Why I Love Having a Workout Program for Strength Gains

I love having a fitness program to follow. Here are my top three reasons why:

Creates Accountability

Helps keep me accountable for accountability and for all my workouts in that week or month.

It allows me to build the practice of consistency.

Promotes Intrinsic Motivation

Over time, after consistently training, we build intrinsic motivation. This is the motivation that comes from us and is not reliant on others. We don’t need to depend on others to do our workouts. Having a plan helps cultivate inner motivation.

Resolve Imbalances

We all have our preferences for what muscle groups to train. Chances are what we gravitate towards are the muscles that are already strong. When we preferentially select specific exercises that target certain muscle groups, we neglect other muscle groups. As someone who likes to train legs, core, and glutes I would preferentially select lower body-focused sessions. It wasn’t until I started following a comprehensive strength training program that I did arm-focused, shoulder-focused, back-focused workouts as part of my training splits.

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I would recommend everyone follow a training program. It helps take the guesswork out of the process of choosing what to do when.

My personal favorite strength training program thus far has been Caroline Girvan’s EPIC Programs. I have completed EPIC I and EPIC II and I am looking forward to her new program, EPIC HEAT.

Having a program takes the cognitive load off of me and allows me to instead get into the zone during my training session.

Start with a high-quality program, do it a few times and once ready, you can create your own program. Just be sure to make it as comprehensive as possible and include muscle groups that you are not crazy about doing (i.e., pushups, shoulders, etc.). In other words, don’t just preferentially select your favorite muscle groups to train because then we’re dealing with the muscle imbalances again.

Share some of your favorite workout programs with the Grace & Grit community in the comments section!

Happy training!

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Thank you for reading!!