Gym workout plans and routines

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A good gym workout plan uses what the gym has and your home does not: the barbell to load heavy on the basics, cables to keep constant tension through the whole range, and machines to reach failure safely without a spotter. These gym routines, for men and women and from 2 to 6 days — including 3- or 5-day weeks — combine all three, and with a free account you can download yours as a printable PDF exercise sheet.

78 exercises available for this setup

Pick your goal and the days you can train. Each routine is generated with periodisation, effort control (RIR) and automatic progression.

Choose your goal

Hypertrophy

• Hypertrophy · 2 days
• Hypertrophy · 3 days
• Hypertrophy · 4 days
• Hypertrophy · 5 days
• Hypertrophy · 6 days

Strength

• Strength · 2 days
• Strength · 3 days
• Strength · 4 days
• Strength · 5 days
• Strength · 6 days

Fat loss

• Fat loss · 2 days
• Fat loss · 3 days
• Fat loss · 4 days
• Fat loss · 5 days
• Fat loss · 6 days

Body recomposition

• Body recomposition · 2 days
• Body recomposition · 3 days
• Body recomposition · 4 days
• Body recomposition · 5 days
• Body recomposition · 6 days

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Machines or free weights? What the meta-analysis found

It is the doubt that shows up on day one in any fully equipped gym: whether to build the routine around machines or free weights. The argument usually gets settled by prestige — free weights as the serious option, machines as a shortcut — and a recent meta-analysis lets us answer with data instead of reputation.

Haugen, Vårvik, Larsen and colleagues pooled thirteen studies with 1,016 participants (789 men and 219 women) in BMC Sports Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation in 2023. The most surprising result concerns hypertrophy: they found no significant differences in muscle growth between training with free weights and training on machines.

Strength is another story, and the key lies in how it is measured. When assessed with free-weight exercises, the group that had trained with free weights improved significantly more. When assessed on machines, the tendency reversed in favour of the machine group, though without reaching statistical significance. It is the specificity principle in its purest form: you improve mostly at what you practise, and in the way you practise it.

The practical reading is more freeing than it looks, and it contradicts much of what gets repeated in gym exercise charts. If your goal is gaining muscle size, choosing machines costs you nothing: the Smith machine squat, the leg press or the pec deck build muscle just as their free equivalents do. If your goal is lifting more in the squat, bench or deadlift, then you do need to practise those movements, because the improvement does not transfer whole from the machine.

There is also a factor the meta-analysis does not measure and that is worth adding to the decision: the learning curve. A machine fixes the path and is mastered in one session; a free-weight exercise demands weeks of technique before it can be loaded safely. For someone walking into a gym for the first time who wants a routine that works from week one, starting with more machines and introducing free weights as technique grows is a defensible decision, not a shortcut.

Other training setups

• Beginner workout routines
• Intermediate workout routines
• Advanced workout routines
• Home workout routines
• Dumbbell workout routines
• Full body workout routines
• Push pull legs (PPL) routines
• Upper lower workout routines

Learn the theory

Training volume: how many sets you really need

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