How I Found The Best Workout to Complement My Meal Plan
In this post, I will share with you my personal experience on how I found the best workout to complement my meal plan.
The world is divided into two types of people, those who think that a good workout program is the secret to getting fit and those who KNOW that a good meal plan is actually the key.
Kidding aside, even though reaching your fitness goals is 80% nutrition and 20% exercise, it’s clear we want to optimize those 20% to the best, efficient workout we can!
After all, if we’re already putting in the effort, why not maximize the results?
This undoubtedly can be challenging at times, so in order to help, I’ve created a compilation of my processes on deciding how to choose a work out program and added some examples from past and present.
How to choose the best workout program to complement your meal plan perfectly
What are your goals
The most fundamental step in building any program is deciding on your goals: are you trying to lose weight? gain muscle? Or perhaps maintain physique?
while there are some instances where you can gain muscle and lose fat at the same time, it is common practice to focus on one of these goals.
Given the goal I can know the workout’s intensity level I’m aiming at
- Losing weight (cutting) – Keep low repetition numbers, high intensity in mind
- Gaining muscle (bulking) – Keep high repetition numbers, medium to low intensity in mind
- Maintain Physique – Standard 10 reps with medium intensity
Next step – define the the program’s conditions and limitations
conditions and limitations
This is perhaps the most important part of the planning process. After all, what good is a “perfect” program which you just won’t follow?
What are your restrictions? Is there temporary injury limiting the options? Is the current weekly schedule tight and it would be better to follow a program focusing only on several intense workout days? Or perhaps the current schedule consists of long work days and the only option to workout is for very short sessions late at night? prefer training on weekends or weekdays?
For me workouts need to be effective, but highest priority under this condition is that I do not want them to take over my life (the all important workout-life balance) Another restriction I have is work out every muscle group in the body at least once a week. Remember the fact that nutrition is first priority and workout only complement my meal plan.
Cardio
It has been proven time and again that whether your goal is to lose weight or gain muscle, it is most effective to focus on weight lifting workouts and accommodate with cardio training according to goal.
For me, if my goal is to lose weight I add one to two 15-20 minute sessions of HIIT. If my goal is to improve overall health and maintenance my cardio sessions focus on endurance such as long runs or bicycle riding.
In the case of gaining muscle, well, to be completely honest and less science based, I cut the amount of time spent on cardio workouts to somewhere between the two options above to none, aside the active rest day (more on that soon)
OK, I’ve got my goal all cleared up and conditions all set, time to look at several plans I’ve used and follow these guidelines:
Workout Examples
The Deceptively Simple Workout
I think we all start with something on the lines of this: plan to workout 3 to 4 days a week and break down the workout to an A-B-C or A-B-C-D plan (Each letter represents one or two different muscle groups worked on a separate day).
Then we’d usually choose some benign exercise combo for each muscle group (yippee! Here is that leg press again!!).
Let’s be clear, there is nothing WRONG with this style of plan, but it tends to get boring fairly quickly, like it did for me, and in addition, measuring my progress, I saw it was not as effective as I wanted, so I went on examining other programs.
The Two to One Workout (221)
This one is structured fairly simple as the one above, but less monotonic – start your week by working out two days and then rest one day, and repeat this cycle.
You might have noticed that this program introduces a simple change week by week where you sometimes rest during weekends and sometimes rest right on the start of the week, which, depending on your lifestyle, can be considered a good (or bad) thing.
I’ve used this plan both for cutting and bulking and loved it – it is well balanced and effective, without too much strain on the body.
So, you might wonder, “If it was so great, why didn’t you stick with it?”
I can boil it down to two issues. The first was that I found myself asking during the day if it is a rest day or not, and far too many times I became disappointed when I came to the conclusion that it was not…
The second issue being the classic “everything gets old after a while” issue. So I moved on to play with some more ‘interesting’ options.
FST-7 Workout
If you’re not familiar with The FST7 training program I highly recommend you check it out! This is a very intense workout mostly recommended for bulking.
It pushes you to extreme, making sure you tear down those muscle fibers so they rebuild fuller and stronger.
When I first incorporated this workout to my programs, I tended to work out four days a week which by itself sounds reasonable (workout-life balance I’ve mentioned earlier). But boy, these days are LONG! An FST7 workout could easily hit the hour and a half, two hour mark if you’re not careful, and that does not include cardio! I was starting to feel like a total gymhead!
I usually recommend and aim towards a 45-60 minute workout so this was WAY too long.
Feeling exhausted and with no time left for myself, moved on to the next program, coming back to FST7 only for short periods later on (See Mix Mix Mix below).
The Super-Superset Workout
This workout has a similar day plan as the 221 Workout mentioned above, but I’ve changed it so ALL my exercises would be supersets of different body groups.
The benefit should be obvious. With busy lives we still want to hit the gym, workout effectively for the shortest duration possible, and leave on to the rest of our day, and this, the program did achieve.
What I did not take into account, though, is that if you don’t want to hinder your results, this is going to be INTENSE – EVERY WORKOUT – EVERY TIME. Just writing that in bold letters already made me fatigue. So although I enjoyed the extra time out of the gym, I went back to programs I consider more balanced.
The “Mix Mix Mix” Program
This one I’ve followed many times, achieved great results, and would recommend to anyone to try it out!
It’s basically taking all of the options above and building a 3-month-plan where one switches between styles every week or two (hence, MIX the workout styles and programs).
I also added to this mix other known training programs, such as Yoda’s Y3T, German Volume Training and others..
While it does require a bit more planning in advance, two benefits came into play here. I NEVER got bored with my training and I ALWAYS saw satisfying results. You keep surprising, shocking and challenging your body week by week! Fantastic!
How I workout Today, or in other words, the best workout to complement my meal plan
So you might be thinking due to what I wrote that I mostly mix it up these days, but actually I do things a bit differently.
Today I moved on to a program that might initially sound intense and time consuming, but it is actually the opposite. I work out six days a week. It sounds like a lot, but I’ve actually found it easiest to follow. Let me explain.
It is a consistent weekly program where you get used to having a very short work out each day (a bit above half an hour), which makes the program much easier to follow compared to many others.
I’m a strong believer that doing 100% is much easier than 99%. A quick example: Two people who are trying to quit smoking, one quits cold turkey while the other gradually decreases use each day. Which option do you think has more chances to succeed in the long run?.
I know, I can hear all of you experts shouting “Hey! 6 out of 7 days a week does not add up to 100%!”. So before you add keyboard tossing to your workout program know that I agree and you’re absolutely right, and that’s the reasonI introduce the concept of active rest day into my programs.
Active Rest Days
The last piece in any program is what to do on rest days. “Here he goes speaking crazy again, Isn’t rest day just for that, resting?!?”
Let’s first calm down, We all value our precious rest day, and one can use it entirely for rest and rejuvenation.
But I’ve found that having an “active rest day” most of the time gives more structure to the program as a whole (hence the 100%), adding an activity both beneficial and enjoyable, in other words , “sport for the soul”.
This can be anything from short & low intensity cardio to timed mountain hiking. Again, the goal is to keep your workout regime and mentality in tact while “feeding the soul” with other passions. Great examples for this are yoga, dancing, playing basketball, hiking, running outdoors, surfing – the list is endless.
Where to take it from here
Do I consider my current program perfect? Guess not, but I’m not looking for the perfect program, I’m looking for the perfect program for this moment . And that’s the whole point!
If you’re just starting out in the fitness world, know that like a good Meal Plan, by sitting down, choosing a workout program and committing to it, you’re already up for a great start!
The examples here are battle tested and fit certain lifestyles. Make sure you choose a workout program that fits yours the best, making it easier to follow, complement your meal plan correctly until the end when you will actually see results.
Don’t beat yourself up if you derail from time to time. See it as an integral part of a learning process – learning what program fits you.
So bookmark this How I Found the Best Workout to Complement my Meal Plan article, and when approaching your next workout program preparation, re-examine these ideas. Try different plans and mix things up every once in a while so you won’t get bored and to avoid your body getting used to the workout.
Good Luck!
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