How Many Reps and Sets

It can be confusing to start planning your workout sessions and that is why we often get stuck doing the same workout and not improving; in fact if we go on so long with out change we develop an imbalance in our muscles and this can cause a weakness and finally an injury.

It is always good to keep a log of your training over the years to see if you have got stuck in a rut. One way of keeping a record is your hours per week or miles covered. Heart rate zones and power meters but it's not so easy to look at your workouts and training plans and decide how much of each thing should I be doing?

We need to think about our goals, from basic fitness to races or muscle development, so here I have made a very simple outline to help you think about what sort of intensity, duration and of course sets and reps. Now the gym bros out there might advise you differently but what we have here is a guideline that can be used to adapt to your own needs.

Muscle action	Sets	Reps	Resistance
Grow	1	1-6	high
Maintain	2	12-16	Medium
Endurance	3	20	Med-light

Training plans 7 to 10 days

Recovery days from 1 day to two weeks depending age and activities. The more intense the activity the more recovery  will be needed.  The older we get also means that we may need more recovery days and less workouts back-to-back so we may want to plan sessions over ten days rather than seven.*

Workouts

Strength, 1-3 days per week – core, upper, lower body

Speed and Power, 1-2 days per week, heart rate zones 4/5

Base fitness or distance training, 2-4 days per week, heart rate zone 2/3

*Recovery days, zone 1, active rest.

The combinations depends on your chosen sport for example training for a half marathon will have more distance training than strength days.

Cycling the plan over three week build of either intensity or duration then week four is a recovery week with lighter sessions allowing the super-compensation (muscle rebuild and fatigue to reduce) required to continue the next month. 

I hope this will give you something to think about with your training when you are looking at the calender. I have a training log that I use with clients that helps us develop these areas that often change as the weeks go by, sometimes there is a set-back and other times we have to switch focus to a weak area so these plans should never be fully set in stone. 

If you are interested in getting better control of your training plan then send me an email crjc75@gmail.com and we can have a look at what is the right steps for you. 

Thanks for reading.

Caspar