To Personally Train or To Personal Train...

Lawyers have a word for accused criminals who represent themselves in court: convicts. Similarly, people like me have a word for guys who write their own workouts. Several words, actually: "weak," "injured," "skinny," "fat," and, worst of all, "skinny-fat."

Why? Because it's human nature for us to make it easy on ourselves. We pick exercises we like. We design workouts that play to our strengths and ignore our weaknesses.

And yet the most successful programs I've used are ones I created for myself. 

Which exercises should I include?

The best workouts are built on basic compound exercises: squats, deadlifts, bench and shoulder presses, chinups, rows. As your own trainer, your job is to fit these exercises into a balanced program. Add in a great warmup and some core work, and you'll have a template you can use to build the body you want.

What should I do first?

The first exercise in each workout should be the one that requires the most effort. If your goal is overall strength, begin one workout with a squat and another with a deadlift, and separate them as much as possible. So if you do squats on Monday, do deadlifts on Friday. On Wednesday, you could start with an upper-body exercise. If your main goal is upper-body size, do the reverse and start your Monday and Friday workouts with upper-body exercises.

This can all happen with the right motivation. Do you have it in you??