Your workouts should be a blend of cardio and resistance training. If you have an hour for the gym, 30-40 minutes should be used weight training and do cardio for the remaining 20-30 minutes. Begin your workout with a 5-10 minute cardiovascular warm up to get blood flowing to the muscles and to raise your body temperature. This will help reduce the chance of injury. Unless you have a muscle imbalance, save your stretching for after the workout. There is plenty of research showing that stretching before lifting weights reduces the strength of the muscle and its overall performance.

A good training split to follow is: Upper-Lower-Rest-Upper-Lower-Rest-Rest, rinse and repeat. On days labeled “Upper” you will focus on upper body exercises exclusively. Stick with compound movements that target the large muscle groups (chest and back). Do about 3-4 exercises each for chest and back, 2 exercises for shoulders/traps, and 2-3 for biceps and triceps. Abdominal and core training can be done with upper body or lower body but should not be done everyday. Many people will say that you can train abs everyday. You can, but how effective will it be? Your muscles don’t grow in the gym. The gym provides the stimulus for growth but it is your rest time outside the gym and good nutritional habits that will build lean tissue.

Lower body days will focus on your legs. Incorporate some balance and reactive (plyometric) training. Don’t forget to do single-leg exercises regularly to prevent muscle imbalances. It is estimated that some people who do bilateral exercises exclusively can have an imbalance with one leg up to 10% stronger than the other. This can lead to an awkward looking size difference or injury. Try to do around 8-12 total exercises during leg day. Play with the rep ranges frequently but try to stay in the 8-15 range for legs. From my personal experience, I have noticed that they respond better to slightly higher reps. That could be do to their constant use and supporting our body-weight on a daily basis.

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