As a personal Trainer there are many questions I am asked about what to do in the gym. Should I just do cardio, should I weight train, should I do a mixture? There is no excuse for not getting into the shape you want so whether you are training from home, training with friends outdoors, or training in the gym there is no excuse. Where people tend to fall down the most is food. I cant express enough to you that if your diet is not right you will never truly achieve your goal.
Firstly you must decide on your fitness goal.
Loose weight : This will require a high calorie burning exercise programme almost like a circuit with weights and high repititions of 15 or more. Plan to go to the gym at least twice a week.
Get fit and healthy: This will require doing a weights circuit high intensity at least once a week.
Get lean and toned for women and men: You need to bring the body to hypertrophy in other words toning the muscle use a rep range of 10-12 reps per exercise and concentrate more on one muscle group at a time for example chest, shoulders etc. Plan to go to the gym at least twice a week.
Build Muscle for men: For men who wish to build muscle a weights programme with a rep range of 5-6 reps of a heavy weight each set almost going to failure and 5 sets of the exercise. Plan to go to the gym 3-4 times a week.
It is extremely important to evaluate your progress. Without evaluating your progress you will not be sure how much you have progressed. Take note of starting weights and starting resistance on cardio after a few weeks you should be able to push harder and increase resistance as you become more use to the workout. For example if your goal is to loose weight or gain some extra muscle I suggest checking weight and taking tape measurements from at least 5 points of the body.
Shoulders, Chest, Waist (Navel), Hips and thighs. Keep a record of these measurements and then every 4-6 weeks check to see how your goals are progressing.
Truly one of the best ways to get in shape, tone up and loose weight is weight training. Aim to do at least 3 exercises of each body part.
How much weight training should I do to begin with? Its recommended that an adults does at least 2 days weight training per week. This can be broken down into different bodyparts like day 1 chest, shoulders and triceps and day 2 legs back and biceps. The more advanced you are you can break this down even futher like chest and triceps one day, back and biceps one day etc.
How much cardio training will I do and when should I do it?
It is best to do cardio after weight training. There are many people with different opinions on this. Doing cardio first uses up all the energy first so you wont have the as much energy to do as good a weights workout as expected. So better to have the energy to do the weight training and then finish with cardio.