Make the Most of Your Workouts
Whether you’re working out at home or in the gym, to get the most benefit from your workouts, you’ll need to get the right frequency and intensity in your workouts.
Getting the Right Frequency
Our bodies are built for movement, and they look and feel their best the more that we stay active.
So an effective training routine is one that includes frequent exercise and activity.
You’ll want to be active on most days—some people set a daily steps goal (between 7,000 and 10,000 steps) to make sure that they’re moving throughout the day.
But when it comes to your actual workouts, most people are successful with a five day training routine—for five out of the seven days of the week, plan to do a workout of between 30 and 90 minutes. Do a rest day after every two or three days.
To keep your training routine effective, you should perform a mixture of cardiovascular exercise and resistance training.
Cardiovascular exercise (or cardio) is any activity that gets your heart rate up for an extended period of time. Many people enjoy brisk outdoor walks or using a cardio machine (such as a stationary bike, elliptical, or treadmill). But playing sports and even doing yard or house work counts as cardio if you get your heart rate up and keep it up for at least 10 minutes.
For your cardiovascular workouts, you want to aim for 150 minutes total per week (300 total minutes if your goal is fat loss). You can get these minutes in during your 5 weekly workouts, exercising for between 30 and 50 minutes.
For your exercise to count towards your weekly cardio minutes goal, you’ll need to get your heart rate into your moderate intensity zone—working at between 64% and 76% of your maximum heart rate [1, 2].
You can get a quick estimate of your target heart rate by using an online calculator heart rate zone calculator such as ACTIVE.com’s Target Heart Rate Calculator.
Keep in mind that you can cut in half the time you spend on cardio by doing high intensity training—working at between 77% and 93% of your max heart rate (or by doing mixed high intensity and moderate intensity training [1, 2].
One 20 minute high intensity block of training is worth 40 minutes of moderate intensity. Examples of high intensity training include:
Running
Jumping Rope
However, especially in the first 6 months of your training, you’ll want to limit the amount of high intensity training to no more than 2 times per week to avoid overuse injury and burnout.
In addition to cardio, you’ll also want to perform resistance training on 2 or 3 of your workout days. Strength training is important for boosting your metabolism, keeping your bones and muscles strong, improving your posture, and toning your body. More advanced exercises can do between 3 and 5 days of resistance training per week.
Managing Intensity
While you’re doing your workouts, you’ll want to pay attention to how hard you’re working to make sure that your exercise is effective.
Cardio
We monitor and measure intensity differently for cardiovascular exercise and resistance training.
For cardiovascular exercise, we want to get your heart rate up and keep it up within a certain range for an extended period of time.
To monitor your cardiovascular intensity, you can take your pulse while exercising or use an activity tracker to check your heart rate.
You can also use a scale of Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) to monitor your intensity. For this, sk yourself “on a scale of 1 to 10 how hard am I working right now?" (with 1 being “minimum effort” and 10 being “maximum effort”). For moderate intensity cardio you want to be working between 6 and 7. For high intensity cardio you want to be working between 8 and 9.
Alternatively, you can also use the Talking Test to make sure you’re working hard enough. For this, you can try talking or singing while you exercise (some people like to say the Pledge of Allegiance or talk with a friend on the phone).
If you’re able to speak comfortably and normally, you’re working at a low intensity. If you can speak in a sentence or two at a time, you’re in the moderate zone. If you can only say a few words at a time, you’re in your high intensity zone. If you can’t talk at all, your intensity is too high and you need to bring down your intensity to keep your workout safe and effective.
Resistance Training
It’s not necessary to keep your heart rate up while doing resistance training—although you may see your heart rate spike after a hard set of an exercise. However remember that the goal here is to build muscle—and in order to do that, we need to challenge your muscles and also give them adequate rest between sets.
Most beginner-level resistance training programs recommend performing between 3 and 5 sets of a given exercise for between 8 and 12 repetitions per set, and resting for between 30 seconds and 2 minutes between sets.
More advanced exercisers may perform resistance training to achieve specific adaptations of the muscles such as strength, muscular power, hypertrophy, or endurance—and the training recommendations for those vary in terms of how many sets and reps, how much resistance, and how much rest there is between sets of a given exercise.
In order to keep your strength training effective, you have to challenge your muscles with a progressive overload—that means giving the muscles more load than they’re used to handling and increasing the amount of resistance over time.
In general, for your resistance training to be effective, you want the last few reps of your sets to feel hard—but not so hard that you have to sacrifice good form. Always practice good form and safe technique. If your form starts to slip, you should end your set and rest.
You can use the RPE scale to make sure that you’re getting the right work load in your resistance training. On a scale of 1 to 10 (with 1 being “minimal effort,” and 10 being “maximum effort”) you want to challenge yourself at between a 6 and an 8. In the last few reps of your sets, you should feel your muscles fatiguing or “burning.”
Another way to ensure that you’re getting the most out of your resistance training is to figure out what your 1 Rep Max (1RM) is for a given exercise (such as squats, deadlifts, or bench press) and training at a percentage of that number.
I don’t normally recommend beginners perform 1RM testing until they have mastered the form and technique of an exercise (since the risk of injury is much higher while pushing your muscles to their max). However you can also estimate your 1RM by testing how many repetitions at a given weight that you can perform and use an online calculator (such as the ExRx.net calculator) to get a rough prediction.
See the chart below for the recommendations for the percentage of your 1 RM to train according to the muscular adaptation you’re trying to achieve [3]:
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[1] Target Heart Rate and Estimated Maximum Heart Rate. https://www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/basics/measuring/heartrate.htm#1
[2] Physical Activity Guidelines Advisory Committee Report, 2008. https://health.gov/sites/default/files/2019-10/CommitteeReport_7.pdf
[3] G. Gregory Haff & N. Travis Triplett. Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning (2016, National Strength and Conditioning Association). Fourth Edition. Table 17.9; Table 17.11; Table 17.12.
JAYD HARRISON
Jayd Harrison is an author, health coach, and online personal trainer from the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina. Over the last decade, she has helped individuals to find their strength and build a healthy lifestyle through personal training, group fitness, and online fitness content. Check out her blog, Youtube channel, and Jaydigains Twitch channel to learn more. Subscribe to the email list to stay up-to-date and receive special offers on Jayd Harrison Fitness & Wellness services and products.
