Upgrade your workout

How to make your workout work harder for you.

Here's a sign of the times: you can actually hire people to come to your house and organise your wardrobe. They'll also do your garage, your attic and your garden shed. These people are tough on pack rats. They ask questions like, "Why do you have this box of dog leashes, but no dog?"

My job isn't all that different. As a trainer, if I see something in a client's workout - or my own - that doesn't belong there, I get rid of it. If I see a redundant exercise, it's gone. Disorganised workout? I organise it. And if I see a client doing a programme he got out of some old bodybuilding magazine, I throw the whole thing out and start over.

I can't come to your gym and fix your workout (or organise your cupboards, for that matter). But I can tell you what you need to know to organise your own regimen, based on your goals, the time available to you and your experience. Now, about those cupboards...

GOALS

I assume the wardrobe lady would start by asking, "What do you need this cupboard to do for you?" Me, I'd ask the same question, substituting the word "workout" for "cupboard". Usually, these goals fall into three categories:

Lose weight

If you're a beginner, start with a circuit in which you do 10 to 12 exercises one after the other, 10 to 15 repetitions per set, with little or no rest in between. Do two or three circuits.

If you're more advanced, try supersets. In these, you do two exercises back-to-back, rest 60 seconds and then repeat once or twice. There are many ways to do supersets, but for fat loss, I'd like to see you use as much muscle as possible. One way is to pair exercises that work different muscles, such as squats and seated rows.

Build muscle

For most men, I recommend exercises that allow you to do eight to 12 repetitions per set. You can do them as straight sets - complete a set, rest about 60 seconds, do the next set of the same thing and keep going that way until you've finished all your sets and are ready to move on to the next exercise.

If you are more experienced, try supersets - but not the way you did them for fat loss. Rather pair synergistic exercises: two moves that work the same muscles. The first should be a compound move to work a lot of muscles, the second a single-joint exercise to focus on one large muscle. So barbell bench presses may be followed by dumbbell flies, while shoulder presses could lead in to lateral raises.

Gain strength

There's no secret here - heavy weights, low repetitions (usually three to five per set for the most important moves such as squats, dead lifts and bench presses) and longer rest (up to four minutes) between sets.

You don't have to do every exercise this way, of course. Start with low reps of your main moves, then do more repetitions with lighter weights and shorter rest periods on less important ones.

TIME AVAILABLE

This is akin to the wardrobe lady saying, "What's your budget?" Before I design a programme, I need to know how much time you're going to put in. I'm going to assume everyone is willing to work out 40 to 60 minutes per session. To me, that's a finite window, just as your cupboard is a finite size.

If you want to do longer workouts, great, but I don't usually recommend it. If I can't give you a system that gets the job done in an hour or less, there's something wrong with my programme. To me, the big variable here is how many days a week you're able and willing to work out.

Two days a week

No matter what your level or your goals, do full-body workouts. You want to hit your major muscles twice a week; otherwise, they'll be completely rested between workouts and will have no reason to grow.

As I said earlier, if you're a beginner, stick to circuits for fat loss. But if you're more interested in building muscle than in losing fat, I suggest doing sets of eight to 12 reps, with perhaps a little more rest in between exercises. Another time-saving option is to do antagonistic supersets. These pair up movements that involve opposite muscle actions, such as sit-ups and back extensions.

Three days a week

If you're not a beginner, adopt a split routine. The easiest to remember is the upper-body/lower-body split. Alternate between them, so that if you're training three times a week, you'll do upper-lower-upper one week, then lowerupper- lower the next.

Four days a week

Again, use a split routine. So if you're working out four times a week, you'll do upper on Monday and Thursday and lower on Tuesday and Friday. What you do during those split routines depends on your goals (explained above) and your experience (explained below).