How to Make Your Own Workout Plan

In Full-Color Foundations, my beginner strength program, I lay out some of the more basic workout structures like circuits and supersets to go along with the basic exercises. Those are great structures for quick workouts, but what about if you have more time and want to do multifaceted workouts that help you get stronger in lots of different ways?

In this article, I’m diving into how to make your own workout plan: the different parts of a workout, what exercises to do, and where they go in your workout to make a well-rounded plan.

Some parts are more important/necessary than others, but it’s important to remember that you don’t need all of these parts to have a successful workout!

Part 1: The Warm Up

When most people think of a warm up, they think about running on a treadmill for 5-10 minutes or doing some miscellaneous stretches. It can help, but it doesn’t always do the best job of getting your body ready for the workout.

Instead, I really like to think about the warm up as activation, or getting your muscles ready for the exercises you’ll be doing. The warm up section of a workout is really about what your body needs to get ready for a workout; everyone is different!

Below are ideas you can use for your warm ups! While I recommend trying all of these, you don’t need to do all of them before each workout- pick and choose what feels best, leave the rest. This is also not a comprehensive list, so add other things if you like them.

1. Mobility Exercises and/or Dynamic Stretches

I’m not a big fan of static stretching (holding a pose/stretch for 30+ seconds) before a workout unless you have an injury/a muscle that is specifically helped by stretching. Instead, I really like having my clients do mobility exercises or dynamic stretches at the beginning of a workout!
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For mobility, I focus on shoulders/shoulder blades, hips, and feet/ankles because those are usually the areas of the body that move the most during a workout. There are tons of great mobility exercises out there if you search for them, but here are a couple of my favorites that really help prepare my body for a workout:

• ​Bench stretch​
• ​Halo​
• ​Hip circle​
• ​Adductor rocks​
• ​Ankle circle​

2. Foam Rolling

Foam rolling is a great way to get sticky muscles ready for a workout! Contrary to the name, you don’t actually roll up and down a muscle for foam rolling. Instead, you slowly roll down the muscle until you find the stickiest (usually the most painful 😭) spot in that muscle, then hold there for 30-90 seconds until it releases. Then you keep rolling slowly until you find the next sticky spot!

If you feel like you have muscles that are tight going into a workout, a combination of mobility exercises and foam rolling is a great way to help!

3. Targeted Muscle Activation

The easiest way to think of this one is a physical therapy exercise- we’re talking about exercises that target specific muscles you might struggle with. The idea is to get these muscles looser/moving more so you can move better during your actual workout exercises.

Knowing what to do for this usually means getting a movement assessment from a fitness professional (like me!) or being assigned exercises by a physical therapist.

A couple really common activation exercises:

• ​Clamshells for activating glutes (helpful for anyone who sits a lot for work!)
• ​Wall taps for activating shoulder blade muscles so your shoulders move more easily
• ​Corkscrews for activating the muscles in your foot better to support you

4. Get Your Heart Rate Up

Put the warm in warm up! Doing some gentle cardio can be a great way to get your whole body a bit warmer and ready for the upcoming workout. This is especially helpful if it’s cold outside or you’re coming from a chilly office.

5. Small Versions of Your Workout Exercises

Example: If I know I’m going to be deadlifting that day in my workout as one of my main exercises (see part 2), then I want to do some things to get those deadlifting muscles ready to go!

For my deadlift, a hinge exercise, I might be using a lot of weight, so I’ll do a couple bodyweight hinge exercises (no added weight) like glute bridges and hip hinges to help my hinging muscles get ready to go!

Part 2: The Main Lift(s)

So…. what do you do next? How do you decide what comes first in a workout?

The simplest answer is: the exercise or exercises that will take the most energy, the focus of your workout!

Workout Splits

Just like in life, you can’t do everything all at once in your workouts. Your body can’t handle going all out on all the muscles all the time. This is why workout splits exist!

Workout splits help you focus your energy on one exercise or area of the body. Each workout focuses one or two main lifts, and you rotate through them all.

Your main lifts are usually full-body exercises that involve multiple parts of the body, also called compound exercises. Once you get the hang of them, compound exercises are typically where you use heavier weights to get stronger.

The reason they go first is because they require the most energy/attention from your body. With lots of body parts moving and more weight, it’s a lot for your nervous system to handle! That’s why you want to do these exercises early in the workout, while you’re still fresh and ready to go.

Note: The main lift is generally the most important part of the workout in this specific structure. Other workout structures like a circuit won’t have a main lift, and that’s okay!

Main Lift Exercises

You might see a lot of workout splits for specific areas of the body, like chest & leg day, back & biceps day, etc. This is a bodybuilding-style workout plan. I approach strength training from a more full-body, functional perspective (more on that here), so my main lifts correlate with the basic exercises: squat, hinge, push, and pull.

When I make my own workout plan, I start by choosing the main lift I want to do that day: a squat, a deadlift (hinge), a press (push), or a row (pull). That doesn’t mean I have to do only that type of exercise for the day, but it helps me focus for that workout so I know where to put my energy!

Here’s what this section of my workouts usually looks like:

Workout #	Main Lift
1	Bench Press
2	Squat
3	Bent Over Row
4	Deadlift

Rinse and repeat!

Your main lifts won’t change very often. Consistency is what matters here no matter what your workout goals are- you keep doing the basics, you keep getting stronger.

Just because you’re doing these main lifts regularly doesn’t mean you have to do the exact same thing every time! There are still different variations of these exercises that can keep it interesting while also helping you get stronger. Stick with one variation for 2-3 months, then switch it up.

A Workout with Two Main Lifts

If you’re crunched for time or realistically only have time for 1-2 workouts per week, you can do two main lifts per workout. I usually do these as a superset, which means I do a round of both exercises before resting.

If you’re doing two main exercises, you can still use heavier weights, but you want to be careful of exhausting your body too much! If you’re going all out on #1, you won’t have enough energy to move onto #2.

When I’m doing this, I usually pair one of the lower-body exercises (squat or deadlift) with one of the upper body exercises (press or row). But you can mix them however you want! This method also leaves room for adding in variations of the main lifts. For example:

Workout #	Main Lift #1	Main Lift #2
1a	Pull Up (pull)	Goblet Squat (squat)
2a	Bench Press (push)	Kettlebell Deadlift (hinge)
1b	Bent Over Row (pull)	Barbell Back Squat (squat)
2b	Overhead Press (push)	Barbell Deadlift (hinge)

They’re all still basic, compound exercises, but by pairing them together I get a bit more variety in the two workouts I alternate.

Part 3: The Supportive Exercises

Supportive exercises complement and strengthen your main lifts. For example, if I want my squat to get stronger, of course doing more squats will work. But also doing other squat-related exercises will help strengthen those muscles in different ways! This is the section for those “related” exercises.

Bilateral vs Unilateral Exercises

Before we get into it, a little vocab lesson:

Bilateral Exercises:
These exercises use both sides of the body. You’re doing something with both legs and/or both arms. These exercises are generally stable and you can use more weight.

Unilateral Exercises:
These exercises use one side of the body. You’re doing something with one arm or leg at a time. These exercises usually challenge stabilizing muscles and you don’t do them with as much weight as bilateral exercises.

Many times, bilateral exercises can cover up smaller issues because one side compensates for the other. Unilateral exercises bring that alllll out into the open (ever noticed that one of your arms is stronger than the other?) and helps you strengthen each side separately so they can be stronger together in the main lift.

If bilateral exercises are usually your main lifts, you’d be correct in guessing that your supportive exercises include unilateral exercises!

Supportive Exercise Examples

1. Unilateral exercises that match your main lift pattern

Main Lift:	Bilateral Exercise Example:	Unilateral Exercise Example:
Deadlift	Romanian Deadlift	Kickstand Deadlift
Squat	Squat	Reverse Lunge
Press	Chest Press	Floor Press
Row	Upright Row	One Arm Bent Over Row

2. Exercises that work similar muscle groups to your main lift pattern and overall help the main lift

Example: The main muscles worked during a row are your lats down each side of your back, but your rhomboids and traps more in the middle of your back also help a lot! In this section of the workout, you can add exercises that target your traps and rhomboids specifically to help make your rows stronger.

How to Put Supportive Exercises Into Your Workouts

Depending on how many supportive exercises I want to do, I put them in a little superset or circuit. Using the example of rows that I gave above, here’s an example:

Main lift: Barbell row (bilateral because both hands are on the barbell!)

After I complete my sets of rows, I move onto the supportive exercises in a little circuit:
1. One arm kettlebell row (unilateral row with a lower weight than my main lift)
2. Upright row (focus on the traps)
3. Dumbbell reverse flys (focus on the rhomboids)

I’ll do a couple rounds of that before moving onto the next section.

If you’re worried about those rowing muscles getting reaaaaaaally exhausted with all this, you’d be justified! Some people see that as a plus and want that, others don’t.

If you don’t want to do the main lift + its supportive exercises in one day, you can mix them up! You can do a main lift, and then a different lift’s supportive exercises. Your workout plan could look something like this:

Workout #	Main Lift	Do Supportive Exercises For
Workout 1	Press	Deadlift
Workout 2	Squat	Press
Workout 3	Row	Squat
Workout 4	Deadlift	Row

The main goal with supportive exercises is to support, not completely exhaust you and make you so sore you can’t move. You might need to experiment with when and how much you do to find the right balance for your body.

Part 4: The Accessory Exercises​

This section is for any other exercises you think would be beneficial for your strength. It’s generally the less strenuous part of your workout because you’ve tired yourself out in the previous two parts!

I like to think of accessory exercises as a grab bag of whatever exercises make you happy and help you reach your goals. While I give suggestions below, you can add any exercises you want. I almost always put my accessory exercises into a little circuit (one exercise after another until I’m through them all).

You can do as much or as little as you want here. This optional section can add a lot of time onto your workout, so be mindful of what exercises you’re doing and why.

To stike a balance between repetition and variety, I like to pair a different accessory section with each of my main lifts. That way, I’m doing the exercises at least once a week or so.

Here are some accessory exercise ideas:

1. Isolation Exercises

Most of the exercises we’ve talked about in this series are compound exercises, or exercises that use multiple joints and muscle groups to happen. Isolation exercises target a single joint or muscle group.

You can use isolation exercises to strengthen areas that don’t get as much focus in your main or supportive exercises. For example, your presses and rows might be strengthening your arms, shoulders, and back muscles, but you can also focus on biceps and triceps muscles in this section because you find it helps you carry things better.

This can also be helpful for areas where you’ve had previous injuries or muscles that have caused issues. Targeting those specific muscles can feel good and help you move better!

Before adding a ton of isolation exercises to your workouts, it’s important to understand what each muscle does and be intentional about why you’re spending time strengthening it during your workout (instead of listening to all the random social media videos about must-have exercises).

2. Movement Strength Exercises

My specialty! These are full-body exercises that help your whole body move as one. They usually use low or no weight, but move your body in unique ways so you can move better in your day-to-day life.

The reason I love movement strength exercises so much is because of how much they help you move. Instead of worrying about tweaking your back when you twist to grab something, you feel more confident doing it because you’ve actually trained and strengthened that exact movement.

Sometimes these exercises can look weird, but I love how much they translate to things you do in real life!

3. Core Exercises

Because you’re moving full-body and stabilizing yourself while holding weight, you’ve already been working your core in the main lift and supportive sections of your workout! But that doesn’t mean you can’t train your core separately to strengthen it even further.

When you look for core exercises, you’ll find a TON of ab exercises, but your core has a bunch of other muscles too! Your core has two big focuses: stabilizing your spine/torso so it doesn’t move and moving your spine/torso in different ways. The stability exercises help your torso and spine stay strong under load, like when you’re carrying something or your friend jumps on your back for a piggyback ride. The movement exercises help your torso stretch, bend, and twist without injury.

Core Movement	Exercise
Flexion (bending forward)	Sit-Ups most ab exercises
Rotation	Russian Twists Chops
Extension (bending backward)	Back Extensions

Core Stability	Exercise
Anti-Flexion (resist bending forward)	Suitcase Carries basics like squats and deadlifts
Anti-Rotation	Pallof Presses
Anti-Extension (resist bending back)	Planks Dead Bugs

There are more ways your core can move and stabilize, but I think you get the idea! This is why it’s important to train all the muscles in your core, not just abs- your core does SO MUCH for your body! In your workout, you can strengthen both movement and stability by grouping a few different core exercises together.

Workout Planning Tip: If you’re looking for time-savers, sometimes you can combine sections. For example, I could do movement strength core exercises like chops or Russian twists to get the benefit of both sections in one exercise.

4. Balance & Stability Exercises

We talked a bit in the last issue about how unilateral exercises (using one leg or one arm) help strengthen the muscles that keep your body stable. “Stabilizer muscles” are muscles that surround joints to help keep them stable, along with tendons and ligaments.

On a smaller scale, strengthening these muscles helps your joints not move in weird directions that cause pain or injury. On a larger scale, strengthening these muscles helps your whole body stay balanced.

Seems like a good thing to train, right? This accessory section is the perfect place to get a little balance work in. Balance and stability exercises help you stay injury-free, be aware of your body, and give a strength boost to all the other exercises in your workout. Spoiler: when your joints feel stable and strong, everything else gets better!

There are a couple different ways to do balance:

1. Practice balancing.
Doing exercises that make you stabilize your body will help strengthen those muscles. One of my favorites is the hop-to-stabilize. Unilateral exercises like this half-kneeling chop also challenge your balance. (This is the recommended and easiest-to-implement option!)

2. Use an unstable weight.
Sometimes this needs specialized equipment like an Earthquake bar, but one of my favorite exercises for arm/shoulder stability is a bottoms-up kettlebell press or hold.

3. Exercise on an unstable surface like a balance board or foam pad.
Big caveat: Lots of times this ends up looking like some sort of circus trick workout, and I generally don’t recommend it because it’s shown to be less effective than the other two options. I wanted to mention it here though because you’ll see this option a lot if you search for balance exercises.

Part 5: The Workout Finisher​

Today we’re at the end of the workout! We’ve generally been living in the strength-building part of the workout (I’m biased, but the most important parts if you ask me…), but now we’re entering into a bit of conditioning before we call it quits for the day: the finisher!

The goal of the finisher is to get your heart rate up and, over time, increase your endurance (the ability to go for longer). You’re leaning into that last bit of energy you have.

You might be familiar with the Crossfit-style finishers that leave you slightly nauseous in a sweat puddle on the floor. You can do that if that’s what floats your boat, but I prefer something a bit less intense. Pushing your endurance doesn’t have to mean pushing so far past that you actually don’t feel well!

Just like the accessory section, there are a lot of different options for getting that little kick of intensity. I love finishers that add a bit of fun- I want to end on a high note!

Workout Finisher Ideas

1. Cardio
Running, cardio machines, etc.

2. A Higher Intensity Circuit
Anything that keeps you moving- search for “workout finishers” and you’ll find a literal thousand ideas.

3. Explosive Exercises
Kettlebell exercises like swings and cleans, skaters, jumping exercises, etc.

Because there are so many different options and it’s really up to personal preference, I’m going to dig into my lesser-known favorite, an AGT finisher!

Anti-Glycolytic Training (AGT)

When you move, you have three different systems that give you energy:

1. Phosphagen (ATP-PC) System
This is the immediate energy you have available to you. You can thank our ancestors for this because it’s the “oh shit gotta get away from this predator” energy. It’s high intensity, but has a sort duration, like 10-15 seconds.

To use money as an analogy, it’s like the cash you have in your wallet.

2. Glycolytic (Lactic Acid) System
This is the next system you tap into after your phosphagen system taps out. It supports moderate to intense movement and lasts for 2-3 minutes. The downside is that this system burns dirty- it leaves lactic acid behind. When you feel your muscles burning? That’s lactic acid.

In our money analogy, this is like using a credit card. Your spending limit is increased, but you accrue interest.

3. Aerobic (Oxidative) System
The third and final system is your oxidative. It’s much lower intensity than the previous two, but goes for waaaay longer. Think marathon, not sprint. The macronutrients in food (carbs, fats, and proteins) help support this system.

In money, this is like having a trust fund you can always pull from when your cash runs out.

So if you can guess by name “anti-glycolytic,” we’re skipping #2 entirely! The goal of this training method is to bypass the glycolytic system so you don’t build up lactic acid in your muscles. The goal is to build endurance that feels good and doesn’t leave you sore and completely spent.

How to Do an AGT Finisher

Step 1: Choose a full-body exercise you can do with 90-100% intensity. My favorite exercise to use for this is a kettlebell swing, but anything you can do with your whole body quickly/with a lot of energy will work: super intense jumping jacks, skaters, squats, or even something like sprinting.

Step 2: Choose your timeframe and set up a timer. I recommend starting with 5 minutes until you have the idea down! But for a finisher, 10-15 minutes would be the max I would do.

Step 3: Start the timer! At the top of each minute, do 10-15 seconds of your exercise at all out intensity. For me, this is around 10 kettlebell swings. This is where we tap into the phosphagen system!

Step 4: Yes, 10-15 seconds of exercise means 45-50 seconds of rest. It feels like a lot, I know! But you’re letting your body recover and refill that phosphagen system for the next round. I like to walk around during this time to keep my body warm instead of sitting.

Step 5: Finish out the time doing a round each minute. By doing the short bursts over time and letting your body adequately recover over a longer period of time, you’re tapping into the oxidative system!

Since we’re skipping the glycolytic system entirely, this should actually feel pretty good! You shouldn’t feel like you’re dying halfway through, and you ideally aren’t ending in a puddle of sweat.

If we’re comparing this to the ever-popular HIIT training, which prompts ~20 seconds on high intensity work and ~10 seconds of rest, you can see the difference. HIIT taps into the glycolytic system to keep you going, which is why you “feel the burn” during. That feeling might make you feel like it’s more effective, but all it means is that you’re tapping into one of your energy systems instead of the others.

Part 6: The Cool Down​ & Recovery

We’ve technically finished the workout, but we still have one crucial piece to go: the cool down/recovery after a workout!

The more intense your workout was, the more you’ll want to prioritize a cool down and let your heart rate return to normal. This gives your body a chance to smoothly transition between the end of your workout and moving on with your day.

The two most common ways to cool down are stretching out your muscles and doing some gentle movement.

The Cool Down

1. Stretching
Post-workout, it can feel good to stretch your muscles. While I don’t love doing static stretching during a workout warm up, I love it for the cool down. Static stretching is what we usually think of when we think of stretching: holding a position for 30+ seconds.

This is especially helpful if you focus on the muscles you used during the workout. For example, if my main lift was squatting, I’ll prioritize stretching my calves, quads, and glute muscles. You can searching for “[enter muscle or exercise] stretches” and find TONS of great options.

Stretching helps loosen up the muscles that just worked hard and prevent soreness as you recover.

2. Gentle Movement
I personally like to do a gentle walk after a workout or do some mobility exercises, but any gentle movement you like to do will work! Just make sure it’s actually helping you return to baseline after a workout instead of keeping your heart rate up.

Workout Recovery

Recovery is where all the strength magic happens- it’s a crucial part of the strength-building process!

When you work out, your muscles get damaged (it sounds bad, I know, but it’s actually a good thing). As you recover, your muscles repair, which is how they adapt to exercise and get stronger!

Your muscles can take 48-72 hours to recover fully, which is why it’s usually recommended that you do:

• ~3 full-body workouts per week, giving your body time to recover in between
• use workout splits so you’re working different muscles in different workouts (I talked about this in pt. 2 of this series!)

Of course, this isn’t a super strict rule. Everyone’s body recovers differently and it’s more important to do what works for you and your schedule.

Recovery Ideas

A huge part of recovery is making sure your body gets what it needs: nutritious food, sleep, etc. You don’t need lots of fancy supplements or equipment to recover, you just need to prioritize things you know are good for you (even if it’s kind of a drag sometimes 😂). No need to go out and buy a cold plunge in the name of optimized recovery…

Recovery doesn’t have to mean not moving at all though! Recent studies have shown that movement can actually be more helpful for recovery than rest alone. Active recovery can be doing activities like walking, swimming, yoga, cycling… the list goes on! The idea is to do them at a lower intensity than your workouts.

Once your body is recovered, you’re ready for the next workout and the cycle starts again!

I’ve said throughout this entire series that all these workout parts aren’t required, but… the recovery part is actually pretty important! If you want to read more about recovery and how it works, I wrote a whole article about it.

These are the types of topics we get into in Colorful Strength, my 12 week beyond-the-basics strength program. Now that you have a solid grasp of the basic exercises, you’ll go deeper with your strength knowledge.

In Colorful Strength, you’ll learn about warm ups, recovery, safety, and different types of exercises that complement your basics. Lessons will cover how to make your workouts more specific to your goals and put together well-rounded workouts. You’ll build the kind of strength routine that lasts, one you feel excited to stick with month after month. With every rep, you’ll feel stronger in the moments

Learn more about Colorful Strength here.