How To Create a Gym Routine to Take You Closer to Your Goals.

So you’re new to training and haven’t got a clue where to start? You arrive at the gym, pull on your trainers, headphones on and then it hits you…..you don’t know where to start.

It’s a tale as old as time; one of the most common things I hear with people who come to me looking to start their own fitness journey. They’re full of motivation. They have a list of goals or things they want to achieve. But then they realise, that the getting from A to B part, the knowledge needed to get them the results they want?I

It’s not quite there yet. Which is fine; remind yourself that we all start somewhere and that until you start DOING or find someone to help you. It’s normal not to know how to tackle it!

So let me step in to try to shed some light. To give you some starting tips to set you on your way.

How it feels when someone gives you some gym knowledge & it works

If you're looking to build your own training programme or gym routine to follow, there are a few things to ask yourself first:

1️⃣ Whats the main goal you’re aiming for? You can obviously have more than one goal running at the same time, but if I asked you to tell me what was meaningful to you, what would you say? The way you train and the training requirements, will be influenced by this, so working backwards helps! (General Wellbeing & Fitness, Fat loss, Muscle Gain, Performance Goals, Confidence, Specific Event etcccc)

2️⃣ Meet yourself where you’re at.

How many days are you currently exercising consistently already? Rather than looking at what other people are doing and thinking that number of sessions a week is the holy grail. If you’re starting from 0, then anything upwards is an improvement!

3️⃣ How many days MINIMUM can you commit to exercise & training weekly?

It’s important that you’re realistic and honest with yourself here. Go off what you HONESTLY believe, rather than what you’d like to think you can do. If you start with the minimum, then once you start becoming more familiar with training in your week, you can always increase it from there.

4️⃣ Look at your week; how does training fit?

What other responsibilities or factors do you have to consider when planning? This affects the energy, time and priority you can place on training. If you have children, demanding career, you’re a carer or have other outside of gym commitments (because for most people, training won’t be their entire life and identity).

Brief pause. Water break. Take a second. Ross from friends knows.

5️⃣ How does your current environment  support your training goals?

If you want to learn Olympic lifting, but you train at home, there may need to be a shift in environment to service your goals. Likewise, if you only train in a class group enviorment, but you want to improve your running, you’re going to have to start running hun.

6️⃣ What do you enjoy doing?

Maintaining an element of play and enjoyment can make things more appealing, especially when you first start out.

7️⃣ How experienced are you?

From a training perspective, how knowledgeable / confident are you? Can you honestly say you could structure a training programme that will lend itself to your goals. If not, how can you access that support?

8️⃣ Do you have what it takes?

Are you aware of the commitment, time and requirements your goals need? A lot of people set huge ambitious goals, but aren’t aware of what they’ll need to do to get there. This will likely require you to change elements of your life, make choices, prioritise differently or shift up your routine.

9️⃣ Now Go Forth & Prosper

Now you have more information about yourself, you can get into the more training specific details. Things like sets, reps, exercise choice. Ultimately, this is the fun part. Matching your actions, to everything else we’ve mentioned ⬆️

That’s all folks.

That’s your 8. That’s your lot. For now.

From here, you’ll likely need to dig a bit deeper into specifics around your goals or the event you’re training for.

But by breaking it down, you can start piecing together. Which gives you a better start point to hit the ground running!

**DISCLAIMER ** This is where having a coach can help; someone to help answer these questions and alongside you, work to take you from where you are currently to where you see yourself in the future. To meet you where you’re at now, then create not just a programme (with sets and reps), but to help you build confidence, self accountability and structure. If you’re based around Salford, drop me a message and we can have a chat about how I can help you.