How many times have you seen someone at the gym doing the same workout routine, but not doing it right or effectively? The routine is often unplanned and without a logical progression or foundation, and the outcomes are often not worth the effort expended. Over-training specific muscle groups can lead to long-term damage to the body's mechanical, tissue, and nervous system, as well as neurological and physiological fatigue.

I made every mistake that every person does when they are in their early years of training. The reason being, I was completely new to the game and enthusiastic about it, especially with greats such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone and Jean Claude Van Damme. Everyone and their dog said that if they followed this plan, brought this piece of machinery or trained this hard, you could be as good as an Olympian god. I remember going to the gym, working intensely on 10 different exercises for sets and reps galore, and wondering why the next day I could only just lift one cheek of my backside off my bed. Furthermore, the long-term damage I was inflicting to my body would return to haunt me later in life.

At that time, the art of planning was deemed unnecessary unless you were a professional athlete, with most trainers worth their weight in gold keeping a tight grip on their training secrets. For the most part, anyone starting an exercise routine was presented with either team sport, athletics, bodybuilding, jogging, gymnastics, swimming or some form of martial art including boxing. To put it in more simplistic, it was often seen as a choice between Conan, the barbarian, and kick-boxer.
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Any planning process should be simple, effective and progressive to be successful. There is no point in developing an overly complicated plan. The more complicated a system is, the more potential there is for something to go wrong. The acronym K.I.S.S. is always a good rule to follow - keep it super simple, and you can't go wrong. A good routine should always consist of a warm up consisting of a pulse-raiser and then a dynamic stretch, even if you're not doing cardio. Followed by the main component consisting of 4 main plans of the moment, last but not least developmental stretching and cool-down. If you do a routine the right way from the get-go, your training will always give you the best outcome.