Working out in a gym or fitness center gives you access to machines, trainers, a pool and other resources you can't find at home. Exercise options include weight machines and free weights for resistance training, a pool or track and machines for cardio workouts. Personal trainers can be helpful but expensive. Save money by planning what you'll do when you get to the gym to help create the best workout to meet your goals.
Muscle-Building Workout Plan
If your goal is to build muscle, create a strength-training plan using gym exercise equipment and weights. Your plan should focus on building specific muscle groups (e.g., upper body, lower body, core and back), as well as specific muscles within each group (e.g. biceps, triceps, pectorals). Set up your plan by day and allow your body to rest and recover for 24 to 48 hours between workouts. If you can visit the gym only three days per week, consider a plan that works your total body each visit but alternates body-area work each set. For example, work on one upper body exercise, then a lower body exercise, then your core before working on your upper body again. If you are able to go to the gym daily, your plan should consist of working one or two body areas each day and resting them the next while you work different body areas the next day. For example, your plan could target upper body one day, lower body the next, back/shoulders on the third day and core on the fourth day. Or, you could work your upper body and core on one day, then back/shoulders and lower body the second day. Repeat the two days in order. For your strength plan, choose weights or resistance levels that allow you to perform six to eight repetitions of an exercise before fatigue or failure, with one to two minutes of rest between each set.
Cardio Workout Plan
Depending on your level of cardio-respiratory fitness, you may want to create a workout plan that has you start slowly, with increasing endurance as your first goal. Endurance, or stamina, is your ability to do exercise over a period of time. Aerobic exercise is done at 70 to 80 percent of your maximum heart rate (MHR). Work at the low end of this scale with several breaks over a 15-minute period as you begin your workout plan. As your endurance and cardiovascular strength improve, increase the intensity and duration of your workouts. Create a cardio workout plan that uses different machines, and change the resistance and incline settings to work different muscle groups while you do aerobic exercises. In addition to treadmills, ellipticals, rowing machines and exercise bikes, add swimming and jogging to your plan, if the gym has those options. Calculate your maximum heart rate by subtracting your age from 220 if you are male and 226 if you are female.
Anaerobic Workout Plan
Many sports, such as tennis, basketball and soccer, require start-and-stop activities that call on the body's anaerobic energy systems. Unlike during aerobic exercise, you will use a higher intensity of effort for a shorter period of time, which requires mostly glycogen to fuel your effort. Some of the same machines you use for aerobic exercise are appropriate for anaerobic workouts as well. You can reduce the resistance and incline settings on bikes, rowing machines or ellipticals to help create sprint workouts. Sprint part of a track, then walk to recover for the next sprint. Use swimming-lane laps as a gauge for your sprint. Sprint on an exercise bike for 60 seconds, then coast for 90. Create an anaerobic workout plan that has you working at a high intensity (80 to 90 percent of your MHR) for 30 to 120 seconds, depending on your conditioning level, with 90 to 120 seconds of rest in between sprints.
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