How To Add Variety To Your Workout

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A question was put to me the other day during a PT session with a client whom I’ve been training for over 3 years.  It went something along the lines of this, “How do you manage to keep our workouts so “NOT” boring?”

I’d like to think that my years of experience, the hundreds of thousands of dollars I’ve invested in my continual up skilling and education or a combination of both have enabled me to rack up hundreds and hundreds of exercises in my tool box, a bit like how auto technicians (that’s old school for mechanics) have hundreds of different spanners and socket sets in their tool box.

But the truth is; I reckon I have about 50 stock standard exercises that I use as my “go to” exercises. I’m going to let you in on a little secret, we fit pro’s actually use the same 6 exercises over and over again, but what we do is vary five simple things, which I’m going to share with you today so that you can use them too, if you want to add variety to your workouts.

They are: sets, reps, weight, tempo & rest.

1. Sets:

This is simply how many times you perform a certain exercise.  If you’ve ever read any of the old school body building styled books you would’ve come across the whole “3 sets” written.  The reality is, your ultimate health and fitness goal will dictate how many sets you are going to achieve and how long you can invest in your individual training session.  I’ve been known to program 10 sets of the same exercise to achieve a certain desired result.  Try it one day, especially when doing legs.  Make sure you have easy access to a wheel chair the next day as you’ll need it.

2.       Reps:

Reps is short for repetitions, or how many times you’re going to perform the exercise in a set.  Again this can vary dramatically, anywhere from 3 reps (power lifters often operate in this rep range) right up to sets of 50 and beyond.  Again your goal will govern this.

3.       Weight:

This is obvious.  You can vary the amount of weight you’re actually lifting or moving.  The more weight you have to pick up or lift, the more motor units you’ll need to recruit to perform the lift.  A motor unit is like an outboard motor on a boat.  The more motors on a boat, the faster the boat can move or the more load it can tow, likewise for a muscle, the more motor units needed to move a weight, the heavier the weight you can shift.

4.       Tempo:

Tempo is often neglected by a lot of fit pros when prescribing exercise programs but it’s a really great way to add variety to the workout as well as creating quite an effective stimuli to your body.  It’s simply the speed at which the weight is moving.  Often written as a 4 digit number to indicate the speed (in seconds) of the weight as it lowers to the ground, pauses at the bottom, moves upwards and pauses at the top of its move.    So an exercise with  4:1:1:0 tempo is moving down for 4 seconds, a 1 second pause at the bottom, 1 a second move upwards and then straight back down again with no rest at the top.

5.       Rest:

The rest is simply the amount of rest you have allowed yourself between each set of exercises.  Sometimes 10 seconds, sometimes 3 minutes, it really all depends on what your goals are.

So, how do you put it all together?  This is where the expertise of the trainer comes to the fore.  You see, with the body having so many different energy systems, as well as the client having varying degrees of inflexibility, coupled with the fact that people often have differing health and fitness goals and begin their journey at different stages of their life, the reality is, not only is exercise selection vitally important, but varying these five variables is the KEY to getting your goals in the shortest possible time.  Get one of these wrong and you could in fact be doing more harm than good.  You could prolong or even not achieve your goals AT ALL.

And here’s another important myth that needs to be dispelled right here right now: Lifting light weights with high reps is NOT, I repeat is NOT a method to burn fat, or tone, or whatever you girls want to call it, nor does lifting heavy weights make you BIG and BULKY!!! (See I even wrote it in bold)

So, if you’d like some help in designing your next program, here’s my ONE TIME OFFER: Like this post and then share it on social media like Facebook, Google +, Twitter, Linked In or where ever you read this.  if you do this, you’ll go into the draw to win a 60 minute Complimentary Coaching Session with me using either Skype, Google Hangout or in person (if you’re local to me).

I’ll make the draw on Monday 23rd December 2013.  Consider this a Christmas gift from me to you.

Pat Rae

ABOUT: Pat Rae is a personal trainer, lifestyle coach, massage therapist, motivational speaker, author and presenter.  He is the owner of a boutique PT studio in Brisbane  and an online health and wellness program both of which have been established to help people live healthier, happier and more energetic life through exercise, eating whole real foods and stressing less.  See more at http://www.prpt.com.au & http://www.patrae.com