Try this new 8-week routine for the best results ever!

Six days a week in the gym to double your gains!

Follow this SUPER SQUAT workout plan now to get huge legs fast!

But wait.

You thought that the last 8-week routine by Mr. Fit was the best, and you only started it six weeks ago. He recommended six days a week but said three days minimum. You can only commit to two days, but you want to give it a shot, so you just skip one day. Now you don't know if you should change to this new routine - maybe it's truly better. You don’t like squats, but they say they’re the best for legs, so maybe you should try. You wonder if you can make six days work in your already busy schedule. Maybe you’ll just sleep less to make it work. You do want to double the gains, after all. Stop.

The Dilemma of the New

Let's slow down.

Does the above thought process feel familiar?

Maybe this exact scenario hasn’t crossed your mind, but you can probably resonate with the confused and chaotic thoughts that pollute our minds when we think about topics we are inexperienced with. It's natural, but fitness and nutrition, especially, have a peculiar way of making things that are fundamentally simple, confusing.

Most routines have merits. There are pros and cons for everything you put your body through. Stress forces a change. If you stress your body enough it will change into something more fitting. That's what we call fitness. The constant cycle of applying new stressors to your body forces it to adapt positively. Work out your biceps to get bigger, and stronger biceps.

The Consistency Factor

How often you work out matters too, to an extent. It's not a perfectly linear relationship, in that, more time in the gym does not result in a perfectly equivalent amount of progress. Generally, though, more is better, but here is why more doesn’t matter:

Consistency matters more.

Someone who goes to the gym once a week for the rest of their life will quickly overshadow the gains of someone who works out six days a week for only the first week of each year.

We like to be all in. Well, sort of. We like to think about being all in but are quickly humbled when life catches up to us and reminds us that we just straight up don't have enough time to exercise every day. This is part of the reason why New Year's resolutions are usually a failure. Life happens. And that's okay.

It's okay to not be perfectly optimized. It's okay to take breaks and fall off from time to time. It happens to everyone, even Mr. Fit himself. The journey matters just as much as the destination and you can create a fitness journey that is yours and yours alone. The only thing that is required is that you start the journey. The journey isn’t a journey if you don’t go somewhere.

Crafting a Sustainable Routine

First, you need to think, ask yourself, and honestly answer the following questions:

1. How many days a week can I commit to exercise?

2. How many hours of those days can I commit to exercise?

3. What type of exercise do I like?

Think about it and be conservative with your time. If you can do one, maybe one and a half hours, the safe answer is one hour. If you can do two days, maybe three, safely answer two days a week. The goal here is to find something you can stick to. Stretching your reality in search of optimization, cause Mr. Fit said three days minimum, will not help long term. It will be detrimental.

Finding a routine that fits into your life is the single most important part of your fitness journey since it determines how consistent you will be. You want fitness to become part of your life, instead of a chore that makes you sore and tired. You can only do this if you commit the right amount of time. The right amount of time to commit is the amount of time you CAN commit. Assuming it's greater than zero, since as was mentioned, a journey isn't a journey if you don't start, and starting takes time.

I know this probably is a strange concept considering the overwhelming amount of fitness advice that suggests more rigid applications, but rest assured it is the right way.

A six-day-a-week routine that you only end up doing two days a week makes you feel like you're doing an incomplete job because you are. A two-day-a-week routine that you do two days a week will make you feel like you completed the work. For both routines you exercise for two days, for one you feel satisfied and for one you feel unsatisfied. Only the one that makes you feel good, for completing the work, will result in long-term success.

Once you figure out how frequently and how long you can realistically work out, next is to decide what type of exercise. It's highly recommended to use a mix of weight training and cardio for fitness. When thinking about what exercise you like doing, for the beginner it may be hard to answer if you haven't done enough to know what you like. Instead, try to think about things you know you don't like, and go from there. If you don't like running because your knee hurts when you run, you shouldn't run. If you like swimming because it is fun, you should swim. Your routine will change many, many times over your life so as you discover more preferences, you can adjust accordingly.

Regardless of your choices, it's important to start thinking about fitness in the frame of “What do I see myself being able to do consistently?”. You'll likely not want to consistently run if your knee hurts every time. Much like choosing the right frequency for working out, choosing the right way to work out, and adjusting as your preferences change, is part of the journey toward lifelong results.

Your Road to Success

If you made it this far, hopefully, you answered all the questions honestly, and you must be wondering how to tie it all together. Now you must choose a routine! Here is what you should aim for based on the number of days you can commit each week:

1 Day - Full Body: A routine that uses mostly compound exercises to hit the entire body in a single workout.

2 Day - Upper/Lower Split: One workout to hit your upper body, and one workout to hit your lower body.

3 Day - Push Pull Legs (PPL) Split: Divide your workouts into pushing movements, pulling movements, and leg exercises.

4 day - Upper/Lower Split: Two workouts to hit your upper body and two workouts to hit your lower body, alternating.

5 day - Conventional Split Routine: Each day targets a different set of muscles: Chest, Shoulders, Legs, Back, Arms & Abs.

6 day - Push Pull Legs (PPL) Split x2: Repeat a Push Pull Legs routine twice a week for increased frequency.

With each of these you should add 20 - 30 minutes, of the cardio of your choice, to the end of the workout. Again, do cardio you enjoy, so you’ll be more likely to actually do it.

If any of these routines are unfamiliar to you, head over to https://www.instagram.com/_lucidfitness/ where there will be simple beginner routines posted, over time, for each of these. The idea is to choose a workout routine that is most effective based on the number of days you can commit, instead of choosing the most effective routine and then trying to change your life so you can potentially commit to it. Make your routine work with you.

Now you have all you need to be successful with a workout routine. You discovered how frequently and how long you can exercise, and what types of exercise you don't want to do. Finally, you were given a target routine that can fit into your life.

All that is left is action.

Thank you all for reading. I appreciate everyone who is supporting this journey to provide clarity.

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