How to Keep Your Fitness Program Fun with Workout Variety

When it comes to your workouts, if you feel like you are going through the

motions, you are almost guaranteed to be wasting your time!

 

If you need to shake up your program a bit, read my blog and watch the video
I’ve included later in this post.

 

To be clear, if someone wants to be a great athlete, they have to specialize.

Sometimes they have to do drill after drill, refining their technique, and that

isn’t always fun.

 

But unless you are really trying to specialize in one thing, I think that ‘mixing

it up’ is awesome.

 

The key goes back to the ‘going through the motions’ issue.

 

You may do great on keeping everything consistent. You may hate variety.

If that’s you, maybe it’s okay to keep doing what you are doing as long as you

are having fun with it.

 

But as soon as it gets boring, as soon as you don’t feel like working out, it’s

time to consider changing things up.

 

One of our most recent new clients falls into this category. He was working out

at one of the big gyms in Plantation (western suburb of Fort Lauderdale for you

guys not in the South Florida area). He was consistent, worked hard, and

achieved some good results.

 

But he’s ready to go to the next level so he started at Personal Fitness Advantage.

He’s been having a lot of fun in addition to creating some new stimulus for his

workout.

 

So if you don’t live in South Florida and can’t come hang at Personal Fitness

Advantage all the time, what do you do?

 

I’ve included a youtube video a bit lower in this blog to give you some ideas.

It’s a video of myself going through one of my Warrior Strength Circuits. Make

sure to check it out.

 

Here’s a list of a few things you can change:

 

-change the exercise

 

-change the reps and weight

 

-change the sequence of exercises

 

-change the bodypart split

 

-Integrate different forms of fitness into one workout (sort of like CrossFit, but

make sure it’s personalized to you to optimize results and safety. The circuit

I demonstrate in the video below is one example).

 

With our Metabolism Acceleration small groups at PFA, we generally specialize

in a strength focused workout and normally it’s whole body. So to mix it up,

we focus on changing the exercise period (30, 45, 60 seconds, etc.).

 

Also, we’ll consider the impact of unilateral movements (like a lunge), vs. bilateral

movements (like a squat).

 

Here’s a two workout scenarios that we might use at PFA:

 

Workout Scenario #1: Ten station circuit, Repeat 3 times, 40 second exercise

duration Mix of unilateral/bilateral movements working the entire body

 

Workout Scenario #2: First half of workout: 5 Exercise Circuit, Repeat 4 times,

30 second exercise duration. Using Multi-joint, bilateral movements

 

Second half of workout: 5 Exercise Circuit, Repeat 2 times, 60 second exercise

duration. Mix unilateral compound joint movements, with cardio intervals, and

bilateral isolation ‘bodybuilding’ style movements.

 

You could take these outlines and create your own, new workout program from

them. Then you could alternate them other day for 3-4 weeks.

 

After that, it’ll probably time to throw some new stuff in the mix.

 

Remember, if you are just going through the motions in your workout, the

likelihood of improved results is almost zero. So why not change it up.

 

For those of you in the west Broward (west Plantation) area, consider Personal

Fitness Advantage, a private personal training studio where we push you to become

the best you can be and everyone knows your name.