A Beginner’s Guide to Fitness Planning

To obtain the fitness results you’re after, you need these important ingredients; a SMART goal, intentional plan, commitment, and consistency. Fitness goals, like any other goal, need to be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). Having a clear and realistic goal is one of the most important factors in your fitness journey success. If you have a goal of losing weight, please keep in mind that rapid weight loss can be very unhealthy. Average healthy weight loss is at a rate of about 1-2 pounds per week. If you struggle with body image issues, I also strongly discourage weighing yourself every day. I recommend only once per week, or less frequently. With those caveats aside, let’s move on to how to make a plan to get you started.

Now that you know where you are headed (your SMART goal) you can make a plan about how to get there. Just like going on a road trip, you need to know the destination before you plan the route. When you plan a route for a road trip, you have to consider the factors that are unique to your drive. The same is true for a fitness plan. Let’s go over the fundamental questions you need to answer to create your fitness plan.

How much time are you committing to working out?

This question has a few parts to it. First, how many days a week are you willing to consistently commit to? You need at least one day per week to rest and let your body recover, so don’t plan on 7 days a week of intensive workouts. You can do light stretches on your rest day, that does not include a long/intensive yoga routine.

You also need to decide how much time each exercise day you are committing to. Are you going to have the same amount of time each workout session, or will it vary with the day of the week? You know your schedule, there isn’t one right answer. If all you have is 10 minutes, then use it! Start with the time you have. Don’t wait to pursue your fitness goals until you have the “perfect schedule”.

Will you have your exercise all at one time, or in multiple sessions in the day? For me personally, as I am restarting my fitness journey, I have a 20 minute time in the morning for weight lifting, cardio, and calisthenic workouts, and 10-20 minutes in the evening for stretching and easy/relaxing yoga routines.

Where will you work out?

If you have access to a gym that you enjoy, awesome, go there if that is what motivates you. If you have a gym but you hate going, maybe don’t make that your only plan of where to workout. If you don’t have a gym, that’s ok! You don’t have to have a gym membership or home gym equipment to pursue your goals. If you have a space that’s large enough for you to lay down in squared then you have all the space you need.

Once you’ve decided the location for your workouts, you need to decide if you want to exercise alone or with other people. If you like workouting out with others, will that be one or two friends, or a group fitness class? If you choose to exercise alone, I recommend having an accountability partner, someone who will cheer for you and encourage you when you feel stuck.

The fitness plan structure.

The key to making a good fitness plan is to remember that variety is the spice of life. Depending on what you decided in the earlier sections, this will look different. The basic principle is to mix up what you are doing on any given day so that you don’t bored, and your body can properly recover. It’s important to vary the type of workouts you are doing.

If you prefer going to group fitness classes that may look like Zumba on Monday, pilates on Tuesday, weight lifting bootcamp class on Wednesday, spin class on Thursday, yoga on Friday,  a calisthenic bootcamp class on Saturday, and resting on Sunday—take a long bubble bath, you’ve earned it. Each of these classes targets different areas of the body and mix aerobic exercise and resistance training.

I am a firm believer that you need to incorporate a mix of aerobic and resistance training exercises. They both do different things for your body. Aerobic workouts improve your cardiovascular and respiratory health, as well as burning calories while you are exercising. Resistance training helps improve your strength, the resistance on your bones will strengthen your bones and improve your bone density, and resistance training boosts your metabolism, which helps your body burn calories more effectively. If weight loss is your goal, I recommend a higher ratio of resistance training days to aerobic days.

Write it down.

Now you need to write it down. Pick a system that works for you, but I encourage you to write down somehow, someway, your plan. Digital or paper, in your regular calendar or in a special planner. You know your systems best. Choose something that works for you. I chose to make a special planner to write down my plan for the week to help me keep track and make sure I have the variety that I want. See what mine looks like below.

Be flexible!

If you try something and it’s not working, switch it up. You don’t have to stick with it if it’s not working. Don’t let it derail you, just pivot.

Get to it, I would love to hear what your favorite point was from this post. How are you going to implement these tips to help you meet your fitness goals?