How To Build Your Weekly Workout Plan (Step by Step)
In this 2025 YouTube tutorial, personal trainer Eric Roberts outlines a six‑layer training pyramid that prioritises consistency, intensity, weekly split, set‑and‑rep scheme, rest/exercise volume, and supplements. He begins by stressing that without a realistic commitment to workout frequency and duration, any program will fail. He defines true workout intensity as approaching muscular failure on the last 1‑3 reps of a set, rather than merely sweating or feeling exhausted. Roberts then evaluates three primary weekly splits—full‑body (ideal for 3 × week beginners), upper/lower (his preferred split for 3‑4 × week trainees), and push‑pull‑legs (for highly dedicated lifters)—explaining which audiences each serves. He recommends a 5‑12 rep “sweet spot” with 1‑2 warm‑up sets and 2‑3 working sets per exercise, warning against high‑volume programs that either over‑stress joints or become cardio‑focused. Rest periods of 90 seconds to 5 minutes are advised to ensure full recovery between heavy sets, and he limits total exercises per session (4‑6 for lower‑body, 6‑10 for upper‑body or full‑body) while prioritising compound lifts first and isolation work later. Finally, he positions supplements as secondary to a solid training, nutrition, and sleep foundation, endorsing creatine, protein powder, and optional pre‑workout as the only essentials. Throughout, Roberts intersperses anecdotes, client success stories, and calls to action for his online coaching program.
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Most people are wasting time doing workouts that won't actually build muscle or lose fat. But if you follow everything I lay out in this video, you'll build more muscle and lose more fat in the next 3 months than you have in the previous 2 years. I've been a personal trainer for over 9 years and helped over 25,000 clients with their workouts. And I promise by the end of this video, you'll have an exact plan to follow with your workouts this upcoming week. To speed up results and make sure you know you're doing the right things. I'm going to use this pyramid to lay out what's most important to what's least important. And at the bottom, before we focus on how many reps you should do, how many sets you should do, what your workout split should be, none of that stuff matters if we don't follow the number one rule of consistency. You could have the best plan on paper, but if you don't follow it, it won't matter. Most people make the mistake of trying to work out 5, 6, 7 days a week for 2 hours at a time thinking that's what's best to make progress, but knowing damn well you won't be able to stick with that. So if you were my client, I'd ask you to realistically answer these questions. Number 1, how much time realistically do you have to dedicate per workout? Is it 30 minutes? Is it 45 minutes? Is it 60 minutes? And number 2, how many days per week realistically can you commit to working out? Is it 3 days? Is it 4 days? Is it 5 days? And when you answer these questions for yourself, I would strongly encourage you, don't think of what you should do, or don't think of what is the best. Think of what can I commit to even on my stressful, crazy, busiest week? Because here's a secret most trainers won't tell you. You can see the same amount of progress working out 3 times a week as you would 6 times a week. And you can see the same amount of progress working out 30 to 45 minutes as you would working out for 2 hours. Because if you are consistent with a good plan, your body will change. Think of it like the concrete under your house. You could have the fanciest furniture in your house, but if the floor underneath it is cracked, it all falls apart. So once you've decided how many days per week you're going to work out, and how long you can work out for, we now get into what makes a good plan. Layer number 2, workout intensity. When I say this, I don't mean how much you're sweating, how hard you're breathing, how exhausted you feel after a workout. The mistake that people make is thinking that workout intensity means running yourself into the ground, very short rest times, And thinking you have to be like suffering the whole time. Instead, here's what workout intensity actually means. Let's say you're doing a set of 10 reps. The first couple of reps won't be that hard to complete, but by the time you get to the 8th rep, the 9th rep, and the 10th rep, if you're not struggling to complete those final reps, that's your sign you're not lifting heavy enough. And not lifting with enough intensity. The reason this is so important is before we talk about how many sets to do or how many reps to do, research shows us whether you do 3 reps, 10 reps, or 30 reps, you can build the same amount of muscle. So as long as you're pushing yourself close to failure and those last 1 to 3 reps are difficult to complete. So before obsessing over the best rep range to build muscle, make sure you're actually pushing yourself as hard as you need to. Now that we know that, let's talk about how you're going to set up a week's worth of workouts. Layer number 3, weekly workout split. You've probably heard many different splits. Maybe the bro split where you do chest on Monday, back on Tuesday, legs on Wednesday. Maybe you've heard of a push-pull-legs split. Maybe you've heard of a full body split, a lower body, upper body split. So there's a ton of options. But the mistake that people usually make is not picking the right split for your consistency goals. For example, if you're working out 3 times a week, a bro split wouldn't really make sense for you. Or if you're going to work out 6 times per week, a full body split wouldn't really make sense for you either. So I'm going to lay out my top 3 workout splits, who they're best for, and why. First, full body splits. This is best if you're working out 3 times per week. Anything more than that with full body splits, I believe, is overkill because your body won't be able to recover from it and you're going to start getting injured or always be exhausted. And this is usually best for beginners or busy people who don't have a ton of time. Second is a lower body, upper body workout split. This is my personal favorite and the one that we program for 90% of our online coaching clients. And it's great because you get to hit each muscle group twice per week. You don't overstress your body and you spread the workouts out evenly across the week to push yourself but also still recover. And this is usually best if you're working out 3 to 4 times per week. And it would look like 3 times a week, lower body, upper body, full body. 4 times a week, lower body, upper body, lower body, upper body. And the third is push-pull-legs. I don't believe this makes sense if you're only working out 3 to 4 times per week because you would only hit your muscle groups 1 time per week. And this is usually best for people who love the gym, they have a lot of time to dedicate to working out, they recover, they very well by getting 8 to 9 hours of sleep, consistently hitting protein goals, and very dialed in with their calories. But remember, working out 5 to 6 times a week isn't better than working out 3 times a week. In fact, we've coached thousands of clients like our guy Wes here who actually saw more results when he switched to working out 3 to 4 days a week than he did working out 5 to 6 days a week. And by the way, if you're like, Eric, this is great information, but can you just tell me exactly what to do and take out all of the guesswork so I don't have to think about it? Well, we sure can. If you click the link in the description below of this video, you can learn more about our online coaching program and how to become a client of ours. So now that we have your weekly workout split, let's dive into how many sets and reps you should be doing per exercise. Layer number 4, sets and reps. The biggest mistake people make is doing too many sets and reps. The idea of more is better is not true here. What ends up happening is you put a lot of stress and fatigue on your body. You can't recover from that, so you end up exhausted and not consistent Meaning you're not going to follow the first layer, and you won't be able to lift as heavy, push yourself as close to failure, which messes up the second layer of the pyramid. And as a side note, the reason a lot of high-volume workout programs become popular is— the honest truth— the people that are jacked that you see are either on performance-enhancing drugs or have incredible genetics. And if somebody has incredible genetics, there's not much you're going to be able to do to look like them. Just because you work out like them doesn't mean you're going to look like them. And number 2, if they're taking performance-enhancing drugs, they are able to recover from a lot more, a lot quicker than the average person who is not on performance-enhancing drugs. So you training like that person who's doing 4 sets of 15 to 20 reps, is not going to lead you to look like them. It's like, for example, no matter how hard I try to practice basketball like LeBron James, I'm not going to play basketball like LeBron James. So instead, here's what the research has shown and my own personal experience coaching over 25,000 people has shown to be the sweet spot for the sets and reps. We said earlier that technically any rep range can build muscle, but I have found the sweet spot of reps to be somewhere between that 5 to 12 rep range. Why? Because, well, if you consistently lift lower reps than 5, the weight that you're going to have to lift is so heavy that you're putting a lot of stress on not just your muscles but your tendons, your ligaments, your joints, your connective tissue. And either this is going to add up to injury over time, or it's going to add up to you being so exhausted from having to lift such heavy weights that you're not going to be able to recover. And doing higher reps than 12 consistently leads to what we talked about earlier with burnout. And you're usually not able to lift as heavy as you need to be in order to maximize muscle building because most people who go close to failure doing 15, 20, 30 reps are usually going close to failure from their cardiovascular system, not necessarily their muscles. So it ends up becoming more of a cardio workout than a strength training and muscle building workout. So this 5 to 12 rep range allows you to lift heavy enough without getting the negative side effects on either extreme. And for sets, we need to lay out the difference between a warmup set And a working set. A warm-up set is where you do 2 to 5 reps of light weight just to get the form down and warm up your body. And then a working set is where you actually push yourself close to failure. I believe most people should do 1 to 2 warm-up sets to prevent injury, and then doing 2 to 3 working sets is more than enough for you to see progress in fat loss and muscle building. And that may not seem like enough, only 2 sets, but remember, you're now pushing yourself very close to failure. So trust me, it will be enough. So if the workout calls for 3 sets of 8 reps on squats, all 3 of those sets should be heavy, close to failure sets, not just the last one. Now, how long should you be resting in between those sets and how many exercises should you be doing per workout? Let's talk about it. Layer 5, rest and exercise per workout. Now, again, most people think working hard means very short rest times, a high heart rate, doing a ton of exercises, and their body will be forced to change. That's just quite the opposite of what's actually true. In fact, research has shown that the rest time most optimal for building muscle is at least 90 seconds in between your sets, if not up to 2 to 5 minutes of rest in between your sets. And now some people might hear that and think, oh my God, that is so long. If that's you, you are the person who is not lifting heavy enough and you're not pushing yourself close to failure. Because if you were, trust me, you would need at least 90 seconds of rest to be able to fully recover heading into your next set. And this is the important part, you should be fully recovered from the previous set before you go into your next set because we are not doing a cardio workout here, we're doing a strength and muscle building workout. So you want to have the best performance you possibly can into the upcoming You can't do that if you're still exhausted and gassed from the previous set. And for how many exercises to do per workout, because you might have also heard, Eric, the workout's going to take me 2 hours if I'm resting for 2 minutes in between each set. It should not. And here's why. I'll break this down into upper body, lower body, and full body exercises per workout, because again, that is what 90% of our online coaching clients follow. If you're doing a lower body workout, All you need is 4 to 6 exercises per workout. And if you don't believe me, you should try this one day. Any of our clients who see 4 exercises on leg day automatically know that day is going to be a bitch. Because when you're actually pushing yourself close to failure, it will be enough. So this way, 4 exercises, 2 to 3 working sets, rest for 90 to 180 seconds in between those sets. You'll get done in under an hour easily, and you'll still see great progress. For upper body, anywhere between 6 to 10 exercises, and for full body, anywhere between 6 to 10 exercises. Now, what should these exercises consist of? Well, at the beginning of your workout, you should be focused on mainly compound movements. These are exercises like squats, Deadlift, bench press, shoulder press, rows, hip thrust, Bulgarian split squats. And then towards the end of your workout, this is where you'll do your isolation exercises: bicep curls, tricep extensions, leg curl, leg extensions. And now that we know that, there's one more layer of the pyramid we haven't covered. And funny enough, it's the one that people obsess the most over. Layer 6 supplements. Let me be very clear. Supplements are meant to supplement your already good training program, nutrition protocol, and sleep and recovery. If you don't have those 3 things, supplements will be a waste of your money. Before you go and spend any money on supplements, you should first spend that same money to actually get a proper workout program, to make sure your nutrition is in check, Because you can have all the supplements in the world and it won't matter. Now, assuming you're following a proper workout routine— and by the way, you can click the link in the description below if you'd like to join our online coaching program, or if you just want a low-cost workout program you can follow, there'll be a link for that in the description below as well— there are 3 main supplements I recommend once you're on a proper strength training program. The first one is creatine. This is the most researched supplement ever created for muscle building. It has tons of studies to back it up. I've actually done a different video on creatine that I can link in the description below where I go through all the myths. I go through if it's going to cause hair loss or kidney damage, when you should take it, everything. But creatine, 5 to 10 grams per day every single day, no matter if you work out that day or not. The second one is protein powder. And in fact, I have my own protein powder if you'd like to check it out. There'll be a link in the description again below. But think of this as just like eating a chicken breast. It's just an easy way to get in extra protein into your diet, which more protein equals more muscle building. And number 3, pre-workout. You don't need this one, it's not necessary, but a lot of people like using pre-workout To get a little bit of extra energy, endurance, stamina, and even if you get a good pre-workout, a strength boost and a strength increase as well. There are other supplements, but to be honest with you, those are the 3 staples I would start with once you have a proper workout program in place. And again, if you want my team to take out all of the guesswork for you and tell you exactly what to do so you know it's right, Click the link in the description below to learn more about our online coaching. And after you do that, you can watch this video here to learn everything I wish I knew before lifting weights.
