Over the past few weeks, we discussed a series of exercises that I highly recommend because of their safety and effectiveness.  Let’s run through the list once more:

Now even if I think you should be doing all the exercises because they don’t only work on their specific part but also all the other balancing and stabilizing muscles in the body, making for an excellent overall workout, it’s not necessary to do them daily or even all in one workout.  There are several possible breakdowns you might want to try.  Feel free to do them all and maybe see which one works best for you or if you like the variety.  While the discipline of doing the same things is good, it’s also a great idea to keep your body from getting bored with the same old routine by changing sets, reps, and schedules of exercise.  So here are three good possibilities:

I.  Full body - This means doing the entire program in one day, with at least one day of rest in between workouts, for example, M-W-F or T-Th-S.  You would be following the Sets & Reps chart according to your needs.

This is very good when you’re just starting out and need to build basic all-around strength with a lot of recuperation time during your three to four non-resistance training days a week.  Remember however that this doesn’t mean you can’t do any kind of exercise on your rest days.  You can do cardio workouts to burn fat and calories and gain stamina, you can work on your abs, you can try any kind of sports, etc.

II.  Split program - This schedule breaks up your program into two days.  It’s up to you how you want to arrange your split, you might want to try Chest/Back/Legs, Shoulders/Biceps/Triceps, with Abdominals on both days if you can manage it, or Chest/Shoulders/Triceps, Back/Biceps/Legs, again with abs as often as you possible.  Whichever you choose, you should have at least one day of rest in between every two straight days of workouts, therefore - Mon/Tu workout, Wed rest, Th/Fri workout, weekend rest.  This way, you work your entire body out twice weekly.

This is a very nice schedule when you’ve improved to the point where you’re doing more sets and reps because then your workout tends to take longer.  This way, instead of taking say an hour to work on your whole body, you’ll have that time to concentrate on just those three bodyparts, giving you a better workout.

III.  Three-day split - This is really useful for when you want to do several different exercises to really give two bodyparts an intense workout, or when you don’t have all that much time for your day’s exercise.  Ideally, you should have at least one day of rest in between the three days which means Mon-Tues-Wed workout, Thurs rest, and so on, but what some people prefer to keep things even and neat is to do Mon-Tues-Wed/Thurs-Fri-Sat and then rest on Sundays.

Now you have your program exercises and your workout schedule options.  You know how many reps and sets you need to do, and you can mix and match these to suit your goals.  All you need is to get started on your very first workout and once you’ve done that, there’s no stopping what you can achieve!

Fitness bulletin. Yoga Moves sessions are ongoing at Olympia Condominiums on Makati Avenue. Interested parties may call or text, 09179613765 or email yogamoves2009@gmail.com.