How to Structure a Workout

The structure of a workout is the determining factor in how successful a weight lifting routine will be. There are many things that I see people doing wrong at the gym, that can hinder their progress. Some of them are just illogical while others are potentially dangerous. One of the major problems I see is how people structure a workout. There are three main structure problems that reduce the effectiveness of a program...

>>> The first and main problem is that people often don't split up their workouts. They try to do everything at once, and because of this, lose focus. Focus is the factor that decides whether you will make progress or not, and if your working out without focus and determination, you might as well not lift weights at all.

>>> The second issue is that people don't understand the difference between a compound and isolation lift. A compound lift for example is a shoulder press which hits all the parts of the deltoids, as well as the trapezius to a certain degree. An isolation exercise would be a lateral raise where the medial head of the deltoids is targeted. The order that these should be in is from top to bottom or if you wish to picture it this way, as an inverted triangle. Start with one overall lift like shoulder press and give it everything you have. Once you have completed several sets to failure then start to target the individual muscles of the region, an example of this is below.

Shoulders

• -Shoulder Press -Compound-(overall shoulders)
• -Shrugs -Isolation-(trapezius)
• -Front Raises-Isolation-(anterior head of the deltoids)
• -Lateral Raises-Isolation-(medial head of the deltoids)
• -Bent over Raises-Isolation-(posterior head of the deltoids)

>>>The Third Problem is that people often do not correctly split up the muscles when making a body split. When designing a serious weight lifting routine, you should hit a body part only one directly a week and then maybe another time indirectly. An example of this would be doing biceps on arms day and later in the week working back, where almost every back exercise uses the biceps to some extent. You should split your workouts up into this pattern if you wish to avoid overtraining and thus diminished returns for your hard work.