Why I like creating my own simple workouts.

It's great to pick up ideas from other people's workouts. But these days I'm really enjoying putting together my own simple workouts by following a few simple principles.

1) Body-weight warm-up to get the blood flowing and to prepare the various muscle groups for action.

2) Include 3-4 sets/circuits to be repeated 1 or 2 times (I usually just repeat circuits once)

3) Use opposing or completely different muscle groups within a circuit. This allows the energy to focus on intensity rather than dealing with muscle fatigue.

4) Do not use the exact same workout twice in one week.

Here's what I did today:

Warm-up: Body-weight squats, leg swings, walking lunges, light 10 yard jogs with high knees, then with kick-butts, side shuffles, cross-over shuffles, close-grip push-ups, leg stretches, standing stick-ups, waiter bows, planks, Romanian dead lifts with 2 25# dumbbells. (Took about 10 minutes)

Workout:

Set 1: Pull-ups (12), 100# barbbell squat (25), 1-leg push-ups (10/side). Rest 1 minute, repeat (only got 10 pull-ups on second set).

Set 2: Stability-Ball 1-leg curls (10/leg), Inverted Rows (12). Rest 1 minute, repeat (10 inverted rows on second set)

Set 3: 1-leg step-ups with two 25# dumbbells (10/leg), Cross-body mountain climbers (25/leg). Rest 1 minutes, repeat.

Set 4: Chin-ups with knee-ups (6), Ab wheel roll-outs (10). Rest 1 minute, repeat (only got 4 chin-ups on second set).

Finished with 3 sets of 10 8-yard shuttle sprints with 1 minute of rest between sets. Total workout time was about 25 minutes plus the warm-up.