One of the hardest parts about working out is figuring out what to do.

I mean, yeah, the exercise itself can be tough.

But even though I used to be a personal trainer, I still felt blocked from exercise due to poor planning.

It was a hurdle to create a workout plan that aligned with my goals.

What can I do so I don’t get bored?

How long did I really want to run for?

When would I start lifting heavy vs doing lighter weights?

How and when should I vary the lifting stimulus?

And on and on.

In spirit of this common struggle, I wanted to share my plan and goals, and encourage you to steal what sounds useful for yourself.

Also, I have a bonus at the end. If you help me out by taking a survey, I will send you the excel doc I use to build out my workout plans. It comes with a yearly periodized plan (shown below) as well as a 3 sample workout-weeks, and a strength tracker.

The Outline

First, I have some good news. You do NOT need to plan out every single workout.

Things change. Life happens. Goals shift.

Your individual workouts may change.

However, it is incredibly helpful to create an outline.

The outline should include:

• Your physical goals over the year
• What training will you do (cardio, weights, both)
• General training volume.

My outline looks like this:

Here are a few things to notice:

• All the weeks of the year are listed at the top.
• I list out the physical focus or goal I want for different periods of the year.
• I lay out a general outline of the volume of work I plan on doing. This coincides with the goals set for each time period.
• I also list out how much cardio I want to maintain (or build into) over the year.

The Overview

For the first couple of months:

• Training volume is relatively high with low mileage. Time to build more muscle!

From March through May, the focus will be on building strength.

• This means heavier weights with less reps. Given that my total lifting volume is decreasing, I will have some more juice for running.

Over the late spring and summer, the goal is to get lean and mean. Lots of reps, lots of miles, and lots of calories to burn.

• Then, I’ll end out the year sliding back into a strength cycle, and then a build cycle.

Now, this all could change.

I could suddenly catch the bug to do Ultrarunning, or maybe powerlifting. If that is the case, then I will change the plan.

However, knowing that I will likely just want to get after the garage workouts, this plan will likely stick.

This plan will serve as my outline for 2024!

Now, there is much less of a hurdle to jump over when thinking about what workouts I want or need to do!

For you

Feel free to take this and use it for yourself!

If you want to customize your own periodization plan, I will send you a copy of the Excel doc I use for planning. I’ll also add in a few template workouts you can use and adjust as you see fit.

To get this worksheet, all you need to do is take a short survey. I’ll trade you 🙂

As 2024 arrives, I want to continue helping and serving you as best as possible.

To effectively do this, I could use your help with a couple questions!

Please check out this survey on Microsoft Forms: https://forms.office.com/r/dhXeqSaAgU

And keep crushing it!

Clark