How to Plan a Well-Rounded Workout
Here at VIVO Training Systems, we want to empower you to get moving, whether it's as one of our clients or on your own. To that end, we’ve crafted this in-depth guide to designing workouts. We hope it will inspire you to try your hand at creating a workout routine — or at least give you a behind-the-scenes look at why we structure our programs the way we do!
When you’re designing a workout, there are a few things you should determine first: How many different workouts you want to have, how many days per week you’re going to work out and how long the sessions should be.
For beginners or people who want to keep things simple, we suggest focusing on a single workout that’s done 1-3 times a week. If you’re planning to work out 3-4 times a week, two differently structured routines work nicely. Rarely, we will have someone doing more than three different workouts — those tend to be people who have been training a long time, or someone who needs to do much shorter but more frequent training.
The benefit of having a single workout is that it allows you to become very comfortable with the movements, which makes it easier to get stronger! On the other hand, following a program with two different workouts allows you to train on consecutive days while targeting different muscle groups. This approach reduces the risk of overtraining and supports better recovery.
Next, let’s talk about workout length, which will depend on how much time and energy you can regularly dedicate to exercising. The most common durations we see are 20-30 minutes and 45-60 minutes. This includes a short warm-up and cool down.
For a 20-30 minute workout, we usually format the workout like one of the following:
AMRAP: 5 exercises, a 10-20 minute timer, and do as many rounds as possible
3-4 supersets of 2 exercises each
2-3 supersets of 3 exercises each
For 45-60 minute workouts we usually go with one of the options below:
5-6 supersets of 2 exercises each
4-5 supersets of 3 exercises each
3-4 supersets of 2-3 exercises and a 5-10 minute finisher
If you’re wondering what “supersets” are, it refers to grouping 1-3 exercises together and doing them right after each other, without taking a break. This allows you to get more done in a shorter amount of time. Typically the superset exercises work different parts of the body — you do an upper body exercise supersetted with a lower body exercise so that your upper body recovers while your lower body works, etc. Another way we like to group supersets together is using exercises that complement each other. For example, supersetting an exercise that will help with hip mobility before doing an exercise that requires good hip mobility.
The order in which you do things in a workout are also important. VIVO Training Systems workouts are typically formatted as follows:
Warm-Up
Power
Strength
Assistance
Cool Down
The Warm-Up gets your body ready to workout and usually includes something to get the body temperature up, some mobility exercises and some activation exercises. We do Power next, as it is the most neurologically taxing, and sometimes we do other neurologically taxing exercises such as get-ups at this point with, or instead of, the power exercises.
Then we move on to the Strength exercises, which are the most challenging physically and are usually a little lower in reps than the Assistance exercises. The Assistance exercises are typically higher reps and less weight. Then we finish with a Cool Down, which usually includes some exercises to help stretch the parts of the body that were used in the workout and help transition the body into recovery mode.
Now that we’ve covered the number, format and length of the workout: How do we choose what exercises to do? In order to train the whole body in a functional way, we try to incorporate all of the basic movements below in each workout, or at least as much as possible.
Here are the basic movements included in a well-rounded strength program:
Upper Body Push (push-up, shoulder press, etc)
Upper Body Pull (row, pull-up, lat pulldown, etc)
Lower Body Push (squat, lunge, etc)
Lower Body Pull (hinge, deadlift, etc)
Loaded Carry (farmer’s carry, etc)
Get Up (Turkish get-up, etc)
Rotational Core (wood chop, Russian twists, etc)
Anti-Rotational Core (plank, pallor press, etc)
We can break it down a little further for some of the groups:
Upper Push:
Double Arm Horizontal
Double Arm Vertical
Single Arm Horizontal
Single Arm Vertical
Upper Pull:
Double Arm Horizontal
Double Arm Vertical
Single Arm Horizontal
Single Arm Vertical
Lower Push:
Double Leg
Single Leg
Lower Pull:
Double Leg
Single Leg
Here’s an example of putting it all together for a 20-30 minute workout:
10 minute Warm-Up
Power
KB Swing (double leg lower body pull)
Plank with Shoulder Taps (anti-rotational core)
Strength
Goblet Box Squat (double leg lower body push)
Lat Pulldown (double arm upper body pull)
Assistance
Single Leg Glute Bridge (single leg lower body pull)
Yoga Push-up (double arm upper body push)
5 minute Cool Down
You may have noticed that we didn’t get all of the different movements in. In this case, we would make sure that the next program included single arm push and pull exercises, lower body single leg push exercises and rotational core exercises. For sake of time, we typically only include the carries and get-ups in the longer workouts — they’re great as a finisher. Or if someone has specific goals that would require these we will work them in as needed.
If you’re doing a program with two workouts, but working out Monday/Tuesday/Thursday/Friday (back to back days), we like to split it up so you don’t do the same movements two days in a row. The simplest way to do this is to have an Upper Body day and a Lower Body day. However, you can also do a Push-Pull Split: Upper Body Push exercises and Lower Body Pull exercises on one day and then Upper Body Pull and Lower Body Push exercises on the other.
Ok, we’re almost ready to work out! But how many reps should you do? This can be a bit more complicated depending on your goals. The simplest way to figure out your reps would be to start at six reps for each exercise with a weight that feels challenging but not too much. Then after a couple weeks when that weight starts to feel easier, bump the reps up to eight, and continue like this until you get to about 12 reps. Once 12 reps feels easy, it’s time to increase the weight. We usually keep the sets around 2-4 for each exercise.
Now you can put it all together and try out your own workout plan! You’ll get the best results if you stick to your program for at least 4-6 weeks before making any big changes. We hope you enjoy designing your own workouts, but if you have any questions or want help with your training, we’d love to hear from you!