Exercise Routines: Building a Personalized Routine

Tom Rooney

If you want to embark on a new fitness program, the best way to start is to plan out exercise routines. This doesn’t mean that you have to choreograph a series of fancy aerobics moves. It means that you need to plan out what types of exercises you’ll do when. That way, when it is time to hit the gym (at home or at a fitness center) you’ll know exactly what to do that day.

Here are some starter tips for designing your own exercise routines:

• Figure out the types of aerobic exercises you like to do and make a list of them.
• Write out your fitness goals – to lose weight, gain muscle, tone body?
• Make a list of what days you’ll plan to exercise and where you will exercise on each day.

Once you have done that, you can start to plan your exercise routines. You will have a routine for each day, but the routines should all work together to give you a balanced system. You also need to be realistic about your time. If you are not currently exercising you probably don’t have a ton of time in your day to exercise. A good way to start is to find a time in the day (or every other day) that you can devote just to exercising and do not schedule or commit to anything else during that time. Your exercise routines for each day should include the following:

• Warm-up. Get your body geared up to exercise. This includes walking or light aerobics as well as stretching.
• Strength-training and aerobics. There are two ways to work these into your routine. You can do a little bit of each every workout or you can alternate a full workout of strength training with a full workout of aerobic exercise.
• Cool-down. Spend five or ten minutes cooling down. You can repeat your warm-up, including stretches, until your heart rate goes back to normal. This will help reduce muscle soreness.

Using this framework for exercise routines you can fill in your favorite types of exercises. Maybe one day you want to do a mixture of jumping rope and jogging for your aerobic exercise while another day you want to bicycle and yet another day you want to follow an exercise video. This is fine and even encouraged because the more varied your exercise routines the less likely you’ll find yourself bored with your workout. On the same note, don’t feel like your exercise routines are written in stone. It’s good to change and update your routines as you become more fit so that they are still challenging and beneficial.

If you’re still not convinced that exercise routines are not right for you, consider this. If you have a specific routine where you repeat the same types of exercises in the same order every week, you can start to chart your progress. For example, if you use the treadmill for 20 minutes each day, keep track of how far you travel. As you become more fit, you’ll go faster and further – if it’s written on paper you’ll see exactly how far you’ve come in your exercise routines!