How to Create a Training Plan: Step-by-Step Guide With Example

Anyone writing their first training plan quickly runs into contradictory advice: three sets or five, full body or split, to failure or not. The research takes the pressure off. In 2026 the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) updated its resistance training recommendations, drawing on 137 review papers with more than 30,000 participants combined. The finding: surprisingly few details change the outcome in a noticeable way. What counts is training regularly with a load that keeps rising – and getting a handful of variables right.

A training plan sets out which exercises you do on which days, with how many sets, repetitions and how much effort – and how that load increases over the weeks. This guide walks you through building one yourself in five steps, shows a complete example and covers the mistakes beginners make most often.

What a good training plan has to do

A plan should make sure of three things: that every major muscle group gets enough work regularly, that you recover between sessions, and that you can measure progress. A plan you abandon after two weeks achieves none of these, however sophisticated it looks.

Five steps to your plan

1. Define your goal Muscle growth, strength or general fitness – and your experience.
2. Set your training days As many days as you can genuinely sustain for months.
3. Choose exercises By movement pattern, matched to your equipment.
4. Set the dose Sets per week, repetitions, effort and rest.
5. Plan progression A clear rule for when reps or weight go up.

Each decision narrows the next one: someone who can only train twice a week needs a different structure from someone with five free evenings.

Step 1: Define your goal and starting point

What should the plan achieve? In the gym, the answer is usually muscle growth, often paired with getting stronger. The two are linked, but they respond differently to programming.

A large analysis in the British Journal of Sports Medicine pooled studies with more than 5,000 participants in 2023. Every combination of load, sets and training frequency it examined beat no training. For maximal strength, heavy loads came out ahead – above 80 percent of the weight you can lift exactly once (your 1RM). For muscle growth, by contrast, all variants produced similar results.

• Goal muscle growth: You have plenty of freedom with load and reps. What matters is enough sets per week and technique you can build on.
• Goal strength: Heavy sets on a few main lifts belong in the plan, because strength is highly specific to load and movement.
• Goal general fitness: A lean two-day full-body plan meets the World Health Organization recommendation to strengthen your muscles on at least two days per week.

Your experience determines how much structure you need. The ACSM counts as a novice anyone who has never trained with weights or has taken several years off. For them it recommends two to three sessions per week with loads for 8 to 12 repetitions. Early on, you gain most by learning a few exercises well and progressing them regularly.

Step 2: Set your training days

The most honest basis for any plan is your calendar. Plan as many days as you can keep up for months – not as many as you would manage in one motivated week.

For muscle growth, the number of days is secondary. A meta-analysis – a combined analysis of many studies – of 25 studies found no meaningful difference between training less or more often, as long as the number of sets per week was the same. For strength, training more often helps a little more, mainly because more sessions allow more sets. An analysis of 67 studies confirmed in 2026 that this extra benefit shrinks with every additional session.

The “full body or split?” question matters less than many assume, too: 14 studies with 392 participants found no difference in strength or muscle gain at equal set volume. So the split follows your training days:

Better to commit to one day fewer and actually show up. If one day of a four-day plan keeps falling through, half of your body only gets one session a week.

Step 3: Choose exercises by movement pattern

Instead of starting with favourite exercises, think in movement patterns. That way no major muscle area is forgotten and pushing and pulling stay in balance:

• Horizontal push: bench press, dumbbell press, chest press machine.
• Horizontal pull: barbell or dumbbell rows, cable or machine rows.
• Knee-dominant leg exercise: squat, leg press, lunges.
• Hip extension and posterior chain: Romanian deadlift, deadlift, hip thrust, leg curl.
• Vertical push: overhead press, free or on a machine.
• Vertical pull: pull-ups, lat pulldown.

Add one or two targeted exercises for arms, shoulders, calves or core. Which variant you pick depends on equipment, mobility and technique. In the 2026 ACSM analysis, equipment type and exercise difficulty did not consistently affect outcomes. For building leg muscle, a leg press can therefore be a good alternative to the squat if you perform it cleanly and can progress it. If you specifically want a stronger squat, though, you have to train the squat itself – strength is specific to the movement.

Two rules still pay off. Exercises across several joints, like squats or bench press, go first: according to the ACSM, strength improved more when an exercise was trained early in the session and through a full range of motion. And five to six exercises per session are enough for most plans – more often just means less focus per set.

Step 4: Sets, reps and effort

Now for the actual dose: how many sets, how many reps and how hard?

How many sets per week?

For muscle growth, the number of hard sets per muscle group per week is the most important figure. An analysis of 15 studies showed in 2017: the more weekly sets, the greater the average muscle gain. In the 2026 ACSM analysis, muscles grew better from about ten sets per muscle per week. That is a sensible guideline for muscle growth, not a minimum requirement: muscles also grow with fewer sets, especially early on.

That does not hold without limit. The 2026 analysis of 67 studies found that each additional set adds less – much earlier for strength than for muscle growth. One detail helps with counting: the researchers counted sets that only train a muscle indirectly as half a set, and that fitted the data best. So rows count towards your biceps, just not fully.

As a beginner, start with a number of sets you recover from well and only add sets where progress slows down.

How many reps?

For muscle growth, the rep range is remarkably flexible. An analysis of 28 studies compared heavy loads (up to 8 reps), moderate (9 to 15) and light (more than 15), each trained to exhaustion. Muscles grew similarly, but participants got stronger with heavy and moderate loads. A good middle ground: 6 to 12 reps on main lifts, 10 to 15 on smaller exercises.

How hard each set should be

You do not have to go to failure. An analysis of 15 studies found no evidence that training to complete failure builds more muscle than stopping just short of it. An exploratory analysis from 2024 suggests muscles grow slightly better when sets end closer to the limit; for strength it made little difference.

In practice: end working sets with one to three reps in reserve – meaning you could still have done one to three clean reps. Two to three on heavy compound lifts, one is fine on small machine exercises.

Rest between sets

In a small study of 21 trained men, three minutes of rest between sets over eight weeks led to more strength and more thigh muscle thickness than one minute. The direction makes sense: if you are fresher, you get more done in the next set. Plan two to three minutes for compound lifts and about one to two for smaller exercises.

The dose at a glance

• Sets per week

  About 10 per muscle as a guideline. Beginners start below it.

• Reps

  6–12 on main lifts, 10–15 on smaller exercises.

• Effort

  1–3 reps in reserve.

• Rest

  2–3 minutes on main lifts, 1–2 minutes otherwise.

Step 5: Build in progression and recovery

Without progression, every plan eventually stalls. Whether you increase the weight or the reps is secondary: in an eight-week study of 43 trained participants, both groups gained similar muscle and strength.

Double progression is easy to apply:

As a rule of thumb, the ACSM suggests 2 to 10 percent more weight once you exceed the target reps by one or two. For how to handle plateaus, see the article on progressive overload.

Recovery belongs in the same plan. If your performance drops over several sessions even though technique and rest stay the same, fewer sets or a lighter week (deload) help. A full break is not mandatory, though: in a study of 39 trained participants, one group took a complete week off halfway through a nine-week programme. Muscles grew equally in both groups, and the group that kept training even became slightly stronger in the legs. Planned lighter weeks, as built into 5/3/1, are something different from a complete break.

Example: a three-day full-body plan

Here is a complete starting plan for beginners and returning lifters who go to the gym three times a week. You alternate two sessions: week 1 is A – B – A, week 2 is B – A – B, for example on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Session A

Session B

What the numbers mean: averaged over two weeks, front thighs and back get about 9 direct sets per week, hamstrings and shoulders 7.5 and chest 4.5 – plus help from the overhead press. That is deliberately below the guideline of about ten sets: early on, clean technique matters more than maximum volume, and you keep room to grow.

How to progress: double progression for every exercise. Rest two to three minutes on squats, bench press and Romanian deadlifts, about 90 seconds otherwise. If a muscle group stops progressing after a few weeks and you recover well, add one set per session there. Before your first exercise, warm up with two or three lighter sets.

This example is a starting point, not a recipe. If you are planning with different training days, equipment or a different focus, you can skip the arithmetic:

Muscle growth or 5/3/1: which approach fits?

The example plan is a classic muscle-building plan: several exercises per muscle, rep ranges, progression through reps and weight. It fits if you want to build muscle, develop a solid base of strength and plan flexibly with equipment.

5/3/1 sets a different focus. Developed by Jim Wendler, the system revolves around four main lifts: squat, bench press, deadlift and overhead press. You calculate the weights from a training max, usually 90 percent of your estimated maximum. Three weeks get heavier. The numbers 5, 3 and 1 set the minimum number of reps you should reach in the last, heaviest main set of each week – if you have more in you, you do more. A lighter week follows, and the training max rises in small steps.

5/3/1 fits if

• you want to get stronger specifically in the four main lifts,
• you like fixed percentages rather than deciding on the weight yourself each week,
• you are technically confident in the main lifts and can train four days a week regularly.

Our literature search in the Europe PMC database (as of 5 November 2026) found no controlled study of 5/3/1 as a complete programme. That does not rule out research outside this search. Its building blocks, however, match what research shows about strength development: heavy sets on a few main lifts, a working weight below your maximum and predictable progression. The articles on 5/3/1 training and the training max explain the details; the 5/3/1 calculator works out the set weights.

The training plan generator offers both approaches. Even in its flexible muscle-building approach, a training max drives the main lifts in a three-week wave plus deload.

Common mistakes when creating a training plan

Most plans do not fail on the science but on the execution:

• Too many exercises: eight chest exercises on one day spread your focus, not the load. Five to six exercises per session are enough.
• A plan for a professional athlete’s life: six training days do not help if you can realistically manage three. When days are missed, whole muscle groups go untrained.
• No progression rule: without a clear rule, you lift the same weight for months. Decide in advance when reps and when weight go up.
• Constantly new plans: switch every two weeks and you never have two comparable sessions. Progress stays invisible.
• Not writing anything down: without notes, next week you will not remember whether 60 kg went for 8 reps or for 10.

From plan to progress

A training plan is only the beginning. Its value comes from the cycle that starts afterwards: create a plan → do the training → log weights and reps → track your progress → adjust the plan. Only your records show whether your progression rule is working or whether an exercise has stalled for weeks.

That is exactly what the currently free Coach Cedric App is for. After signing in, you can save the plan from the generator there and keep working with it:

• Log sets, weights, reps and RPE during your session, with a rest timer.
• Compare planned and actual values.
• Analyse your strength trend, estimated one-rep max (e1RM), tonnage, set count and muscle distribution.
• Move or make up sessions in the calendar, and log preloaded sessions even offline.

The app does not make your decisions for you. It makes your history visible so you can make them based on your own numbers.

When personal coaching makes sense

A good plan and clean records carry most people a long way. Sometimes, though, a second pair of eyes helps more than another plan: you have been stuck for weeks even though you have checked progression and recovery. You are unsure whether your squat or deadlift technique is right. Or your life requires the plan to be adapted regularly around shift work, travel or family.

In online strength coaching we go through your plan, your progression and your technique questions in a personal session. If you want regular adjustments and feedback over a longer period, ongoing support provides the right framework. If you have pain or an injury, get it checked by a doctor or physiotherapist first.

Your next step

Use the example plan as a template or let the free training plan generator create a starting plan for your training days – then follow it consistently for a few weeks before changing anything fundamental.