Confusing workouts, where do you start?
Whether you use kettlebells, cans of beans, or just your body weight, you can still make these workouts work for you. Credit @weareambitious

Workout guides are an essential map when it comes to navigating the fitness industry.

It can be a confusing place, especially for people who are new to it.

On top of learning new exercises, deciding which workout guides their training, and getting to grips with nutrition, clients are bombarded with alien fitness terms.

These weird acronyms and workout names look more suited to extremely complicated rocket science than a home-based workout. 

When your clients come to you confused by all these terms, it’s a pretty legit problem to have. 

We’ve written a guide to four of the most popular, but misunderstood workouts, so you can give your clients a clear answer when they make the inevitable “EMOM? WTF?” face.

You can to reassure them that it’s not as complicated as it all sounds IRL (that means ‘in real life’, just FYI) - you could even send them this workout guide!

To show them just how easy it all is, we crafted some effective example workouts to help clients reach their goals.

Tabata

This style of training originated in Japan, created by Dr (you guessed it) Tabata. 

The idea is to push the body to its maximum threshold, with minimal rest, over the course of 4 minutes. The result should be overall improvement to both the aerobic and anaerobic systems. 

To complete a Tabata workout, simply perform an exercise at maximum effort for 20 seconds. Follow this with a short 10 second rest. Repeat for 4 minutes. That’s one round complete!

Aim for 3 - 4 rounds (resting 1 minute in between each). Use a range of exercises, to give your clients a full body blast. 

Try this on for size…

  • 1 -  air squats (4 minutes)
  • 2 -  press ups (4 minutes)
  • 3 -  kettlebell swings (4 minutes)
  • 4 -  burpees (4 minutes) 

Sweaty? Us too.

AMRAP 

Made popular with the rise of CrossFit, an AMRAP is an acronym for As Many Reps (or Rounds) As Possible.

One of the perks with AMRAPS is that they are suitable for any person, no matter their fitness level.

Endlessly variable, and adaptable to any fitness goal, they’re an excellent option to share with any of your clients. How do you do it? Complete as many reps or rounds as possible, of a single exercise or circuit, in a set amount of time. 

With an AMRAP, you perform all reps of one exercise before moving on to the next, going as fast as possible, with minimal rest throughout. 

Make them more challenging (and fun?) by incorporating a mixture of both weighted exercises and cardio elements, for example.

Give this a go…

In 20 minutes, complete As Many Rounds As Possible of:

  • 5 burpees
  • 10 press ups
  • 15 sit ups 

EMOM 

Another CrossFit favourite (that sport certainly has a lot to answer for) EMOM stands for Every Minute, On the Minute. 

This workout method is a staple because it can be adapted and modified to suit the needs of any training or fitness goal. 

It’s also time efficient, scalable, and well suited to body weight movements, making it a great home workout guide.  

EMOMs are pretty straight forward. 

Set a block of time (try 15 minutes). Then on every minute (including 0:00, you sneaky peeps) perform the prescribed number of reps for the chosen exercise/s. 

Once all the reps are completed, rest for the remainder of the minute.  

That means that if it takes you 20 seconds to perform 10 press ups, you get 40 seconds rest until the next minute rolls around. 

As a coach, EMOMs give you a great opportunity to get creative with your workouts, allowing you to deliver an effective session in a short amount of time. 

This 15 minute EMOM will have your legs and arms feeling like jelly:

  • 1st minute: 10 pike presses
  • 2nd minute: 15 lying leg raises  
  • 3rd minute: 20 air squats 

Repeat for 5 rounds. 

'Plyo'

Originally called ‘Jump Training’, Plyometrics is a type of training style that helps increase muscular power and explosiveness, which can be utilised to help your clients either build muscle or burn fat for instance.

Plyo training works by utilising the stretch and rebound of your muscle fibres. As a result you're enabling a greater ‘explosion’ of powerful movement in exercises such as squats, or press ups. workout guide

It’s ideal for sport-specific training, because being explosive in basketball or rugby can be crucial to your success. 

This is a method that’s best suited to more advanced clients. Because it can be so intense, even they should only incorporate it into their training two to three times a week at most. 

Make sure they give their muscles and joints sufficient recovery time (which they’ll need, after the high impact nature of these workouts).

Ready to try some explosive moves? Perform 3 sets of 8 reps for each movement: 

  • Clapping press ups
  • Squat Jumps
  • Reverse lunge with single leg hop
  • Burpees with tuck jump 

Do you prescribe any of these approaches for your clients? Have you got a workout guide you recommend? Which other acronym workouts do you love?

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Published by Eloise Leeson in All posts for Fettle