Tweaking a Posted Workout

One of the questions we've received was, "How does one adapt a workout?"

Using my Trim Down version as a base workout, here's what I'd look at if I were a person interested in the workout, but saw that it wouldn't work for me...

First, I'd jot the workout down on paper so I could see what was really there, i.e. how many sets per bodypart, how many sets per day. While I was writing it down, it would become clearer what I liked or disliked about it and with a little bit of analysis, it would be easy to exchange exercises to suit my needs, or raise or lower the number or sets or the reps per set as I wanted.

When I wrote this workout, I was designing it for me. I'm just coming off a few months of learning Olympic lifting techniques and slipping bodypart workouts in as I had time, so I was pretty excited about getting back to supersetting. Also, I wanted to use some of what I had gained via the Olympic lifting, deep front squats and push jerks in particular. Plus, I wanted to catch up on some of the bodyparts I'd been slacking on, read: calves, abdominals, forearms and cardio.

The two basic ways a person could tweak the Trim Down while still retaining the basic structure would be to change the set volume from 4 or 5 to 1-5, depending on the person's desire, fitness level and available time. Anybody could take the exact routine, but decrease the sets from 5 to 3, etc and be rolling along happily as early as tomorrow.

The second easiest way to tweak this one would be to replace some of the exercises. I chose them for a reason, but the reasons suit me. Another person may need to catch up on leg extensions and may not care about calves, so that person could replace the calf raises with extensions, trade extended biceps for forearms, or drop the calves and forearms altogether with no replacement.

For the workout to do what I have in mind, the leg work has to be there. A person could exchange the front squats for other squats or leg presses, but 3x legs is important for the athletic, shaping workout that this is.

I did the Monday workout and it took me, start to finish including cardio and warmup work, 80 minutes. This is coming off 10 days away from the gym (we worked out at night), so I had quite a number of [quick] conversations and some mirrors to polish. It also takes a few workouts in a row to understand a combination and get the weights right quickly, without thought. I'd say it'll clock in at just over an hour for most people after the third go-round.

Laree

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