20 Steps to Creating a Personalized Program

Creating your own program involves 20 steps, which are described in this section. They will give you the answers you need to start training with a program that best matches your goals. The 20 steps outlined here combine resistance training and cardio training. You may have decided that you want to perform only resistance training. However, if you have fat to lose or have difficulty maintaining your body weight, it is wise to add some cardio training. Stretching regularly to maintain flexibility as well as good posture is also important, especially given that it requires only a few minutes per week. Rigorously following a good program will result in progress. However, gauging progress can be difficult because you see yourself every day. You may even believe that you are not making any progress at all. And then one day your clothes feel tighter in a new place and looser in another. One way to detect improvements is to photograph yourself at least once a month. Many have found that photos are more reliable than body weight or measurements. Rest assured that as long as you are training regularly and eating a balanced, healthy diet, fat will diminish and muscles will develop. Because some women achieve results more quickly than others, though, you cannot predict your rate of progress. Identify Your Goals To create a perfectly tailored weight training program that suits your needs, you must first clearly define your objectives. You work out to do one or a combination of the following: • Reshape your body • Get rid of excess body fat • Improve your sport performance • Remain healthy • Fight the loss of mobility due to aging You should be able to precisely state your main goals as they relate to these objectives. Avoid very vague objectives such as I want to get in shape or I want to improve my physique. Be as precise as possible. For example, in one month, you may want to do one or more of the following: • Lose 10 pounds • Increase your strength by 10 percent • Fit into clothes you have not been able to wear for a while Specific programs to help you meet your goals can be found in part III of this book. There you’ll find programs and circuits using either minimal equipment you can keep at home or gym equipment to focus on your upper body, lower body, or both. Ideally, you should tailor these programs to suit your specific needs. The following steps will help you do just that. Decide How Many Days Per Week to Train Your personal schedule will determine how many days you can work out each week. The following two weight training programs are suited to beginners: • One weekly weight training session: Training only once a week is better than no training at all, and you will still make progress. For athletic women who are already training for their sport, one weight training session per week is probably enough. If you are a beginner with very little free time, this is a good start as long as you stick to your program. • Two weekly weight training sessions:  Two weight training sessions per week is a good minimum. If you train for a sport, don’t overdo it by weight training more than twice a week. If you are not doing sport-specific training to start with, we recommend that you perform two weekly weight training workouts for a month or two, and then move to three sessions a week when you feel ready. After three to six months of regular three-days-a-week weight training, if your body has adapted well to the rigor of training, you could move to a four-day program. • Three weekly weight training sessions: If you do not practice any other physical activity, the ideal would be to work up to three weight training sessions a week. With this schedule, you can spend more time on each body region. If you are a beginner, training three times per week allows you to set up three shorter workouts as compared to two longer ones; if you have a couple of months of training under your belt, this schedule allows you to perform more sets per body region. • Four weekly weight training sessions:  This schedule allows you to perform even more sets and more exercises per body region. This is an advanced strategy that is not for beginners, even if it is tempting in order to make progress more quickly. We do not recommend more than four weight training workouts per week. Keep in mind that overtraining is more damaging to your progress than undertraining. Only high-level athletes benefit from more than four sessions per week. Muscle strengthening occurs only if you take enough rest between workouts. Therefore, rest is of the utmost importance if you want to progress quickly. Training too often does not provide your body enough rest. A loss of strength is the main sign that you are overtraining—in other words, that you are doing too much. Women suffer from a higher risk of injury during sports than men do. For example, in response to resistance exercises, the rate of tendon collagen synthesiss 50 percent less in women than in men.1 As a result, tendon regeneration is much slower in women than in men. Therefore, to avoid injuries, women need longer rest periods between heavy lifting sessions than men do. Alternating heavy workouts with lighter ones favors recovery. As far as cardio training is concerned, if you wish to gain muscle mass and strength, do not overdo cardio; once or twice per week is enough. If you already train for another sport, no extra cardio training is required. For health purposes, performing three cardio workouts a week is enough to begin with. If you are in a hurry to lose weight, you can start with three short cardio sessions per week. As your endurance increases, you can slowly increase either cardio frequency or duration, or both. Choose Your Training Days To progress quickly, follow this one main rule: One day of weight training has to be followed by at least one day of rest from weight training (so doing a cardio workout the day after a weight training session is a possibility). This may not always be possible, but this is the ideal frequency. For the various schedules, here are your options: • One weekly weight training session: This schedule does not pose any recovery issues, and weight training can be done on any day. • Two weekly weight training sessions: Separate workouts as much as possible (e.g., Monday and Thursday or Tuesday and Friday), but at a minimum, try to respect the pattern of one workout and one day of rest. If you can train only on weekends, however, go ahead. Weight training on both Saturday and Sunday isn’t ideal, but your body will have plenty of time to recover during the rest of the week. • Three weekly weight training sessions: With this schedule, respecting the one-workout-one-day-of-rest pattern is difficult, but still possible. The worst possible configuration would be to train three days in a row and then take four days of rest. Try to balance your week as much as possible—for example, by weight training on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday or on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. • Four weekly weight training sessions: With such a high training frequency, properly spacing the workouts to provide your body with enough rest is difficult. Respecting the one-workout-one-day-of-rest pattern is not possible for at least two workouts. Whenever you perform two workouts without rest between them, make sure that one targets your upper body and the other targets your lower body. Cardio training has fewer constraints because it does not traumatize the body nearly as much as weight training does. However, it is still a good idea to spread out the sessions as much as possible over the week.