Once you've decided on a goal, picked a training split, established your sets and reps and made an inventory of your equipment, it's finally time to plug in exercises. Many people make the mistake of starting here when creating programs, but it's much more efficient to get the other variables squared away first.

Picking exercises can be daunting, as there are seemingly endless options and many criteria to consider. Try not to get overwhelmed, and take solace in the fact that this isn't actually the most important part of the program design process. You can see results using many different exercises so long as you use the right amount of load and volume.

Many people come to the weight room with aches and pains. While you don't need to let minor issues get in the way of exercise, it is important to make sure you're setting yourself up to move well both in and out of the gym.

"Mobility training is like flossing — people don't enjoy it, but you need to stay on top of it to reap the benefits," Showalter says.

Regularly performing dynamic stretches and drills can improve your mobility and connection with your body. "Adding in mobility to your warm-up as well as after sets of your exercises as active recovery is a great way to be efficient with your training," Showalter says. He suggests picking drills that target stiff or problematic areas; some common offenders include the shoulders, thoracic spine and hips.

You can sprinkle these exercises throughout your workouts to save time and make sure you don't skip them altogether. For example, if you are performing a superset of squats and chin-ups, you could add a third exercise to work on your hip or shoulder mobility.

Writing cardio or conditioning programs can be even more complex than writing strength-training programs, and is beyond the scope of this article. The goods news is that most people who just want to look and feel better don't need the same level of conditioning technicality as a professional athlete preparing for a race, game or fight.

Here are a few simple ways to build cardio into your workout program:

• ‌Add additional cardio days.‌ You can perform a cardio workout on a day when you're not lifting weights if you have extra time for the gym.
• ‌Replace one or two lifting days with cardio days.‌ If you are training three days or more, you could replace lifting days with cardio days. Make sure you're still lifting at least twice per week.
• ‌Add high-intensity conditioning to the end of a lifting workout.‌ Finishers are short bursts of intense cardio that you perform at the end of a workout. This is a great strategy to maintain or build your cardio fitness without adding tons of extra training time.
• ‌Perform more cardio outside the gym.‌ Look for ways to make your daily life more active or take up active hobbies. Could you walk, ruck or bike your commute instead of driving or taking the train? Can you play pickup sports with your friends or join a martial arts class? There are nearly endless possible opportunities to get moving.

The principle of progressive overload states that you need to take on greater challenges over time if you want to continue seeing progress at the gym.

A big reason why using a structured program is so much more effective than doing random workouts is that it gives you a framework from which to progress. You don't want to change your entire training program each week, but you do want to manipulate certain variables to increase the difficulty and push yourself.

"Over the course of the training phase you could do things such as lower the reps and increase the weight or vice versa, aim to shorten rest periods or aim to get more reps on an exercise with the same weight," Showlater says. "Stick with the same exercise but aim to add more stress on the system by doing it slightly faster, heavier, with more rep or with less rest."

Here is a list of possible ways to progress:

• Add more weight
• Add more reps
• Perform more sets
• Take less rest between sets
• Improve your form
• Perform an exercise more explosively
• Improve your mind-muscle connection (most relevant for hypertrophy)

If you're training with minimal equipment or limited weights, you may need to get a little more creative. Here are some options that might work if you've exhausted the list above:

• Slow an exercise down
• Add pauses to an exercise
• Perform 1.5 reps (Two examples: A 1.5 rep squat requires you to squat all the way down, stand up halfway, squat all the way down again before standing up all the way. A 1.5 rep seated row requires you to pull your elbows all the way back to your sides, extend your arms forward halfway, pull all the way back again before extending your arms fully.)
• Progress to a more challenging variation of the exercise

Regardless of how you choose to progress, it's a good idea to track what you're doing from week to week. Track your exercises, sets, reps, weight and any other relevant data electronically or using pen and paper. You'll need this information when it's time to write your next training program and it keeps you motivated to work hard from week to week.

Once you've completed four to six weeks of training, it's time to write your next program. Look over your recent training data. Assess what went well and what was challenging. Consider whether you can still maintain the same training frequency over the next four to six weeks. Then, use the same process outlined in this article to create your next program. Soon, you'll have workout planning down to an art.