One thing I’m very passionate about is planning and scheduling workouts in advance.
(Hm, funny that I made a website about bootcamp workouts. It all makes sense now…)
When you are just getting started with your bootcamp, it’s not too hard to just plan on the fly the one or two workouts you run per week.
However, once your sessions start becoming more popular and you start running more sessions per week, you’ll find planning sessions on the fly becomes unmanageable.
A much better way is to create a simple system that works for you to get your sessions planned each week. Today I want to share with you some tips that can help you create your own system.
1. Look at a month at a time
One of the things clients love is variety. They love not knowing in what way you’re going to challenge them in today’s session.
A simple way to ensure you’re using plenty of variety is to look at your workouts in one month blocks. Make sure each block includes a variety of workouts like teambuilding, strength, intervals, running, individual challenges, circuits and specials (board games, boxing, tyres & ropes).
| Week | Monday | Wednesday | Friday |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Strength | Strength | Teamwork |
| 2 | HIT | Strength | Running |
| 3 | HIT | HIT | Strength |
| 4 | Strength | Teamwork/Fun | HIT |
2. Plan a week at a time
Planning a week’s worth of workouts at a time can seem a little daunting, but it will set you up to be more flexible.
By having several workouts planned and ready to go it’s much easier to handle things that come up like bad weather or less/more clients than expected. Simply swap today’s session one of the other workouts you planned.
3. Re-use workouts
Don’t feel like you need to plan every single workout from scratch. You can use the same workout in different sessions, as long as the group of clients is different.
If you run a particularly good session, you can use it again the following month, just use the 80/20 rule: 80% the same, 20% different. So keep the bones of the workout and just change some of the exercises and/or timings.
An additional benefit of this is that because the drill is familiar you won’t need to spend as long explaining how the drill works.
4. Keep it simple, Skipper
It can be really easy to create a convulated, overcomplicated workout drill when trying to create something new.
A good rule of thumb is that your workout should be able to fit on one page. Any bigger and there is probably too many rules or too many exercises, both of which will blow out the workout by taking a long time to explain and demonstrate.
That said, that’s just a rule of thumb. 10% or so of your workouts can be longer and more complicated as these are often the fun, elaborate workouts that make a great way to end a week or month.
There you go lovely trainers, I hope that helps you with planning your sessions this month.
Kyle Wood created Bootcamp Ideas in 2010 when he was hunting around on the internet for workout ideas. He ran a successful bootcamp in Victoria, Australia and spends his spare time managing this site, adventuring (or lazying) with his wife and find new ways to make bootcamps even better.
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