How to Plan a Home Workout

Are you sometimes determined to squeeze in a workout before the day is out but also have sef-doubt about how to plan your exercise session?

• Have I got everything covered that I need to improve my fitness?
• Am I safely putting the exercises together to reduce my risk of injury?
• Is the effort I am about to put in going to bring me maximum results?
• Will this workout maximise the time I have available?

Once I discovered the zone system to building workouts, and then adapted to my clients sessions (as well as mine, even while I was an athlete), the results yielded great gains across all aspects of fitness.

What are the zones

I am sure you would agree that every training session should begin with some preparation for what you are about to embark on – the warm up. So, in the zonal system, zone 1 is the warm up.

Power (moving yourself fast over a short period of time) is essential to the health of your movement, but it is massively over looked in the fitness industry, especially for us over 40’s. Strength seems all the rage at the moment. Everyone is aware that strength is important as we age, but without an element of moving yourself quickly, then your strength development is restricted. Power can only be improved when there is no fatigue, so this is why power development is zone 2 towards the start of the session.

As power primes strength it comes as no surprise that a strength focus comes in next at zone 3.

Finally zone 4 consists of your stamina/ endurance work. This could include HIIT (high intensity interval training) on one end of the scale, to long slow endurance sessions that could involve a 20-30 continuous paced run.

Building your workout

Every workout should begin with zone 1 type activities. This not only warms us up but also helps to reset your posture, especially if you had been sitting behind a desk all day, commuting for a few hours or had just woken up after a nights sleep. Here is a sample zone 1 workout.

Then which of the zones you choose there after to build your home workout is up you depending upon your goals, how you're feeling that day or the time you have free to workout.

If you want a complete session then engage in some movement from each of the remaining 3 zones, but they must be completed in order. If you decide to miss out a section, say for this example, zone 2 – the power section, then go straight onto zone 3. Here is a zone 3 session for you:

Then you could round off your workout with zone 4 such as the workout below:

So, I have given you an example of a home workout you can easily complete, safe in the knowledge that you are striving towards where you want to be. Home workouts can be highly effective when you follow the zone system.

Have fun and enjoy the journey!