"Workout Plans - Plan Your Work, and Work Your Plan"

Any of y'all watch the first season of the boxing reality show, "The Contender"? Like most reality shows, the boxers were broken up into two teams that competed against each other in challenges, then, of course, the fights. The team of the winning fighter in each fight would get a cool reward.

One of the rewards was a dinner with former heavyweight champ George Foreman. As they sat there, sipping on champagne, and eating expensive steaks, he tried to pass along some of the wisdom he had gained through his decades of experience both in and out of the ring.

One of the things he passed along was that they had to be smart - figure out how to handle finances, figure out where they wanted their career to go, etc. He summed it up into one simple quote (which I'm sure had been used by others before, but I'd never heard it):

"Plan your work, and work your plan."

Man, talk about profound. This applies to all plans in your life - especially your workout plans.

Was trading emails with a guy the other day, regarding workout plans, and how to set them up. He was commenting how I'd said once that workout plans weren't just some sort of randomly thrown together workouts. That they shouldn't be just "Hmmm...how can I kick my own ass today?"

He went on to tell me that was how he did his workout plans many times, and told me about what he had done for that morning.

The problem with designing workout plans like this is that you never really know what you're doing long-term. It's Ok on a day-to-day basis, but what about a month, two months, or even six months to a year down the road?

You have to have some sort of 'checks and balances' system in place. Or a checklist. Something that ensures that you're doing a balanced workout plan.

You see, trainees too often do only exercises they like. How many times have you seen a guy with a big upper body, yet legs so small, he looks like he's riding a chicken? Or how about a guy who looks great in a mirror, because he's trained the hell out of his front/side shoulders, chest, abs, biceps, and quads, yet totally neglected his traps, back, triceps, low back, hamstrings, posterior chain (all the stuff you can't see in a mirror), etc?

It's human nature to do this kinda thing. Who wants to do what they don't (necessarily) like to do? And if you don't have some sort of system in place to make sure you do it, then when will it get done?

Let's look at a different scenario.

Let's say you really enjoy training, and aren't the kinda person that wouldn't train legs, or what have you. Great for you - give yourself a pat on the back. That doesn't mean you don't still need to make sure that you're doing a balanced program.

Say for lower body, you work the hell out deadlifts, DB/KB swings, pull throughs, DB/KB snatches, and cleans. What's the problem? Sounds like a great lower body program, right? And it is...for the short term. Look back at it - all those exercises are hip-dominant (meaning that the focus is on the hips). There are no exercises that are quad-dominant (which focus on the quads) such as squats, step-ups, or even lunge variations.

Didn't think of that, did you?

For upper body, say our workout plans consist of primarily bench press variations (flat, DB, incline, dips, etc.) and different rowing exercises. What's the problem? Both of those are in the 'horizontal plane' (meaning your arms travel perpendicular to your body). No 'vertical plane' (meaning your arms travel parallel to your body) work such as overhead presses, chins, pullups, etc. are being done.

Now, in the short term, you might be Ok with workout plans like this. But long term - six months, a year, or more - you're going to develop muscular imbalances that can end up leading to injury.

It's not smart to ABC (Always Bench & Curl), right? It's not a complete workout plan. Well, neither are these.

That's the problem with many of these 'make it up as you go along' workout plans. There isn't a system in place to make sure that you're getting all types of work in.

I mean, if you're the kind that just does what you feel like each day, answer me this - when was the last time you did:

See what I mean? All of these things need to be a part of well-design workout plans. And they all should be done (given that you don't have any glaring weaknesses to work on) in more or less even amounts (in terms of how much you do, how often you do it, how much weight overall you're moving, etc.) to keep muscular imbalances from forming.

Now, do I think you should be a workout plan nazi? Hell no - of course not.

If you want to change up your training all the time, or what you do on a given day, hey - go for it. You just need to make sure that you have some sort of plan, system, checklist, or whatever in place to make sure that you're covering all the bases.

Train Hard, Rest Hard, Play Hard.