How to Create the Perfect Workout Plan // Ultimate Guide

welcome back to my channel my friends so today we're going to go through how to create the most amazing training routine that works for you that gets you results that fits in your lifestyle and that just it just works okay you guys are just in sync i know that right now it's the start of the year happy new year by the way but you can watch this at any time of the year maybe it's chinese new year maybe it's the end of the tax year maybe it's q2q3 end of close play financial markets it doesn't matter whether you have a training routine already or whatever time of year it is sometimes it's just helpful to kind of reflect on what you have and see if it's really taking care of you properly in the last few videos i shared my training plan which helped me come back from an injury that i was suffering from for over a year and then i also spoke about will smith's weight loss journey and his weight loss routine that kind of felt like it was set up to make it feel more difficult than it had to be and it kind of got me thinking what is it about a workout plan that makes it and i'm not trying to sound dramatic over here but your workout plan has the complete power to transform your results and the way you feel about working out both physically and mentally regardless of what goal you have so you know it's kind of a big deal so we're going to go through the best way to build a routine that works for you that makes you feel happiest in the long run and then i'm also going to sprinkle in a little bit of science you guys know me i can't make a video without looking at the scientific literature it's in my blood okay but we're going to go through the science of how to schedule your routine schedule your weekly workouts as well so that you're not wasting any of your pressures and my precious i mean time now the first step is to be really clear on your goal it's super important to know exactly why you're working out and what you're working towards now if you want to make the most improvements in a particular area then you have to be specific specificity is key it's really hard to say but it's key being specific means focusing your training to optimize for one particular goal at a time so you could say i want to build some muscle or i want to get stronger or i want to lose fat or i want to get athletic and more functional or i want to improve my endurance and all of those are particular goals that you can optimize for now you could be sitting there thinking damn it i really wanted two particular goals the one i get the most is i want to build muscle and lose fat being specific would allow you to maximize your muscle growth and then maximize your fat loss by focusing on one of them at time so you can still be specific and achieve multiple goals just by focusing on one of them at a time so being specific sequentially and you might be thinking well hang on natasha what are you talking about we've seen you train we've seen you train lots of different things hypertrophy strength plyometrics functional training gymnastics endurance all of these things what are you talking about and to that i say you've caught me red-handed that is how i train now right now i'm working on the complete other end of the spectrum to specificity where i train lots of different goals together and that comes at a price the prices that i don't make as much progress in any one particular area compared to if i was being specific trust me i've paid my g's i've done my time okay i've done my years of being specific where i was just focused on one particular goal at a time and there was there was nothing else it was just tunnel vision build muscle build strength get explosive and that's a decision that i've made because fitness for me right now is just about having fun and just adding to my life and just making me feel good and less stressed and all of the other good things that come with training but trust me if i needed to hit a particular goal i would get i would get down and dirty with the specifics so there's a trade-off the more focused and optimized you're training for a particular goal the more advances you'll make in that particular area and remember you can still be specific sequentially you don't have to commit to something for a lifetime you don't have to be best friends for life you can just be best friends for now i am thinking i'll probably make a program like move reload or something that reflects more of how i train today but um i just think the trade-off and understanding the trade-off and where you want to be on that spectrum and why is going to be really fulfilling for you so the second step is being honest about what is sustainable for you fitness should be adding to your life it should make you feel happier healthier physically and mentally more confident and just like you can live your life fully like i mentioned it in the will smith video but i really feel like health is being of sound body and mind and if you're hating the journey to a healthier you then that isn't healthy even if you hit your goal and anyway even with the most amazing most perfect scientifically backed routine in the world if your workouts feel like they're getting in the way of your life then you just won't stick around long enough to see the results and that's just the same for everyone so sustainability is the key to getting serious results so my approach is this first we figure out what's a truly sustainable level of commitment to get to your goal and then we pack in all the optimizations and all of the science into that structure to give you the very best bang for your buck so before we go into any science i need you guys to be super honest be honest with me be honest with yourselves everyone's friends here it's just important to be honest if you look into your real life what are all of the goals and commitments that you have outside of fitness that you want to achieve so that you can figure out how much time you can actually work out a week i feel like the best way for me to do this is just to write everything that i have down that is fixed so that can be lectures work school face timing my mum whatever it is that's fixed and locked down write it down because you cannot move those fitness is supposed to add to your life not start scrubbing away things that you actually enjoy and you want to achieve so now that you have like a realistic week in front of you what are the time slots where you can actually make a workout can you get to three sessions a week because generally speaking generally this is very general across a large number of scientific studies and from my personal experience three sessions a week is where you can start to see significant changes in the short to medium term and that progress drives you to keep going at the same time it's not strictly true that more training is always better elite coaches are really aware of stress fatigue over-training and sub-optimal performance from just not having enough recovery so generally three to six sessions a week i i feel like it's more three to five sessions a week for someone who has other time commitments who isn't an elite athlete is a good ballpark if you want to get results and balance that with sustainability if you're a beginner or you're recovering from an injury don't feel like you have to just jump straight into your goal level of training a week it definitely wasn't like that from me when i came back from my injury last year it took me three months to kind of ease my way back into things i'm really happy now with my two days on one day off it's about four and a half sessions a week and it's working really well for me okay now that we have a feel for what's doable for you and your life we can start talking about how we can make that time really count so next we're going to talk about key training principles and optimizations and how can we pack as many training optimizations as we can into your schedule to get the most bang for your buck eureka for your euro power for your pound in other words pitching for your currency i'm sorry i had to do it so the first training tip i have for you is around your most important day regardless of your goal you probably have a most important day if you're muscle building it might be your most priority muscle that you're trying to build if you're trying to get stronger it might be that day where you're doing your one rep max your heaviest lift if you're losing fat it might be your most compound most energetic most dynamic workout of the week i always recommend putting that day after your rest day or after your longest sequence of rest days so if you're working out four times a week and you've had a rest day saturday and sunday put your highest priority day on the monday where you feel the most refreshed so the next tip is about creating your split and figuring out how long you need to recover before hitting that same session or muscle group again studies showed that across a range of body parts after a really tough session where muscles were pushed close to muscular failure that 70 of resistance trained individuals needed 48 hours to fully recover before they could push the same weight at the same amount of reps so if you plan to hit a muscle group intensely it's likely that you'll need at least one to two days recovery before hitting them intensely again and if you're a beginner that recovery time is probably even higher because you haven't yet had those adaptations that come with training beyond the recovery of a particular muscle group i think there's a broader point about intensity because we all have to kind of manage our lives manage our energy levels and motivation and that's where i feel like rate of perceived exertion can be really helpful basically rate of perceived exertion is how hard you feel you're pushing yourself in a workout so if we think of a one out of ten you're on a beach you're lying down you've got nice cranberries you're in hawaii congrats by the way you look over you see a pina colada so you reach for it a little bit of shoulder engagement a little bit of stretch in the lats you pick it up bit of forearm action a bit of bicep flexion you take a sip easy peasy one out of ten so now let's talk about a 10 what does a 10 feel like have you guys ever seen the rocky films you're probably thinking oh yeah the rocky films i know what she's talking about i have the tiger that's so motivating you're wrong i'm thinking about rocky 3 where he's in the ring with clubber lang and he's just getting that's a 10. and to be honest like these have i've rarely hit tens because they scare me sometimes so my recommendation for someone that has an average quality and quantity of rest an average level of stress is to have no more than three intense sessions a week where you're working at a rate of perceived exertion of about an eight or nine that means that if you're training three times a week maybe every session can be an eight or a nine rate of perceived exertion if you want to go above three intense sessions a week and still keep it sustainable i genuinely feel like that needs to come alongside having above average level and quality of sleep and rest a below average general level of stress so it's really up to you to decide whether fitness is your priority and you go that route or if you just want to fit it into your life and make it part of your lifestyle so if you want to achieve some lower intensity sessions this is what i do a couple of sessions a week are low intensity then here are a few tips first of all i would just lower the volume so i'm doing fewer reps fewer sets overall the workout is shorter or i would increase the amount of rest time between sets and i would also lower the weight so i'm doing the same exercises but with a lower weight and therefore the whole workout feels a lot less intense so now i want to talk about intensity over time as in months and years not just how you manage your intensity in a weekly schedule and i think it's really important and healthy to be aware that elite athletes don't train intensely all the time they generally take weeks off during off season and they'll also intentionally have training phases where the intensity is lower lots of different studies across lots of different training goals like power speed strength even body composition has showed that some level of periodization where intensity and volume are lowered in the short term is optimal for peak development over the long term i think it can be healthy to be aware that if you're picturing some super fit super strong super successful athlete working out all the time intensely that that is just not the case so please don't feel an imaginary pressure to have an amazing intense training week all the time instead just stay in check with your mind and body notice for things like your body's not recovering as well your muscles always feel sore your motivation is dipped your energy levels have dipped all of these are completely valid signs for you to kind of lower the intensity of your training or just to take some time off it's not worth squeezing in more substandard workouts and waiting for you to have proper over training symptoms before being able to justify like a good break i probably take about one to two weeks off every two to three months sometimes it's like planned like i know that i'll be on holiday other times i'll just take it on the spot i just listen to how my body's feeling so the next thing i want to talk about is shorter workouts in your routine sometimes you just don't have the time the clock's ticking you've got somewhere to be you've been somewhere you just what do you do this happens to me i feel like a lot of the time doesn't mean you can't have a good workout you just have to be a little bit smarter about it so these are some things that have really helped me the first is to do the warm-up your first exercise in most of your workouts should always be a compound move using as many muscle groups as you can and then what we're going to do is merge your warm up and your first exercise together so i'd start off with some light sets of your first movement and then in your rest period do a little bit of dynamic stretching you know some leg swings a little bit of hip openers all of that is amazing doesn't get you out of breath you're still using your rest by your being super time efficient and with three or four warm up sets you're taking about five minutes and then you're ready to go you're at your working weight it's just it's just a match made in heaven the next is to stick with super compound movements throughout the workout so these are multi-joint movements that work lots of different muscle groups all at once it's just it's amazing for time efficiency regardless of what your goal is stick to super compound movements and the last thing is supersets supersets are your friends they might not feel like it but when time is not your friend supersets become your best friend and there's a different ways that you can incorporate supersets if you're really trying to hammer in a particular muscle group supersetting two exercises that target the same muscle is a really great way to just ko but supersets don't have to be targeting the same muscle groups which will keep your heart rate high during the whole workout but it will also give each muscle group enough rest now the last point i want to talk about in terms of general optimizations is what happens when you need to skip a session it happens you write down a plan life gets in the way it's supposed to get in the way i get questions about it all the time the question goes somewhat like this oh today was supposed to be my leg day but i wasn't able to do my leg day because i had to do some homework and then i wasn't able to fit because the gym closed so what should i do should i do my leg day tomorrow maybe should i not take my rest and do my leg down my rest day or maybe i should swap the sessions reschedule my whole life next week skip it the thing is i know where you're coming from i've been there so many times i felt lost so many times where i'm like what do i do now like i've gone rogue but to be honest if it's only happening like once in a blue moon it's really quite rare then in the grand scheme of things over the long term of your training it is not going to make that much of a difference how you go about trying to fix that skipped session in fact i don't even know what i'm talking about it's going to make no difference and if it's a one-off but you're really bugged by it then if it's a high priority session swap it in for a low priority session and if it's a low priority session just skip it honestly skip it don't worry about it so now i'm going to talk about optimizations for two goals in particular fat loss and muscle building because i get asked those questions all the time i will do more dedicated full science explained videos where i bring in nutrition so make sure you're subscribed if you're not already and hit the notification bell as well but this is just a little taster of how you would schedule your weeks and any other extra tips in terms of like training styles in terms of the training styles for fat loss it can be really easy to think of cardio as being the best way to achieve fat loss but there was a systematic review that studied 58 high quality studies and they found that programs based on resistance training elicits significant reductions in body fat percentage body fat mass and visceral fat in healthy adults that even covers studies where resistance training was the only intervention for fat loss there wasn't any dieting they didn't even do any cardio alongside it it was just resistance training and they still found a significant difference other systematic reviews went to look for the optimal way to lose fat and they found that concurrent training where you mix resistance training and aerobic training elicited a greater change in lost fat than just resistance training alone or just aerobic alone they found that concurrent training allowed you to lose fat whilst protecting the muscle mass that you would have lost from aerobic training alone i personally prefer and i personally recommend keeping a majority of the sessions as resistance training sessions and maybe having one or two cardio sessions a week that's because you worked hard for your muscle right if you were specific at building that muscle and building that strength you don't want to lose it all during a cut so that's why i maintain a good amount of resistance training even when i'm working on a fat loss program now there was a meta-analysis in 2016 that concluded that we recommend exercise programs that involve aerobic and resistance exercise at least three sessions per week and 24 weeks in length so you're seeing that three sessions a week come up again i agree that three sessions a week is that minimum kind of sweet spot where you're still keeping lots of sustainability in your routine but also you're gonna start seeing enough results so that you can keep driving forward and pushing forward through that program a split that i really like if you are going to train three days a week would be lower body resistance training then upper body resistance training and hit and then a full body resistance training it can help to focus on movements at the gym where you're moving more weight or you're moving at speed so that you put out as much energy as you can per rep per minute that you have when you're training and that that my friends is real bang for your buck in terms of which cardio to pick fasted cardio hasn't been shown to be any more effective than fed cardio do it if you feel sick when you eat something in the morning or whatever but don't feel like you're gonna get extra results by doing fasted cardio and now you might be thinking well what do i choose what cardio do i do do i do hit do i do medium intensity do i do low intensity so many choices and here has become really popular online but a review of the studies shows that it's as effective for body fat reductions than performing medium intensity cardio for longer and so it's the time saving effect plus with hip there's more variety you can do lots of different moves you can also just do it in a small little space in your own home but it's really your choice if you have lots of time and you don't want to do hit because you don't enjoy here you will get the same results by doing a longer medium intensity session or an even longer low intensity session if you do go for hit though be aware that you do need a little bit of time to recover because it's demanding if you're doing it right if you're doing hit good then you need to really recover and allow yourself to recover because research into fit athletes showed that adding hit into their routine significantly reduced their ability to recover in as quick as four weeks okay muscle building maybe your goal is to shape that body you know boulder them shoulders grow the guns accentuate the abs quadruple the quadriceps curve the calves i don't know can we keep going that might be your goal and so here is the muscle building specific optimizations and tips to help you schedule your week so first of all the training style that you want to go for is hypertrophy now traditionally we tend to think of hypertrophy as being in the 8 to 12 rep range but a lot of researchers showed that even when you go up to like 15 20 sometimes 30 reps you can still get just as statistically significant results in hypertrophy as if you're sticking to 8 to 12 rep sets the key thing that the research found was that as long as you are pushing yourself close to failure then you will still get those same results but i still prefer to do around eight to twelve just from a time efficient perspective it means that i can do more variety rather than doing sets of like 30 it's just personal preference now in terms of optimal weekly volume for muscle gain scientists like to measure this in terms of sets per muscle per week now the systematic reviews have shown that if you increase the number of sets per muscle group per week you make more gains but the vast majority of studies only test to a maximum of 12 sets per muscle per week and with that lack of data the authors of one study concluded that it remains unclear as to where the upper threshold lies as to the dose-response relationship between resistance training volume and muscle growth the body of literature that goes beyond 12 sets per muscle per week is really small and it's really conflicted so basically we don't know we don't know if it plateaus after 12 sets per muscle per week we don't know if it increases after 12 sets per muscle per week we just don't know my take is that we just shouldn't be overly confident about what happens when we go beyond 12 sets per muscle group per week the science just isn't good enough so some coaches will say do 10 to 20 sets per muscle per week i recommend to get to at least 12 sets per muscle per week especially if it's a kind of high priority muscle for you but see those extra sets as being bonus sets if you can do them well rested if you can't and you feel like you can't recover don't worry about it but aim for that kind of 12 sets per muscle per week as that kind of baseline target and the last thing is to focus on progressive resistance so progressive resistance or progressive overload will be the main driver of your hypertrophy gains this basically just means slowly but continuously increasing the stress that you put your muscles through over time but it doesn't necessarily look like increasing the weight that you're lifting so you can increase the weight but you can also change the tempo go a lot slower that means you've got more time under tension you can also have better control of the movement more discipline better form you can have a very different amount of load going through those target muscles depending on what your form is so when i'm going to the gym and i'm seeing a bicep swing like one of these get my back involved it's as if you're a pro do you do it often what like this when i'm seeing one of these that's putting a completely different load on your bicep compared to a bicep curl um which is what i assume we're trying to do but yeah and you can also increase the volume so increasing the number of sets that you're doing or increasing the number of reps per set these are generally supposed to be small steady improvements over time like the american college of sports medicine recommends that changes in total training volume like reps sets and load be made in increments of 2.5 percent to 5 per week to avoid the possibility of overtraining so they're not big changes now i'm going to go into the detail of muscle building all of the science that you have to know and the nutrition in another video a separate video and i'll do exactly the same for fat loss as well so make sure you're subscribed hit the thumbs up if you like this video as a little taster and i will see you guys very soon i love you so much bye

Channel: Natacha Océane

Views: 1,727,287

Keywords: how, how to, create, make, design, best, perfect, workout, exercise, training, plan, routine, programme, fat, weight, lose, loss, muscle, fit, fitness, health, beginner, transformation, natacha, natacha oceane

Id: -tld0bc0t3k

Length: 24min 55sec (1495 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 17 2022