Workout Plan Generator

The generator combines three separate models. Energy cost uses the metabolic equivalent of task, where one MET is resting metabolism, about 3.5 mL of oxygen per kilogram per minute; calories equal MET times body mass in kilograms times duration in hours. Resistance training is assigned 3.5 to 6 METs and vigorous circuit work around 8. Cardiovascular intensity uses the Tanaka estimate of maximum heart rate, 208 minus 0.7 times age, split into five zones at 50, 60, 70, 80 and 90 percent. Programming variables come from load-response research: 1 to 6 repetitions at 80 to 95 percent of one-repetition maximum for maximal strength, 6 to 12 at 65 to 80 percent for hypertrophy, and 15 or more below 60 percent for muscular endurance, with rest of 3 to 5 minutes for heavy strength work against 60 to 90 seconds for hypertrophy. Weekly set volume per muscle group is scaled by training level within the roughly 10 to 20 set range that dose-response evidence supports, and split selection follows training frequency, since twice-weekly stimulation of each muscle group outperforms once-weekly schedules. Several caveats apply. MET values are population averages that ignore individual efficiency and post-exercise oxygen consumption, so session calorie figures can be off by 15 to 20 percent. Age-based maximum heart rate formulas carry a standard deviation near 7 to 11 beats per minute, so an individual's true maximum can sit well outside the estimate; only a graded exercise test is accurate. The one-repetition maximum figures are body-weight strength standards, not measurements, and should not be loaded to without testing.

Structured progressive resistance training is usually traced to the legend of Milo of Croton carrying a growing calf, but its clinical formalisation is twentieth century. Thomas L. DeLorme, a US Army physician working with wounded soldiers at Gardiner General Hospital in Chicago, published progressive resistance exercise protocols in 1945, and with Arthur Watkins refined them in 1948 into a three-set scheme using fractions of a ten-repetition maximum. That protocol is the direct ancestor of modern set and repetition prescription, and it moved weight training from athletic subculture into medical rehabilitation. The measurement layer arrived later. Barbara Ainsworth and colleagues published the Compendium of Physical Activities in 1993, assigning MET values to hundreds of activities and giving exercise energy estimation a common reference; it was revised in 2000 and again in 2011. The familiar 220 minus age maximum heart rate rule appeared in a 1971 paper by Fox, Naughton and Haskell and was never validated as a regression equation, a point Hirofumi Tanaka, Kevin Monahan and Douglas Seals made when they reanalysed 351 studies for a 2001 paper in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology and proposed the 208 minus 0.7 times age formula used here. The American College of Sports Medicine, founded in 1954, has issued exercise testing and prescription guidelines since 1975, and volume recommendations were reshaped by dose-response meta-analyses, notably work led by Brad Schoenfeld published in 2017.