Workouts update: I think this version might stick?

A few weeks ago I posted about my current workout woes.

You all so kindly helped me realize that my ‘ideal workout plan’ (5 strength/ 3 cardio/ 1 yoga) was probably a bit unrealistic for this current stage and season of my life. Given the time constraints of my schedule, this plan meant I was often aiming to do doubles some days (e.g. cardio in the morning, strength on my lunch break), and required getting to the gym on both weekend days.

The end result was that I just could not really keep up. (COULD I have done this? If I were truly dedicated? Yes, probably. But I am not training for the Olympics here. I have other things I have to do, want to do, need to do, etc. and this plan just was just not fitting in well while also allowing me to dedicate time to other pursuits.)

Therefore, several people in the comments had suggested I try FULL BODY WORKOUTS.

This was one of those paradigm shift moments for me. Why had I never thought of that?!?! I think I got so fixated on the fact that the plans I’d been doing recently (EmPowered Fitness and Momentum by Sohee) had 4-5 day body part splits that this just hadn’t really crossed my mind. Actually, if I’m honest, I think I also felt like, well, 3 day splits are for people who either aren’t as dedicated, or for beginners…. People like ME, who are “experienced exercisers”, should be doing the most “advanced” version offered…. 🙄

But the comments about trying full body workouts really made me pause and think. I quickly realized that YES! This is such a perfect idea.

Some reasons why full body workouts seem smart for me:

1. I actually loved the full body workouts I was already doing. (Day 5 in Emma’s EmPowered Fitness plan is a full body workout.) I found them really fun and I looked forward to them. I do not personally really ‘love’ working legs for an hour straight, so I’d sometimes find myself semi- dreading my 2 leg days. (Leg days are the hardest for me! I totally prefer to train upper body…). By switching to full body, the workouts are more balanced each day, which I mentally enjoy.

2. Switching to full body means that if I have to miss a workout, at least I’m still working my whole body a couple times per week. If you do a body part split and miss a day, you might be skipping a whole week of training chest/triceps, for example.

3. Dropping from 5 strength –> 3 strength opens up more days in the week for more cardio! (without having to try to do the unrealistic doubles!) I know I have been neglecting cardio in recent years. I also know that cardio can be controversial in the fitness world (sort of, though I feel like less so lately), but as my dad pointed out- our family has a history of cardiac disease. Cardio should probably be something I’m prioritizing. I’m also not getting any younger. If you don’t use it, you lose it, right? I don’t think I need to do hours and hours of cardio (and I do not believe tons of cardio is essential for a good physique), but doing 3 solid ~30-40 minute sessions a week (consistently!) feels like it would be a strong addition to my life, heart and health maintenance. (This is not counting dog walks which are… not really cardio because Charlie stops too much to sniff. We typically walk him twice a day for about 10-20 minutes each, sometimes more, sometimes less.)

4. Getting to the gym only 3 times/week feels WAY more realistic than 5. If I do a Tuesday/Thursday/ Sunday schedule, then I only have to get to the gym twice during the work week. This opens up some lunch breaks that I can take care of household things, go for a walk, run an errand, etc! This is refreshing (and again, feels more balanced). It also means I don’t have to try to force myself to go to the gym in the early morning, which just wasn’t fitting in the best with the boys’ staggered school start schedules this year.

5. I can do the cardio and the yoga at home. See #4, but having a balance of home/ gym workouts feels right for this stage of life.

6. I also love the balanced feel of 3 cardio, 3 strength, 1 recovery/yoga! The alternating days means it feels fresh each day. I especially like not trying to fit in both cardio + strength in the same day. (Unless I want to! That’s another perk- I could combine a morning cardio workout with a noon strength workout and take an extra day off! This schedule feels more malleable and naturally forgiving in a good way.)

So far I’ve been doing:

M- cardio (at home, morning)

T- Full body #1 (gym, at lunch)

W- cardio (at home, morning)

Th- Full body #2 (gym, at lunch)

Fri- recovery/ stretch/ yoga (at home, whenever it fits in)

Sat- cardio (at home)

Sun- full body #3 (at gym)

So what actual workouts am I doing now??

Before this change, I’d already cancelled my EmPowered Fitness workout membership. She had raised the prices recently and anyway, I had notebooks full of past workouts…. so I had just been cycling through old workouts for the past few months (sort of…. when I actually did them…). However, the workouts I was doing were the 5 day body part split, not full body.

I have been lifting long enough that I first thought I’d just write my own full body workouts… but I’m also kind of lazy and really enjoy just having a pre-written plan to follow without thinking about it!

So ultimately I decided to (don’t hate me!) ask Chat GPT for help, mostly out of curiosity at first! I don’t have serious strength goals besides fitness/health, so I’m not super picky right now.

I asked it to give me 3 full body strength workouts to be done in a gym that would take 45-60 minutes to complete, using a mix of free weights and machines, avoiding traditional barbell squats and conventional deadlifts (due to my back issues). It spit out a lovely looking workout in 1.5 seconds. 😆

Then I took it a step further and asked it if it could create a 12-month workout plan with a different plan for each month, in a similar style to this first one. It happily complied, and I now have a pdf of “2026 workouts” (with some surprisingly nice variety, and even some different “focuses” for each month (e.g. one month is Strength Foundations, another month is ‘Athletic Power’ focused, one month is ‘Machine Based Efficiency’, etc.).

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A few disclaimers:

*I don’t think it’s ‘necessary’ to do a new program every month, honestly. You can definitely keep progressing for more than 4 weeks! I just kind of like to mix it up and enjoy the variety.

** I feel a little guilty using Chat GPT in this way, because I don’t want to diminish the work of professional trainers! But in my case, I wasn’t going to hire a trainer anyway. I would have just written my own workouts at this point.

***I also have the knowledge base re: strength training to make sense of and safely evaluate what Chat GPT gave me. I feel comfortable tweaking it as needed.

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All in all though, I have been LOVING THIS NEW PLAN!!! (SHU is probably getting tired of me texting her every time I’m at the gym, “I’m just loving these full body workouts!”) 🤣 I really am though!

I’d like to extend a big thank you to those of you who commented and recommended I try full body workouts! Such a great idea for me and as always, I appreciate your ideas and thoughts.

Oh, but what about cardio??

Ah, yes- forgot to address cardio. So far I’ve just been sticking to You Tube cardio videos- Emkfit and Pamela Reif are the ones I’d been doing before, but now I’m making an effort to choose slightly longer ones- more in the 30-40 minute range vs the 15-20 minutes I was doing before.

I’ve also started dabbling in the world of Caroline Girvan! TBH her “HIIT workouts” sound harder than I think I want or need (I believe my sister used the word “brutal” to describe them…), so so far, I’ve just done her “LISS or steady state” videos (I’ve done this one and this one). These have felt about right! Still PLENTY hard, but not like, death level. 😉 (I disagree with her description of those as “low intensity” though. THEY ARE NOT! Either that, or I’m in terrible shape and /or she’s a robot.)

Eventually, as seasons change, I could see maybe mixing it up further and even swapping in some gym cardio classes, swimming?, cardio machines, etc., but for now, this feels good.

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So there’s my latest update! I know, I know, I have written several “here’s my new plan!” proclamations over the past few years. 😆

But this time it feels different?! This feels really good so far! Really sustainable, fun, enjoyable, balanced, realistic….

If nothing else, sometimes you just need to mix it up and do something different for a while! There’s something to be said for “new plan energy”, for sure. 😉

Daily Graititude:

I am grateful for morning snow showers here today. Not enough that it’s causing problems on the roads, but it feels cold and “snowy” and festive. 🙂