Plan Your Complete Home Workout Program - Weight Lifting and Cardio

These days, it seems that everybody and their mothers are on some type of home workout program. Weight lifting, aerobic and flexibility routines are the most common styles of home fitness programs.

As the health benefits of regular exercise have come to light in recent years, so to has the need for affordable and accessible fitness programs.

With gym dues and health club memberships at all time highs, not everybody can afford a first class fitness lifestyle complete with fancy health club memberships and personal training sessions.

Does this lack of extra money mean that health and fitness will forever be out of your reach?

Not if I have anything to say about it!

While it is true that health clubs offer top notch fitness equipment and workout facilities, there is no guarantee that access to these fitness amenities alone will bring you success.

I have had extensive experience helping clients develop a home workout program weight lifting or otherwise, that often times gets better results than more traditional fitness avenues.

I even prefer to perform my workouts at home in my unfinished basement, rather than have to put up with all of the distractions at the local gym.

By properly planning my home workout program - weight lifting, aerobics and stretching all receive the proper amount of attention and focus, and allow me to accomplish more in less time, than if I were working out at some fancy gym.

The first step in planning any home workout program weight lifting or otherwise, is taking a quick inventory of the available fitness equipment.

For weight lifting, it is not a necessity to acquire all of the fancy equipment found at the gym. A simple set of free-weights, a good quality adjustable weight bench, a squat rack and an Olympic bar are all that you will need to plan a comprehensive free-weight lifting exercise program.

Location…Location…Location…

If you intend to perform any type of home workout program weight lifting, cardio or flexibility, it is essential to have adequate space to perform your workouts. Whether this space is a garage, an extra bedroom or part of a basement really does not matter. Just make sure that there is adequate room to move around and the space is free of unnecessary clutter.

If your goals require you to push through fatigue and lift heavy weights, it is important that this space allows you the privacy to focus and mentally prepare.

Creating Your Complete Home Workout Program

After you have chosen a location for your home workout, the next step is to sit down and develop your workout plan. This step is really not that much different from planning a weight lifting workout for a gym.

Since your home gym is a little more limited than a fully stocked commercial gym, it is important to develop a workout routine that incorporates basic compound free weight exercises.

Compound exercises are exercises that involve moving the weights through space in a manner that multiple joints and muscle groups are utilized to complete each repetition.

A short list of compound exercise includes: squats, bench press, incline press, lunges, standing calf raise and pull-ups.

While these exercises are typically harder to perform, they definitely pack more bang for their buck than any isolation exercise.

If you are an experienced weight lifter and your goals are to pack on lean muscle mass, I would recommend performing three set of 2 - 3 different exercises per workout.

Perform each set with a weight that is heavy enough to challenge you, and not allow you to perform more than 8 fairly strict repetitions for each set. Focus on only one or two body parts per workout. Rest for a minimum of 2 minutes and a maximum of 3 minutes, this is enough time for your muscles to recover for the next set, but not so much time that you get bored and fall asleep.

If you are a fitness beginner, you will want to slowly ease into your new home work out program by lifting with lighter weights for more repetitions to condition your body.

I recommend performing 2 exercises per workout.

Use a weight that allows you to comfortably perform 10-12 repetitions of each exercise with fairly strict form. Do not attempt to lift weights that are too heavy at the beginning of your program. If you do, you are almost guaranteeing that you will injure yourself and not be able to continue your fitness program.

Rest for 2 minutes between sets to ensure adequate muscle recovery. Perform this style of weight lifting workout for 3 - 4 weeks, or until your muscles have developed a base strength level. After a few weeks of this routine, your muscles should be recovering from each workout quicker, and be gaining strength with each new workout.

Rest and Recovery

When you are just beginning any type of home workout program weight lifting especially, it is extremely important that you allow enough time for your muscles and joints to recover from each workout. Plan your schedule so that you are performing workouts on each body part / muscle group only one time each week. Give each muscle group a full week to recover from the previous workout.

Don't Forget About Aerobics!

In order to design a complete home workout program weight lifting is only the tip of the iceberg. For increased health and fat loss, you will need to add some sort of cardiovascular conditioning to your routine. As with everything else, the frequency and duration of your workouts will vary depending on your goals and time frame for achieving them.

Take it easy in the beginning and work into a realistic fitness routine that you will be able to stick with. Many beginners tackle too much in the beginning and become frustrated and burnt out with their home workout program weight lifting or otherwise, before they even begin to see any results.