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Training plan - downloadable



This is an outline of a plan, you fill in the exercises. Download it and print it.


Don't get too caught up in exercise selection. The most important factors are consistency and intensity.


Consistency: Getting in shape and building muscle takes time. Commit to doing resistance training for a long period, ideally until you're 109 years old.


Intensity: If you want to build muscle, you need to stress the muscle, which means each working set should be (at least somewhat) difficult. If you finish a set and think "that was hard and I feel tired and my muscles are burning" you're probably doing it right. Try doing as many as you possibly can, right up till you fail on the last one. This will show you what 'training to failure' means and you can use that as a benchmark. You don't need to train to failure every set, but you should get close (if you want to build muscle).


Regarding exercise selection: all exercises that don't injure you are fine, but you'll probably benefit from doing a lot compound movements like squats, lunges, pull ups, bench press etc. These are movements that use multiple muscle groups and require more than one joint moving at the same time, like your knees and hips in a squat.


Isolation exercises are also good, especially to target specific muscles like building up your biceps (don't forget the triceps) or targeting an area that benefits from a bit of extra training, like isolating the upper back to help with posture.


I always do some direct core exercises too. The core protects the spine and helps you in every movement in and out of the gym, so give it some extra work. Focus more on exercises based around the plank, where you resist movement, rather than exercises that bend the spine, like crunches. The goal is to stop the spine flexing, for example when you pick something up you want to keep your spine flat and braced, rather than the spine bending because your core couldn't support it.



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