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In the first installment, we talked about determining the number of days and total time you will be exercising each week. I also presented a video which should have helped you determine how many exercises to perform in total.

The next part is to take your list of exercises and organize them into a balanced program. Before you begin to do this, you need to determine what kind of training split you wish to follow. A training split is a method of organizing your exercises based on groupings of movement plains or body parts. I will present a few training splits and how to use them for each fitness level. Continue reading

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In the last installment, we went over how to choose the right training split and how to organize your exercises based on that split. I hope now you have a rough schedule set up.The next step is to determine how many repetitions to perform per exercise. Use the following table as a guide: Continue reading

Circuit training is one of my favorite intensity techniques. With this technique, you choose 4 or more exercise, and perform them one after another with little to no rest.

Why Circuit Training Helps with Muscle Mass

Three hormones work for you when you use a high intensity technique such as circuit training:

• Testosterone and Human Growth Hormone (HGH) are released during this type of high intensity training. For more information on this, check out my article Use Supersets Training to Continue reading

I’m going away to India in February for my cousin’s wedding. I like to call it the “Land of Tea” because everywhere you go, you are offered “Chai” or Tea. In fact, after my first visit to India (as a teenager), I became addicted to Indian Chai.

One of the problems I always have is maintaining my weight. Last time I went to India I had gained a tremendous amount of weight due to horrible food choices and lack of exercise. I have prepared a video to explain what went wrong and how I plan to remedy the situation in the future:

How to Design an Effective Vacation Training Program

Creating a vacation program is easy once you have the right tools in front of you. So before you leave for your vacation I want you to do three things:

Step One: Determine the type of training equipment you have access to. If you do not have access to a gym, then you can create a bodyweight or resistance band training program. If you do have access to a gym, try to figure out what kind of equipment will be in that gym.

Step Two: Determine the amount of time you have to exercise. Be practical here. Try to figure out what your itinerary is ahead of time. If you have a family like mine, there won’t be any itinerary. In that case, prepare for the worst.

Step Three: Use the methods below to develop your training program.

3 Methods to Training on Vacation

It’s a good idea to have a “bag of tricks” while you’re on vacation. Here are three more tricks to add:

Max Rounds in 20 minutes – This is classic density training and something that’s been repeated several times on this website. I’m repeating it again because not enough people use this format of workout design.

• When you’re on vacation, you have limited time. You may have 10-20-or 30 minutes to workout before you leave for some enchanted getaway tour bus. I know for myself, I’ll be needed in more places than I can pronounce.
• The main idea is to set up a circuit and perform it as many times as you can within a given time frame.

Tabata Training – Here is another training method I’ve talked about numerous times on my site. I think people are too scared to try this method. But I’m telling you, it’ll save you a lot of time and prevent you from gaining any vacation weight.

• Tabata training revolves around intervals of 20 seconds work, and 10 seconds rest. Traditionally, you perform 8 rounds for a total of 4 minutes, and then you’re done. Most people will choose 3-5 exercises for a 12 to 20 minute workout.
• Create a Tabata routine based on the amount of time you have. Don’t be afraid of modifying already established training protocols.

One of the best ways to help you with your intervals is to use the GymBoss Interval Timer. It costs just $19.95, and you can program it to help you keep track of any sort of intervals you may use. Click here to grab yours today.

Singles for Strength – Here is something I have never talked about on this site. If you get a chance to hit a gym with a lot of free weights (most hotel gyms just have machines), then you can perform something called Singles Training.

• Choose one barbell exercise and perform anywhere between 5 to 10 sets of singles. You can gradually add weight to the bar as you progress, or just start off with 80-90% of your maximum and perform 10 sets of singles. (By the way, singles means performing just 1 repetition)
• Singles are a great way to maintain or even boost your strength levels while on vacation. If you have just ten minutes to workout, then perform 5 singles with 60 seconds of rest between each set.

What a Great Way to Workout while on Vacation! – Image by tinatinatinatinatinaBodyweight Training Resources

I’ve come across a lot of great bodyweight training resources along the years. Check out these two resources before embarking on your journey:

Workout Without Weights – This is an eBook written by Coach Lomax. It has taught me pretty much everything I know about bodyweight training. The eBook is concise and easy to follow. It comes with six “mini” eBooks for additional information. One of the mini eBooks is a full 4-week Tabata training program. This may end up being your full program for you vacation. Check it out here.

BodyweightCulture.com – Bodyweight Culture is a no nonsense forum with a lot of people who are genuinely there to help you out. If you’re a complete beginner to bodyweight training, no one will yell out you (the way they do on various other forums – I won’t mention any names), but instead they’ll kindly ask you to use the search function for your question. The information is GOLD and the people are NICE. Check it out here.

Fitting Exercise into Your Busy Itinerary

As mentioned earlier, when you’re with my family, anything can happen at any time. I have thought of some survival techniques to help you fit in at least three workouts per week while you’re on vacation:

Technique #1: Exercise First Thing In The Morning – Before anyone can tell you to do something, or before that tour bus leaves, just get up a few minutes early and perform a quick workout.

Technique #2: Get it Done on the Side of the Road – When your family or tour bus makes a rest stop find a good park bench or open area and start cranking out pushups, jumping on benches, and pulling on tree branches.

Technique #3: Make it an Event – If you’re going to be with cousins or friends, then get them to workout with you. If they’re not interested offer to teach them, or make a compromise. Say, “Your Art Museum on Sunday, and my Gym on Monday.”

Relaxing While on Vacation

Most often when you’re on vacation, you want to get so much done in such a short amount of time that you forget to relax. I’ve had my best memories when I’m with my family, all sitting around at the dinner table, or playing cards at 2 in the morning, or with my cousins lounging around at a hookah bar. Don’t forget that you’re there to see family and old friends, not just to take some picture of the Eiffel Tower.

Relax, Have some Chai – Image by Veralyn AdeyinkaRelaxing your body is important. If you want stress, then go to work. But if you’re going to spend money on a plane ticket to a distant land, do it stress free. If you are extremely limited on time and need to choose between relaxing and exercising, choose the former. You can always get back into the groove when you come back home.

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A whole-body exercise is an exercise that works a majority of the body in one movement. Here a few examples of such exercises:

• Burpees
• Muscle Ups
• Thrusters
• Clean + Press
• Snatch
• Sumo Deadlift High Pull

A hybrid exercise is when you combine two or more exercise to create a “hybrid.” Here are a few examples of such exercises:

• Burpees + Pullups
• Power Snatch + Overhead Squat
• Power Clean + Front Squat
• Chinup + Leg Raise
• Pushups + Power Clean

Incorporating whole-body and hybrid lifts saves a lot of time because you can work your entire body with one or two exercises. For example, performing Burpees work your legs, chest, shoulder, and triceps. Pullups work your back and biceps. Put them together, and you’ll be working your entire body.

Additional Resources:

For some great high intensity hybrid and other unique bodyweight exercises, take a look at Bodyweight Exercise Revolution.

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I spend a lot of time on this website talking about quick workouts. It’s time to give you guys a primer on how to design such a workout:

Step One: How long will the workout last?

• Determine how long you want the workout to last and make that your time period or TP. You can choose a TP of 20 minutes, 10 minutes, or even 5 minutes. But be careful. The shorter the TP, the more intense the workout will be.

Step Two: Choose your Exercises

• Use the following video to decide which exercises you wish to use.

Step Three: Organize your Exercises

• Use the following table to determine how many repetitions you should perform per workout:

Table 1:

Goal	Rep Range
Mass Gain	8-12 reps
General Fitness	8-20 reps
Strength	1-8 reps
Fat Loss	12-20 reps
Athletic Fitness	12-20 reps

Step Four: Put it all together

Here is a sample 10 minute workout with the goal of General Fitness:

Maximum rounds in 10 minutes of:

Pullups 8 reps
Pushups 14 reps
Bodyweight Squat 20 Reps

Wait a sec, how did you come up with that workout?

The truth is, there is a certain amount of creativity and experience involved in designing quick workouts. What I did in the above workout was put together a triset, or three exercises back to back without rest.

• The goal is to perform as many rounds, or sets of the workout as possible in 10 minutes, without rest. If your goal was to increase strength, then you would still use a 10 minute time frame (or any other time frame, depending on your schedule).
• The exercises you choose will need to be difficult. Remember, for strength you need to be working in the 1-8 rep range. It is suggested you use some for of exterior resistance if you are unable to or do not wish to perform more difficult bodyweight exercises.
• It is also suggested that you take some rest, at least 60 seconds, between each set.

BONUS TIP:

Forget the Cardio

Most trainees spend too much time on distance or steady state cardio, especially while trying to lose fat. Cardio is just one tool in the battle against fat, but not a necessary one. If you replace your hour-long cardio sessions with short 10-15 minutes of intense exercise, you will save an enormous amount of time and may even achieve better and faster results. Here are some articles for more info on this topic:

• Fat Loss without Cardio
• Three Methods to Help End your Cardio Rut!

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The most important thing you need to take into account when designing a bodyweight training program is how much time you have to actually workout. For starters, ask yourself which three days in your schedule is the lightest. If, for example, you say to yourself that the weekends are your only days off then you need to ask yourself if you will actually be motivated to exercise on the weekends.

Some Tips on Scheduling

• My suggestion is to use either a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule or a Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday split. You can even perform a 2-day program and train only on the weekends. Choose something that you know you can stick to for the long-term.
• I have found that I am able to stick to a program better if I am training at a higher frequency (5-6 days per week), since this way I feel I have something to do each day. But this choice is prescribed only to intermediate and advanced trainees.

Once you have determined which days to train, you need to determine how many hours per day you have to exercise. Use the following as a guide:

Table One:

Lifestyle Description	Approximate Time to Train
I’m A Full Time College Student	5+ hours per week
I’m A Full Time College Student with a Part-Time Job	4-5 hours per week
I’m a Stay-at-Home Parent or a College Grad looking for Work	3-4 hours per week
I Have a Full Time 9-5 Job	2 hours per week
I Have 2 or More Full-Time Jobs or Work 60+ Hours per Week	1 hour per week

Now take the time you have to train and divide that by the number of days you have chosen to train.

• For example, if you have chosen to exercise 3 days per week and have time for 3 total hours of exercise per week, then your training session will last 1 hour. If you have chosen to exercise 5 days pwer week, and have time for 1 total hour of exercise per week, then your training session will last 12 minutes.

Before we continue, I know what question you have in your head: “How can you get a good workout in just 12 minutes?” You can. I have had intense workouts that only last 4 minutes. I will devote a separate post on this topic.

How much Rest?

The next step is to determine how much rest you wish to take between each set. This will be based on your experience and goals. Use the following two tables to help you:

Table Two:

Fitness Level	Prescribed Rest Time
Beginner	2-3 minutes
Intermediate	1-2 minutes
Advanced	Less than 1 minute

Table Three:

Goal	Prescribed Rest Time
Mass Gain	1-2 minutes
General Health	1-2 minutes
Strength	3 + minutes
Fat Loss	0-2 minutes
Athletic Goals	Less than 1 minute

Choosing Exercises

Now that you have your rep range and total time per session, it is time to choose your exercises. I have prepared a video to help determine which exercises you should focus on and have published it before. Here it is again:

Use the video to make a list of the exercise you will use. The second part of this post will run on Monday. I’m letting you guys use the weekends to really brainstorm this stuff. It’s important.

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If you notice the workout plan that I prescribed, all the workouts involve free-weight exercises. There are two reasons why you should use free-weight exercises:

• They are often the least-used in health clubs, as opposed to machines and cables, hence you’ll save time.
• Machines limit your range of motion and do half the workout for you. Machines were conceived for rehab use, and are good for senior citizens or extremely out of shape trainees. If you’re a guy, stick to the iron.

If you’re using machines as part of your training program, see if there are any bodyweight, free-weight, or cable alternatives you can use to get the job done faster.