It's been a while since I've had original content of my own here. I thought I'd ease back into it with a short post about the FITT principle. The FITT principle should be a cornerstone of how your workout should be structured and any personal trainer will likely design programs following it.

F - Frequency. This is simply how often you're going to perform your routine.
I - Intensity. How hard you're going to be working
T - Time. How long your workout will be
T - Type. What kind of exercise are you doing.

This can be use in macro to design your routine for a week and then used in micro to structure individual exercises. Here's an example of how you can use FITT to design a strength training routine for a week.

Macro
F: 4 days per week
I: Moderate
T: 45 minutes
T: Strength training

Macro

F	Monday	Tuesday	Thursday	Friday
I	80% 1RM	80% 1RM	80% 1RM	80% 1RM
T	45min	45min	45min	45min
T	Upper Body Push Bench Press Shoulder Bress Triceps Dips	Lower Body Pull Supine Hamstring Curl with Gym Ball Dead Lifts Single Leg Roman Dead Lift	Upper Body Pull Lat Pull-Down Seated Rows Upright Row	Lower Body Push Squats Calf Raises Seat Knee Extensions

You can then take each individual exercise and apply the FITT principle as below.

Micro:

In the above micro split, the Time is determine by the tempo and work to rest ratio for strength training.

tempo for strength training is typical 2-1-2 (2 seconds eccentric , 1 second pause, 2 concentric). Work to rest ratio for strength training is about 1:5, so 30-40secs:150-200seconds.

That's basically it. Use the FITT principle to help design your workouts.

How do you design your workouts? let me know in the comments.