Fitness Schedule

Geschatte leestijd: 18 minuten How do you create a Fitness plan? What should you consider to create the best training schedule for yourself? You’ll read about it here. 

What is the purpose of a fitness schedule?

You can tell yourself: “I’ll just train three times a week”. That’s fine. Better than nothing at least. However, if you want to get the most out of your precious time, a good fitness plan is necessary. In our FITsociety app for iPhone and Android, you can create your own fitness plans, or have them created for you by one of the many connected coaches. If you want to do this yourself, chances are you’ll adopt a friend’s plan or pick one off the internet. That will often already be better than nothing. It’s not personal, of course. In this article, we mainly want to show you the science behind a good fitness schedule so you can set up a good one yourself. However, that’s quite a lot of science. Even reduced to a simplified explanation, it’s impossible for me to give all the relevant information in a short article that you can enjoy reading in 5 minutes. But those are the choices you have.

• You use generic plans like the ones you can find here. Then the question is how well they fit you (at this moment).
• You can seek the help of a coach who has already done all the hard thinking for you.
• Or you decide you really want to understand what’s what and take the effort to delve into the matter properly once.

How do you make a personal fitness plan?

If you want to create a fitness plan, you always have to take into account a few important variables:

• What is the goal of the plan?
• Are there physical limitations?
• What is the required recovery time?
• What experience do you have with training and what is your capacity?

By answering these questions, you at least know which ingredients should go into the soup. To know how the soup should be cooked, more knowledge is needed. You need to know how your muscles are supplied with energy and how this energy is used. You need to know the different types of exertion that correspond with the different energy systems and what this means for the effect of a training on your muscle and fat mass. This determines not only the type of exercise but also the intensity, duration, and/or volume of the exercise. Knowledge of the function of the (different heads of) muscles enables you to select the right exercises to engage them. If you do three different exercises for the same muscle, it adds relatively little if the muscle is engaged in the same way each time. As important as the exercises in a fitness plan are the empty spaces. The rest days and moments of rest between sets and exercises can have as much impact on your results as the training itself. A good fitness plan takes all these aspects into account.

What is the best fitness plan?

So there can’t be such a thing as “the best fitness plan”. After all, the purpose of it can differ from person to person and how that goal can be achieved, also depends on many factors. Let’s start with those objectives and look at the different ways you can improve “fitness”.

• Improving endurance
• Increasing muscle strength (with distinctions including maximum strength and explosive strength)
• Increasing muscle mass
• Burning fat
• Increasing coordination and stability
• Lowering health risks

You can make these even more specific, but these are pretty much the main flavors.

Fitness plan for beginners

Possibly you ended up here because you were specifically looking for a fitness plan for beginners. However, ‘no longer being a beginner’ is not really a goal. A training plan for a beginner wanting to run the Dam tot Dam, for instance, is of course very different from a beginner who wants to look muscular on the beach this summer. The first tip is thus to know exactly what your goal is and which training matches it. Many people who enter a gym for the first time, for example, start on a treadmill or other cardio equipment. Often with the thought that they are mainly burning fat, while they are mainly improving their endurance. Knowing what you’re doing prevents a lot of disappointment. Other things to keep in mind as a beginner.

• The best fitness plan is the one you stick to. So don’t start with a plan for 5 days a week if you did little to no physical exertion before.
• What works for someone else may not work for you. So don’t blindly follow someone else’s plan. Choose a plan that suits your goal and experience.
• Your body needs to literally learn to train. Focus especially on good form and not too much on maximum performance.

Building up intensity and volume in your training schedule

It all comes down to the right build-up of intensity and training volume. When we talk about strength training, intensity is the weight with which you train and the speed with which you perform the exercise. Volume is the number of repetitions, sets, and exercises you do. In cardio, the intensity is mainly the speed, but possibly also other factors that increase resistance such as an incline or weighted clothing. Volume is then the duration of the exercise (whether or not expressed in distance covered). When you start training, you can quickly be tempted to rush. You’ve finally taken that step to be more active and then it can’t go fast enough. You enter the gym and want to look like some of the fit figures you see walking around there. Even your body itself seems to encourage this haste initially. In the first weeks, you notice how quickly you become stronger and soon you are found four times or more in the gym. It’s good to know that your muscles always get stronger before they get bigger. It’s mainly the control of the muscles by the brain that improves first. The muscles also become more efficient in absorbing and deploying the different energy sources. However, movement requires more than efficient use of muscles. It also requires a certain muscle mass, strong attachments of muscles, and joints that can handle the load. Asking the maximum from your newly acquired strength too quickly is thus a sure recipe for injuries. Such injuries can lead to downtime, forcing you to take that big step to start again later.

Structure of training goal in your fitness plan

Let’s give a practical example of a training goal and the steps to work towards it: Suppose you start with strength training and your goal is to become as ‘strong’ as possible. ‘Strong’ means for you, for example, being able to deadlift or bench press the heaviest weight in the gym. Your goal is then developing maximum strength. You normally develop this by training with weights with which you can do one to four or six repetitions. If you start with that as a beginner, you can probably make an appointment with the physiotherapist right away. Developing maximum strength involves the highest intensity of training. That’s the last thing you want as a newbie. Goal: Muscle condition–>Muscle mass–>(maximum) strength

Building up muscle condition.

Therefore, start first with building up muscle condition. Perform your exercises with 12 to 20 repetitions and corresponding weights. This way, you train the control of the muscles and oxygen uptake without overburdening the muscles themselves, the attachments, and joints. The pyramid system is a (rightly) popular way to organize your sets. Do the first set with a weight with which you can do 18-20 repetitions. The second set a weight with which you can do 16-18 repetitions. The third set 14-16 repetitions. You prepare your body each time for the next load. The improved coordination and oxygen uptake are necessary for the next phase.

Building up muscle mass.

To generate a lot of strength, you don’t just need a smart engine, but also a big one. After about 4 to 8 weeks, you can decrease the number of repetitions and increase the weight. Choose a weight with which you can do a maximum of 6 to 12 repetitions, possibly again built up with the pyramid system (concerning the weight). In this phase, your body (to a greater extent) uses another energy system and different muscle fibers. These are not yet the specialists in generating maximum strength, but they are the fibers with the most potential for growth. That larger mass can of course be useful in the last phase. Moreover, your body is now already more accustomed to the higher load due to the heavier weights. Finally, you can move to the last phase.

Building up maximum strength.

You are now two to three months further along, but can now start those heavier deadlifts much more confidently. You are nearing your limit in terms of intensity, so take those last steps slowly. Do not reduce your first exercise in repetitions to a single repetition right away. Such a so-called 1 repetition maximum always carries a risk, and it’s questionable to what extent it adds more to strength development (than, for example, 4 repetitions). Such a ‘1RM-max’ might be done at the end of this last phase of 4 to 6 weeks. Then mainly as a test, to see where you stand. Or maybe for that show moment in the gym you’ve been waiting for so long. Now, however, the chances are much greater that you walk away proud rather than crawl away. Even if you have one goal, it may be wise to train multiple goals. Also in this example, I mentioned the last 4 to 6 weeks as a phase. When maximum strength is the goal, it could again yield extra profit to train for muscle mass again after this period. To increase that ‘engine capacity’ again. How quickly you can move from one phase to the next depends on how your body responds. So, especially listen to the signals. For example, if you notice that you no longer feel the good kind of muscle soreness and also do not experience the bad kind, then you can probably make the progression to the next phase.

Building up intensity in cardio

Translating this to cardio, you can compare maximum strength with a 60-meter sprint. That also needs to be worked up to. Now, there may not be many people who have that as a goal. High Intensity (Interval) Training (HIIT) is, however, gaining in popularity. Thereby, the number of people performing more intensive forms of cardio increases. In traditional cardiovascular training (‘cardio’), the intensity is low. Thereby, it is ideally suited for beginners. The largest variable that must be taken into account is the volume; how long and often you do the exercise. HIIT is becoming increasingly popular, thanks in part to the benefits of this training method according to researchers. In HIIT, you alternate short moments of high intensity with longer moments of low intensity. As a beginner, it’s wise to do a few weeks of traditional cardio before switching to HIIT.

Fitness plan for women

Just as there are no plans specifically aimed at every man’s goal, there are also no plans suitable for every woman. However, we can see some common differences with men in general, both in terms of goals and the best methods to achieve them.

Strength training for women

In terms of goals, we see the classic difference in goals regarding muscle mass. However, a development in recent years is that more and more women see the value of strength training in achieving their beauty ideal. Partly because that ideal itself is changing, but also through the insight that you do not suddenly turn into a bodybuilder from strength training (which is also difficult for men). Those beautiful buttocks and legs, that back and shoulders that make your waist look narrower. That can mean months or years of serious strength training. With the rise of crossfit, we also see a growing group of women engaging in intensive strength training, following the same regimen as men. Strength training for women is therefore becoming increasingly popular.

“Women recover faster and can therefore train more often”

But apart from possible differences in goals, men and women also differ physically, of course. The differences in strength, especially in the upper body, are evident. But training intensity is relative to your own capability, so that says nothing about how heavily women should train. This relative intensity is an important factor in determining the necessary time for rest and recovery. Recovery time allows a muscle to repair the damage inflicted and to take up enough sugars again as fuel. Processes that make the muscle stronger and recharge it for the next training. If you stress the same muscles again before this process is completed, you do not benefit from the full growth of the previous training. Moreover, your muscles are not yet able to perform optimally during the next training. At the same time, training more often means a larger and more frequent stimulus for growth. An ideal schedule thus ensures that the entire basis of your schedule is based on this recovery time. A commonly mentioned rule is that muscles need 48 hours of recovery time before they are directly stressed again. For indirect stress (when they assist in the exercise for other muscles), this would be 24 hours. This rule corresponds well with various studies, conducted among men.

“Women 4 hours recovery time, men 48 hours”

A, by now well-known, study from 2010 showed that women only needed four hours of recovery time to perform maximally again. For men, this was indeed 48 hours [1]. Both were given exercises suitable for a training aimed at muscle mass and strength. Then it was examined how long it took before they could deliver the same performance. Women only needed 4 hours for this. Similar outcomes were seen four years earlier. In a study from 2006, 12 men and 15 women had to do leg extensions [2]. First, it was examined which weight they could lift up once at most. Then they were given an ‘exhaustion protocol’. With 50% of this maximum weight, they had to do ten sets that were to be held for 10 seconds each (30 seconds rest between sets). Afterwards, the maximum strength was tested again. This was repeated ten times. In the men, the maximum strength in the tests decreased faster than in the women. They were also less able to maintain the exhaustion protocol for as long. Another, also small-scale, study may give an explanation for this difference in recovery time. In that study, both trained and untrained women were compared [3]. This time, no strength training was done, but sprint training. That the men were faster, was not very strange. More interesting was the difference in declining performances between men and women. Eight men and eight women had to sprint 30 meters three times in a row on four occasions. During each test, the decrease in speed in the second and third sprint was greater in the men than in the women. The men also built up more lactic acid, which made it seem like the women were better protected against exhaustion. Like a limiter that is set tighter. Both studies suggest that part of the difference in performance is due to the fact that women can push their muscles less to the limit due to this limiter.

Full body fitness plan for women

What does this mean for the fitness plan for women?

• That they can train relatively less intensively.
• Because they can train relatively less hard, they need less recovery time.
• Because they need less recovery time, they can train the same muscle group more often.

Compensate intensity with volume, therefore. Men often use a training split. A division of muscle groups to train over the week. Think of the well-known chest and biceps on Monday. The reason for this is the mentioned 24 to 48 hours of required rest before they can train the same muscles again. That means they can’t train the whole body, ‘full body’, every day. That also means they can devote more attention to certain muscles in the same amount of time per training. Women do not need to use such a split and could, for example, train full body three to five times a week.

Training more muscle mass is more result?

Another reason given for training full body is that training a larger muscle mass would lead to a greater hormonal response [4]. That greater response of anabolic hormones would lead to more muscle growth and strength. In a study from 1994, however, this was not observed when a full body training plan was compared with a training split in a group of women [5]. There, the comparison was:

• Full body: Two trainings per week in which the upper body (4 exercises, 5 sets, 6-10 repetitions) and lower body (3 exercises, 5 sets, 10-12 repetitions) were trained.
• Split: Four trainings per week. Twice the same training as mentioned above for the upper body and two days for the lower body.

In this study, the same amount of training was ultimately done. In the full body plan, however, more muscle mass was trained on the same day. This did not lead to different results in the study over 5 months. The theory that training a larger muscle mass leads to more results could not be confirmed in this study. Also in a more recent study from 2016, no difference in results was seen over 8 weeks between full body and a training split [6]. In that study, this applied to both men and women. Here too, there was no difference in total training volume. In one case, three exercises per muscle group were done, three times a week, for three muscle groups in the same training. In the other case, one muscle group was trained per training, and all 9 exercises were done on that day.

We might deduce from this that full body training for women only offers extra results (compared to a split) when the same muscles are indeed trained more often in the week and there is a higher total volume. This did not happen in these studies.

Cardio for women

From the research with the sprint times and the necessary time to recover, one could also deduce that women can do cardio more often than men. In practice, we might actually see that many women do less cardio than before. This is mainly due to the growing insight that a diet plays a much larger role in reducing fat mass than cardio. ‘Eating less’ changes to ‘eating better’. In our app, we are continuously adding foods and making it easier to track your nutrition. To thus provide for the personal need for nutrients. For traditional cardio, the realization is growing that you primarily do this to improve your endurance and keep your cardiovascular system healthy. The previously mentioned HIIT is becoming increasingly popular for both purposes. Partly because you need significantly less time for it. When it comes to ‘fitness’ in the literal sense, a combination of strength training and cardio would always be preferred. A (full body) strength training combination with HIIT could be a very efficient training.

Fitness plan for weight loss

So far, I have equated the terms fitness plan and training schedule. Strictly speaking, a fitness plan also includes a nutrition plan. ‘Fitness’ is also an outcome of dietary habits. Losing weight is a matter of consuming more calories than you get from food. Realize that big mistakes in a diet cannot be completely compensated for by moving more. Moving more is, of course, good for several reasons. However, when it comes to losing weight, I would always advise first determining your nutritional needs (to have them determined) and comparing this with your actual nutritional intake. Regarding that nutritional need, we’ve written several articles that make it easy to calculate this for yourself. In our app, you can then keep track of what you eat for a while. This gives a clear insight into the extent of the problem. That also immediately clarifies whether, for example, running three times a week for half an hour is a drop in the bucket (or a bucket of water on a matchstick).

How much extra do you need to move to lose weight?

It is possible to lose weight by just moving more. Easy and quick it is not. In a study, 141 overweight men and women were followed for ten months [7]. The goal was to find out if these people could lose weight by moving more without adjustments in their diet. Participants had to train 5 times a week, burning either 400 or 600 kcal. Those who completed less than 90% of the workouts were removed from the study. The researchers calculated per person how many calories were burned at a certain effort and intensity. For example, it was calculated that someone used 9.2 kcal/minute at a certain running speed. This meant that they would need to run for 44 minutes to burn 400 kcal (intensity: heart rate 70-80% of max heart rate). People in the group that had to burn 400 kcal per workout lost an average of 3.9 kg in 10 months. In the 600 kcal group, it was an average of 5.2 kg. In the control group that did not train, the weight had increased by an average of half a kilo in the meantime. You have to move a lot extra for relatively little result in weight. Running five times a week for forty-five minutes to have lost about 5 kilos after ten months. I can imagine you had expected more from that.

Extra movement to maintain weight

One advantage of moving more over eating less is that it appears easier to maintain in the long term. At least according to a study we covered last week. People who had lost weight primarily through extra movement found it easier to maintain this new weight than people who had achieved it only with a diet. Those who had lost weight with movement were now eating (slightly) too much but compensated this with movement. The people who had lost weight with a diet began eating more without compensating.

Our tip, therefore: Combine a good diet with extra movement to lose weight as quickly as possible, but expect most from the diet in the short term. Expect more from training in the long term to compensate for minor mistakes in the diet.

Making your own fitness plan

Again, there are a few variables to consider before you can set up a plan for yourself.

• How much experience do you have with strength training?
• How often can you train according to your schedule?
• How often/much can you train concerning the required recovery time?
• What is the optimal duration of a training session?
• Is there a desired emphasis on certain muscles?
• Are there physical limitations?

Let’s take someone as an example who wants to train 3 times a week, wants to become muscular everywhere and has no physical limitations. That means we have to train all muscle groups in three days.

Distribution of muscle groups over your fitness plan

In those three days, a lot has to happen. There are quite a few muscles (groups) that need to be trained:

• Shoulders
• Back
• Chest
• Biceps
• Triceps
• Abdominals/core
• Legs and buttocks

This division can be done at different levels. Some, for example, do not differentiate between biceps and triceps and simply speak of an arm workout. Others do the opposite for legs and divide these into quadriceps, hamstrings, and calves. So, there’s no set rule for this.

Example training split 3 days a week:

My personal fitness plan would then look like this:

• Monday: Chest and biceps
• Tuesday: Rest
• Wednesday: Legs and shoulders
• Thursday: Rest
• Friday: Back and triceps

Here you might notice a few things: Abdominals are missing. Personally, I am naturally lean and always have a six-pack. In terms of appearance, it adds little for me to train abs. Forearms are not listed and I also do not train them separately during the biceps and triceps workout. Simply because I find it unnecessary to give them separate attention. So, everyone can have a personal emphasis. The leg training is placed between the upper body workouts. When I’ve trained chest and biceps, it’s still 96 hours before they’re indirectly put to work again during the back and triceps training. After this training, it’s another 72 hours before it’s time for chest and biceps again. The legs are only called upon once a week. More than enough time for recovery (too much time, even). Per training, I do 3 to 4 exercises per muscle group, three to four sets per exercise, and 6-15 repetitions per set. That way, I do as much as possible in the available time and quickly end up with a training session just over an hour. Also read the article: training abs – 7 tips with explanation and a plan for results

Example training split 4 days a week:

Now suppose I have the same personal goal, but now I have four days a week available to train. That would be convenient because, as you can see, I have much more time for recovery than I need with those 3 days a week. That extra day can be filled in several ways. I could choose to split legs and shoulders over two days. Then I could do more exercises for the legs, which in my personal case can never hurt.

• Monday: Chest and biceps
• Tuesday: Legs
• Wednesday: Rest
• Thursday: Back and triceps
• Friday: Rest
• Saturday: Shoulders

Again, necessary rest has been ensured before the same muscle(group) is put to work again.

Train a maximum of 45 to 75 minutes

We have to consider that a training session can have an optimal length. Exactly what that is, is impossible to know. It depends, among other things, on how much was done in that time (the total ‘time under tension’), how intensive and how long the rest periods were between sets and repetitions [8]. What we do know, is that after that optimal time you run out of fuel and your body starts looking for other sources. Think of fats, but also proteins from the muscles. You are then, among other things, breaking down muscle mass to use as energy for a training that is supposed to build muscle mass. Moreover, these are not the most efficient energy sources for intensive training so the quality of that training will also quickly decline as training goes on for too long. As a general guideline, you could therefore say that you should train somewhere between 45 and 75 minutes. With a very intensive training and short rest periods, you would end up on the 45 minutes or even shorter. With a less intensive training or a training with longer rest periods, it could take longer before you do more harm than good. We have to consider that a training session can have an optimal length. What that exactly is, is impossible to know. It depends, among other things, on how much was done in that time (the total ‘time under tension‘), how intensive and how long the rest periods were between sets and repetitions [8]. What we do know, is that after that optimal time you run out of fuel and your body starts looking for other sources. Think of fats, but also proteins from the muscles. You are then breaking down muscle mass, among other things, to use as energy for a training that is supposed to build muscle mass. Moreover, these are not the most efficient energy sources for intensive training, so the quality of that training will also quickly decline as training goes on for too long. As a general guideline, you could therefore say that you should train somewhere between 45 and 75 minutes. With a very intensive training and short rest periods, you would end up on the 45 minutes or even shorter. With a less intensive training or a training with longer rest periods, it could take longer before you do more harm than good.

Fitness plan: Number of exercises

Now that you’ve determined which muscles you want to train, you can fill in the exercises for it. In a training split, you do multiple exercises for the same muscle group. It’s important here that you use different exercises to emphasize different parts of the muscle (muscle heads and certain fibers). Take the shoulders, for example. You can start with an exercise that trains all heads of the shoulders like a dumbbell shoulder press. Then you can do an exercise that focuses more on the outer heads like side raises followed by bent-over side raises that focus more on the rear heads. Besides focusing on different heads, you can also ensure variety in the way you stress the muscle. For example, by alternating free weights with exercises on a machine or cables. Regarding the number of exercises, you are limited by the maximum time you can train effectively. With 45 to 75 minutes and two muscle groups that need to be trained in this time, you will often end up doing 3 to a maximum of 5 exercises per muscle group, depending on the number of sets and repetitions you do per exercise, of course.

Fitness plan: Number of sets

The number of repetitions depends on your goal and is discussed further below. That variable is often already leading and filled in. With the available time, the desired number of exercises, and repetitions, you will normally have time for 3 to 5 sets per exercise. If you have to choose between 3 exercises of 5 sets or five exercises of 3 sets, I would normally advise going for the larger number of exercises. You might wonder how much added value a fourth and fifth set will still have. A different exercise that stresses the muscle in a different way will probably provide a greater stimulus. From studies, we seem to be able to deduce that 3 sets are at least better than 1 set per exercise. The added value of more than three sets remains unclear.

Fitness plan muscle mass

The number of repetitions you do should not be determined by the available time but by your training goal. When you are focused on muscle mass, try to aim for 6 to a maximum of 12 repetitions per set. As for rest periods between sets, try to keep 60 to 90 seconds of rest. Also, the execution itself can be adjusted to your goal. For muscle mass, both the concentric and eccentric phases of an exercise are important.