The “Perfect Week”
To develop a good workout routine, you need what I call the perfect week. Your perfect week is basically your baseline. Your default setting. This is what a week will look like if everything goes as planned. Now just like work, school, or anything else in life that carries a high priority and a normal schedule, this perfect week will not always occur as planned. The goal is for the perfect week to be the normal setting and then you adjust when needed. It’s like your work – you have a normal work schedule and that is the schedule unless something changes, like you call in sick, take a vacation, etc., then back on track. The same for your diet and exercise. You do your normal week, except when something happens that causes you to miss, either intentionally, or not intentionally. Either way is fine. You miss, then get back on track. This will keep you from on again, off again, rollercoaster of diet and exercise. This will get you on track for doing good the majority of the time and bad the minority of the time, and continuing on and on forever without quitting.
Be Consistent
Remember, the most important thing is consistency. Don’t ever quit. That doesn’t mean that you can’t miss a day or more, it just means make it one of those things that is always a part of your life. So, develop your perfect week and make that your plan every week and when everything goes as planned you will complete your perfect week of exercise and when life gets in the way you get in what you can and then try again the next week.
It’s all about averages
It’s all about averages. Let’s say your perfect week is 5 days of exercise and 2 days of rest. Some weeks you will get in 5 days. Some weeks life will happen and you will only get in 1 or 2 days. Some weeks you will be inspired and get in 6 days. And some of the weeks you get in 3-4 days. At the end of the year, you may average around 4 days of exercise per week. Or you may even average 3 days. But either way, 3 or 4 days per week average for a year is way better than 2 great weeks then quitting for a month and then 1 great week and then quitting for 2 months, and so on and then end the year averaging like 1 or 2 workouts per week. Approach this logically and look at the big picture – the year as a whole.
How to Develop Your “Perfect Week” (and what mine looks like)
The first thing to do is look at your amount of days. I think 3-6 days is a great range. I think the minimum perfect week should be 3 days and the maximum perfect week be 6 days. Your body needs a day of rest. 4-5 days done consistently is great. My “perfect week” is 5 days on and 2 days off. On a perfect week, I exercise Monday through Friday and take the weekends off from my normal routine. Does this happen every week? No, but the majority of weeks it does. let’s take December and January for example. The first 3 weeks of December I may exercise 5 days per week, but the next two weeks have Christmas and New Years, so I may only exercise 2 times each of those weeks. Then the next 3 weeks I am able to get in 5 days per week. So, if you look at the average, over an 8 week period, I can average 4.25 days per week.
The next thing to do is look at what you do those days. This is based on your goals. On my 5 days, I do 3 of my Virtual Trainer total body workouts, and the other 2 days I do traditional workouts (bench press, squats, pull-ups, etc.). I also run 2 miles on the treadmill each of the 5 days before the workout. Your breakdown may be different. The total body Virtual Trainer workouts work for everyone, regardless of their goals, so I coach everyone to have that be the main part of their perfect week. The difference is what to do on the other day or two. That changes per person based on their goals. It may be a cardio only day and a total body workout, or it may be two cardio only days, or a traditional workout, etc. I also recommend doing a 15-20 minute cardio workout every day that you exercise.
Not sure what your perfect week looks like? Contact Me and I can help you develop your perfect week.
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