Set up and adjust your routine: intensity, timing, progression

1. Start from your goal and your time

Start with the simplest question: what do you want to do, and how much time do you have? Short, intense intervals for cardio, an exercise circuit for strength, a guided session for yoga or breathing, or weight training with loads.

A 15-minute workout you actually do beats an hour-long one you keep putting off. You can adjust the length later.

2. Find the right intensity

The rating of perceived exertion, developed by Gunnar Borg, means scoring your effort from 0 (none) to 10 (maximal). For an interval session, aim for 7 to 9 out of 10 during the work; for a strength circuit, 6 to 8.

The "talk test" is even simpler: if you can talk comfortably, the intensity is moderate; if you can only say a few words, it is high. Foster and colleagues (2009) showed this test is a reliable way to set intensity, without any device.

3. Set work and recovery

In interval training, the body's response depends on a few settings: work intensity, its duration, the duration and type of recovery, and the number of repetitions (Buchheit and Laursen, 2013). Changing just one of them is enough to make a workout easier or harder.

• Beginner: as much recovery as work (30 s / 30 s), or even twice as much.
• Intermediate: a little more work than recovery (40 s / 20 s).
• Advanced: work twice as long as recovery (Tabata: 20 s / 10 s).
• If your form breaks down before the end, lengthen the recovery rather than pushing through.

4. Don't skip the warm-up

A meta-analysis by Fradkin and colleagues (2010) concludes that warming up improves performance in the large majority of cases studied. Five minutes of light, gradually building activity is enough before an intense session; a few minutes of cool-down help you wind down gently.

5. Adjust from one session to the next

After each workout, rate your overall effort from 0 to 10. Multiplied by the duration in minutes, it gives a session "load", a simple method proposed by Foster and colleagues (2001) to track training over time.

• Easy workout (effort of 5 or less) twice in a row: increase one setting, for example one more set or 5 more seconds of work.
• Very hard workout (9 or 10), or impossible to finish: go back to the previous setting.
• Change only one thing at a time: you will know what works.
• A lighter week now and then helps you recover and come back stronger.

6. Weight training: loads and rest times

In beginners, short (under a minute) and longer rests between sets give similar results; in trained people, longer rests seem slightly better (Grgic et al., 2017). One to two minutes is a good starting point.

For the load, "double progression" is simple: pick a rep range (8 to 10, for example) and add weight once you reach the top of the range on every set.

How to do it in FitPacer

• Start from a library routine (its sheet explains how it works), then adapt it with the pencil.
• Set the sets, the length of each exercise or interval, the rest between exercises and between sets, the warm-up and the cool-down.
• "Complex" mode to chain several cycles, "Repeat" to do several rounds.
• A colour and a sound per phase, voice announcements and 3-2-1 beeps so you can follow the workout without looking at the screen.
• Duplicate the routine before changing it to keep the previous version.
• In weight training, FitPacer logs your loads and suggests adding weight when you hit the top of the range two workouts in a row.

Routines to get started

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References

1. Borg G. A. V. (1982). Psychophysical bases of perceived exertion. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 14(5), 377-381. doi.org/10.1249/00005768-198205000-00012
2. Foster C., Porcari J. P., Gibson M., Wright G., Greany J., Talati N., Recalde P. (2009). Translation of submaximal exercise test responses to exercise prescription using the talk test. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 23(9), 2425-2429. doi.org/10.1519/JSC.0b013e3181c02bce
3. Buchheit M., Laursen P. B. (2013). High-intensity interval training, solutions to the programming puzzle: Part I. Sports Medicine, 43(5), 313-338. doi.org/10.1007/s40279-013-0029-x
4. Fradkin A. J., Zazryn T. R., Smoliga J. M. (2010). Effects of warming-up on physical performance: a systematic review with meta-analysis. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 24(1), 140-148. doi.org/10.1519/JSC.0b013e3181c643a0
5. Foster C., Florhaug J. A., Franklin J., Gottschall L., Hrovatin L. A., Parker S., Doleshal P., Dodge C. (2001). A new approach to monitoring exercise training. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 15(1), 109-115. doi.org/10.1519/00124278-200102000-00019
6. Grgic J., Lazinica B., Mikulic P., Krieger J. W., Schoenfeld B. J. (2017). The effects of short versus long inter-set rest intervals in resistance training on measures of muscle hypertrophy: a systematic review. European Journal of Sport Science, 17(8), 983-993. doi.org/10.1080/17461391.2017.1340524