four sets would have a 12/10/8/6 rep scheme. What that would look like in action is you performing the 1st set for 12 reps with 135 lbs, the 2nd set for 10 reps with 155 lbs, the 3rd set for 8 reps with 185 lbs, and the last set for 6 reps with 225 lbs. That’s a traditional, or ascending, pyramid. The training structure can also be executed to form a descending, or reverse, pyramid. As the opposite of a traditional pyramid, a reverse pyramid simply calls for starting with the heaviest weight and then decreasing the load and increasing the reps with each subsequent set. If training for hypertrophy or strength, straight sets and reverse pyramid sets are more effective at delivering results than traditional pyramid sets. For endurance, straight sets and ascending pyramid sets are ideal.

What Are You Working Out?

“Pretty soon” has arrived because it’s finally time to make use of the 3-5 days you’ve decided that you’re available to devote yourself to working out. With that information, we’re going to make our actual workout plan, or training split, by dividing your training sessions into different muscle groups or movement patterns. When determining how to break up your training throughout the week, be sure to keep in mind that you should train the entire body, with a focus on improving weak points, and it’s unwise to work out the same muscle group on consecutive days because the human body needs at least 48 hours to repair and recover from the micro-trauma produced by lifting weights.

To assist you with this part, below are some example splits you can plug your available training days into.

Full Body

Upper/Lower Body

Push/Pull/Legs

4-Day Body Part

5-Day Body Part

NOTE: The abs are a muscle group that can be trained 2-3 times a week. Perform exercises for them on a training day or save them for a rest day. Use your own discretion.

What Exercises Are You Doing?

Last is the fun part, that of choosing exercises.

YAY!!!

There are a billion exercises and my detailing them here is beyond the scope of this guide, which is already long as fuck and testing both of our attention spans.³My attention span writing this and yours reading it!

Don’t you fret though, there are many online resources that are only a Google search away!

So get to typing, you!!!

Oh, but exactly what exercises should you pick?

That’s simple!

For the most part, the exercises you elect to plug into your training split should align with your goal. For example, if you have flat biceps and you want a more mountainous peak, it’d make sense to select 1-2 exercises that target that area instead of having your biceps workout consist of 2-3 exercises that all work the forearms directly. That also means that if you’re lifting for strength or hypertrophy, then the bulk of your exercises should be compound lifts, such deadlifts, barbell hip thrusts, and squats, all of which involve the use of multiple muscle groups and allow for the use of heavier weight.⁴Because compound lifts provide more bang for your buck, they should also make up the majority of your split if you’re not able to train frequently. You know, instead of your leg day workout only consisting of leg extensions, prone leg curls, and the abductor machine, all of which are isolation movements that call for the use of lighter weight and don’t recruit as much muscle mass. The opposite would apply to someone who’s lifting for endurance, as performing a complex exercise with lots of moving parts for lots of reps would expose them to the risk of injury as fatigue mounts and their form starts breaking down.

Capiche?

As for exercise order, if you’re training two muscle groups during the same workout, make plans to hit the larger muscle first. For example, if your training schedule calls for chest and triceps, you should do the exercises for the chest before worrying about the tris. The same goes with exercise movements — perform your compound movements before your isolation work. For instance, the barbell bench press should come before cable flyes on chest day. Given that example, it’s apropos to mention that free weight exercises should precede cables and machines.

NOTE: If the small muscle group is a point of focus because it’s lagging in size, strength, etc, then it’s alright to hit it at the beginning of the workout when you’re fresh and not mentally or physically worn down so you can focus on it rather than going through the motions, as is often the case when calves, for instance, are tacked on to the end of leg day. Along the same lines, you may also perform an isolation movement like straight-arm pulldowns before seated bent-over barbell rows, a compound movement, if your lats need more width than thickness, for example. That’s known as the priority principle. Use your discretion.

Phew, I just showed you how to make a workout routine!

Sure, there are more complex weight training systems. But how ’bout we keep it simple, huh? What you’ve put together with your own two hands should be more than enough to get you started.

By no means are we even close to done, though.

After all, you might want to know exactly what you have to do in the gym once you get there.

Care to know?

Even more step-by-step instructions are just a download away in Take Your Ass To The MFKN Gym (And What To Do When You Get There), my FREE ebook. Just join my mailing list to receive it and much, much more!

Glossary: abs, barbell, bench press, biceps, chest, deadlift, diet, exercise, goal, gym, hypertrophy, lats, leg day, lifting form, muscle, muscle group, nutrition, reps, results, routine, squats, work out

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Monster Longe

Monster Longe is a personal trainer in San Diego. He has been lifting weights for +25 years and training clients in the gym and online for about half of that time. When not working with clients or making content that's easy to read, understand, and apply to everyday life, he enjoys long walks and leaving buildings crushed and entire city blocks decimated in his wake.

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