The Unf*ck Your Fitness Podcast

134. Building a Body You Love: How I Create Effective Workout Programming

• Kristy Castillo

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I’m excited to talk with you all about how I set up my own personal training programming in today’s episode!


There are plenty of ways to set up your workouts each week, and there’s really no right or wrong answer in regards to how they should be. I’ve had quite the journey with my workouts over the years. From being an avid runner to doing only Beachbody workouts, to then finding weightlifting and falling in love with that, I’ve tried a little bit of everything!


I’ve grown to love workouts that are full body focused (i.e. compound movements), and so do the ladies I work with! I enjoy getting to create full body and accessory workouts for myself and my Fit Club ladies that are both fun AND effective. While accessory-style workouts (isolation movements) are very beneficial, I’ve found that full body workouts tend to give you more ‘bang for your buck’ overall.


You can totally do 3-4 workouts/week and build a body that you love. But..you’ve got to be doing the RIGHT kind of workouts + lifting heavy enough to do so!


Whether you’ve been working out for years like me, or you’re just getting started with exercise, I hope you find this episode valuable as you navigate your fitness journey!

In today’s episode, we cover:

  • My personal journey with workouts + how that’s changed over time
  • My decision to really shift my workouts & programming a few years ago + what that looks like now
  • Compound movement examples + the awesome benefits of doing these
  • My current workout programming with both compound and isolation movements
  • How I’m able to make my Fit Club membership effective
  • Why full body workouts tend to yield better results 
  • Paying attention to soreness and how your body recovers after workouts + why enjoying your workouts & getting results matters


How to work with me:

FIT CLUB is a monthly membership with workouts designed to take the guesswork out of your fitness routine + get you the body you want. These workouts can be done at home or at the gym.

PRIVATE COACHING is my 1:1 program, where we work closely together to cut the BS, and learn what to do to get the results you want-for life! This is the best way to fast track your results and truly understand the journey-you can choose a 3 month or 6 month option!

MASTER YOUR MACROS COURSE allows you to go at your own pace and learn how to make macros fit into your lifestyle.

Connect with me on Instagram @kristycastillofit and @unfuckyourfitnesspodcast so we can keep this conversation going-be sure to tag me in your posts and stories!

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Click HERE for my favorite fitness & life things!

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Un-Fuck-Your-Fitness Podcast. I am your host, Christy Castillo, and I'm here to give you real talk and cut the BS so you can actually enjoy building a body you love. I'm a personal trainer obsessed with giving you simple action steps to take you from feeling stuck to feeling sexy. Let's go. Hey guys, what's up?

Speaker 2:

Welcome to today's episode I am going to be talking to you today about how I set up my own personal training programming, and this will also tie into how I set up my Fit Club membership, the workouts inside of that membership, because they're similar to what I do. And then this will also kind of give you some tips on how to set up your own and you can kind of take a look at what I do and why and translate that into your goals, your routine, your life, if you want to. There are a lot of different types of training. There are a lot of different ways to set up your week for success, as far as how many days you want to work out a week, as far as what you want those workouts to look like. So there's no right or wrong answer. But I think it's important for me to talk about how I do it, because I want to be very transparent about what I'm doing and why. So I've actually gotten a couple of messages saying like can you do an episode on why you do full body workouts, why you set your workouts up the way that you do, and so I'm excited to talk about that today. So up until the last few years, I started with Beachbody Programming, as you probably know. Unless this is your first episode, then welcome Hi hello. But I started with Beachbody Programming, as you probably know. Unless this is your first episode, then welcome Hi hello. But I started with Beachbody Programming Before that.

Speaker 2:

I was just a runner. All through high school I was a runner and after having kids I was a runner. I loved to run. I really didn't understand fitness or working out. I liked to run and I just kind of assumed that if I wanted to look good, I would run. I didn't know anything about lifting weights or anything at all, so I was just a runner. And then I kind of realized that the ladies that had a body that I wanted strong build were working out. So I started with P90X, loved that, moved into different beach body programs, started to realize that I really loved weightlifting and not so much cardio, and I really liked the way that my body changed with weightlifting and how I felt and even mentally. So I really liked that. I switched from Beachbody coaching. After that I didn't really want to do the workouts anymore. I just didn't vibe with that. So I went to bodybuildingcom and I really learned to work out instead of following a video like Beachbody has you do. I learned to just take the movements and do them on my own. So that was a shift.

Speaker 2:

If you are a Beachbody lover or in the past you were and you go from even I have Beachbody ladies start to do my workouts and they're like oh, I'm used to following an instructor in the gym or following a class or following a video on YouTube or the new body workouts, and now it's just on an app where it has the movement and I can listen to a podcast and I can listen to music and it's. You know it's different but it's exciting and it also taught me, I should say, and it teaches you to do it on your own. You don't have to rely on the instructor, you don't have to rely on the video. You can do it on vacation, you can do it outside, you can do it at home. Like it takes matters into your own hands and that also created a lot of confidence for me.

Speaker 2:

So I went from Beachbody following videos to bodybuildingcom and learned how to just execute workouts on my own and then, after that, I really ventured into just this job, this career, for myself and of course, I continued to grow and what these workouts looked like, basically for bodybuildingcom and Beachbody. They were five days a week and they were more muscle group specific, meaning one day I'm doing buys and tries, the next day I'm doing shoulders and back and the next day I'm doing, you know, chest and core, the next day I'm doing lower body, maybe hams and quads, I you know it's. It's just, it was very muscle group specific. There was like a leg day and it was an upper body day. So that's very different to what I'm doing now. How this switched was I loved my body then, it was fine, it was okay.

Speaker 2:

But I started to realize that my mind wanders on upper body day. I'm different than a lot of people in this. I love leg day and a lot of my clients do not. So I think a lot of us differ in that that's fine. I love leg day and a lot of my clients do not. So I think and a lot of us differ in that that's fine. I love leg day. I really can grind and focus and it's exciting and I'm exhausted after I do a set, so the rest times are great.

Speaker 2:

When I'm doing upper body, I get very, very bored and my mind starts to wander and I'm just thinking like I could just do some squats, I could just add something else in here. So, and it's probably because my upper body just isn't as strong, so it's not like as fun and exciting for me. But what I started noticing was that I really, really liked full body workouts. What I started to do was, on my leg days, I would add in some upper body so that I was getting I was training more upper body because it's just not fun for me and, honestly, if there's a day of the week I was going to skip, it was going to be buys and tries, like I don't even want to do that. No, thank you, it sounds not even worth my time. So I started adding those movements that I don't like those upper body days, if you will onto my lower body days so that I would actually do it. And so I really realized that, wow, for my brain sake and for my body, honestly, because I was actually doing upper body movements that I would typically just walk away from, to be quite honest, I was noticing my body looked better and I felt better. I was more excited for my workout when it wasn't just upper body or just lower body In alignment with that. It kind of just worked out to. I guess all the stars aligned it just worked out.

Speaker 2:

Honestly, I decided a couple years ago that I wanted to take a fall and winter and really build. This was completely out of my comfort zone. I was still focused on being smaller, no-transcript I but I wanted to do something different. I felt like I was stuck and I also just didn't want to take the time to put my own programming together. I wanted to hire a coach or purchase a program that I could just do and not think about it. What program I started doing was the Booty by Brett program by Brett Contreras. He is freaking amazing. I think his program is still called that. But essentially this is something that I really fell in love with and started to tweak a little bit for my own goals, and now this is exactly what I found to work for my own life and I'm going to kind of get into this.

Speaker 2:

So what I typically do it's five days a week is what I set it up for. I was also finding that in my five days a week as far as like if I had to miss a day, like I said, the days I was going to miss were going to be the buys and tries. When we were doing P90X, if I was going to miss a day, it was that stinking yoga that was hour and 30 minutes long. I'm like I'll just skip that, right. So if there was a week where I couldn't work out five days a week which was pretty common a couple of years ago because my kids were just in all kinds of stuff and it was super busy I started noticing that I was consistently missing a workout every day and I'm like I just or every week. I need to get it to four days a week so that I can consistently do them, and then, if I can get in a fifth, perfect. And so I also realized, by doing four days a week, I wanted them to be only full body.

Speaker 2:

So by doing this Booty by Brett program, what he has you do is you do three, basically compound movements. We're going to get into these three days of compound movements and then two days of glute work. It's Booty by Brett, right? That's his very main focus. Of course, he's very, very well-rounded and I built an amazing body during the time that I was doing his workouts. The only thing I didn't like about it for myself was that it was continuously progressive overload, and so that's why I have taken that concept and what really worked for me and I've pulled things that I really liked from his programming and things that I liked from my programming and other programs that I've seen, of course, and made this really, really work for myself.

Speaker 2:

So what happened was when I was because these are very heavy compound movements that I was doing in his programming and this is how you build muscle you lift very heavy, okay, so it's progressive overload, week after week after week after week, and then, of course, a deload week in the beginning, and then you progressive overload again and again and again. I was squatting very heavy, I was hip thrusting very heavy and I was doing these. Every other day was a glute day, isolation moves, so very small movements, but it was a lot of posterior chain, meaning the backside of my body. I injured Myself essentially I wouldn't say maybe injured, like it's not a technical injury, I don't think I pulled at something or whatever, but I became very unflexible and my glutes, my hams, my back, I had a lot of back pain, like it. Just it was too much for me and I had to scale back somehow. So what I essentially took from that programming and things that I liked was I loved having my compound movements on certain days and I like having my isolation movements on certain days. So let's talk about that really quickly. So foundation and accessory days is what I started calling my own workouts, foundation days mainly being compound movements and accessory days mainly being isolation movements. These are the two main classifications of exercises compound exercises and isolation exercises.

Speaker 2:

A compound exercise is one that uses multiple muscle groups at the same time. So we're talking about the squat. It uses many muscles right in your legs, your lower body, so it's using your quads. It's using your hamstrings. It's using your calves. It's using your glutes. It's also using your core, your abs. It's using your lower back. So a squat is a compound movement because it's working multiple muscle groups at the same time. Other compound movements are, like you can squats, deadlifts, lunges, pull-ups, push-ups, bench press, shoulder press, overhead press, back, rows, dips, lat pull-downs, lying pull-overs I need to do those more often actually. So those are compound exercises, compound, using more than one muscle group at the same time.

Speaker 2:

Benefits of compound movements just to get kind of detailed here, because we love our compound movements. This is how you're going to build your body. This is how I recomped. This is how you get stronger. This is how you gain that fitness quality. Compound movements are so good for you. You burn more calories per exercise because more muscles are being used. Obviously, it allows you to work more muscles in a short time frame because it increases the efficiency of your workout. For me, doing squats and then doing a bicep curl after that's going to be harder than just doing buys and tries a day. For me, it just that works so much better. I love the feeling of that.

Speaker 2:

Compound movements can also help to improve coordination and balance. They help to improve your joint mobility and stability, even just during the day. Right, a lot of people throw a hip out or hurt their back because they're just bending over to pick something up. When you learn to bend over in proper form in a squat, in a deadlift, in a single leg deadlift, these are movements that you do every single day. That can help you. It also increases your heart rate during strength training, which helps the cardiovascular system win-win. So you're breathing very, very heavy when you're doing these movements. So, yeah, it can kind of be like cardio.

Speaker 2:

People always think lifting weights isn't enough. It is, if you do it the correct way. It also allows you to exercise the same muscle group for longer periods of time with lower levels of fatigue. I love that because I really want to be able to work my muscles longer and even more days in a row, than just having these isolation movements or having an upper day and a lower day. I want to be able to maybe do squats every or work my legs I should say work my glutes a little bit four days a week rather than just two days a week, and these exercises help with that. And compound movements also allow you to lift heavier weights and it allows you to build strength quicker because you are able to lift heavy. These are compound movements, working your entire body essentially, and so it just it increases your strength faster.

Speaker 2:

Isolation movements, on the other hand, tend to focus on a single muscle or muscle group. So a good example of this would be a bicep curl. Technically, when you are standing doing a regular bicep curl, you are recruiting your triceps to help. They would be a helping muscle group. So you're working your bicep and your tricep, but it's not a compound movement in the sense that you're not working five different muscle groups at the same time. So isolation is what I do for accessory days and that helps to break it up. So right now, currently, to kind of bring this back to what I'm doing, just to kind of explain I wanted to give a little technicality there as to what they're called. So I and even this, this goes into Fit Club.

Speaker 2:

So I personally do three full body foundation days. This is nice because these are my foundation movements, are my compound movements. So I'm doing squats, I'm doing deadlifts, I'm doing chest press, I'm doing back pull downs, I'm doing compound movements on these days Mainly. I will also sneak in a couple isolation movements at the end just to kind of wind down my workout. I'll kind of chill out a little bit before I stretch.

Speaker 2:

So my foundation days are three days a week and, yes, I do always have a day in between my foundation days. So I'm going to do a very big heavy compound foundation day and then I'm going to have an accessory day or a rest day. I don't ever not, I shouldn't say ever I hardly ever do them back to back. If I miss something, we're going out of town and I have to, I will, but it's going to be hard because those are my heavy days. Then I have two accessory days in between. So three foundation days and two accessory days. My accessory days are also full body mainly, but they are smaller movements.

Speaker 2:

So I'm working my biceps, I'm working my triceps, I'm working my glutes, but with very, very simple movements tricep kickbacks, I'm doing bicep curls, I'm doing a glute bridge is still working your glutes and your hamstrings, but it's not working so many things at the same time. Or maybe donkey kickbacks. So very, very small muscle groups lateral raises, things like that. Smaller muscle groups, smaller movements. This is still a very productive workout. It's just not working my main muscle groups. So it gives my large muscle groups, it gives them time to rest and recover while still working on muscles that I want right.

Speaker 2:

This works very nicely because if there is a day or a week where I can only get in three days of workouts, I'm still going to hit my compound movements, I'm still going to hit my foundation days and get in. That's going to be a full week of working out. If I can only work out three days a week, that is enough to change your body, that is enough to build muscle. But you need to be doing the right things. You can't just be doing bicep curls and tricep kickbacks and a couple core movements and go for a run three days a week and expect to build muscle. You have to be doing compound movements. So if you are looking to improve your overall strength which I was and am and get in an efficient and functional workout which I always am, then a workout full of compound exercises it's going to be what you need. Those are my foundation days. So I do those three days a week If I have goals, and if you have goals that are more specific, then isolation is often what's going to get you there.

Speaker 2:

So you want to be doing compound movements for your overall health, to build strong body. I've talked before about an hourglass shape. You want to build out your shoulders and you want to build out your glutes to make your waist seem smaller. These compound movements are exactly how you're going to do that. And then we're going to add on some lats and we're going to add on some shoulders. We're going to add on some biceps and we're going to add on some calves those types of things to really work those smaller muscle groups, because they matter. You want them to be shaped as well, but those aren't the foundation of your body and those aren't the foundation of your workouts.

Speaker 2:

A program that incorporates both of those movements compound and isolation is what you really really want. So this is what I absolutely do. This is how I'm able to work out three days a week sometimes. This is how I'm able to work out four days a week sometimes because I would do my three foundational workouts and one accessory day, and then, if I can work out five days a week, I'm doing my three foundations and I'm doing both accessories. This is also how I make my Fit Club membership work for so many people.

Speaker 2:

So previously in Fit Club I was kind of doing it how everybody wanted it to be. I was doing the five days a week, the separated muscle groups, and that worked until I just honestly felt a disconnect from myself with the programming because it does absolutely work. But a lot of people can't work out five days a week every single week, and then they're finding that they're missing a day and they're like I can't ever make this up, I'm not catching up and honestly it just kind of made me feel like like shit. I was like you don't even have to work out five days a week Like I'm. I have girls that are in college. I have girls that are new mamas. I have girls that are working and new mamas and they have teenagers and we're I mean we are busy people and honestly, you don't have to work out five days a week and so I'm like why don't I just have my clients work out like I'm working out and it's worked out really, really well? So that's how I set up my Fit Club Actually currently in Fit Club, just because I do change things up a little bit, I get bored with things, my clients get bored with things.

Speaker 2:

I will almost always keep in Fit Club and for myself our three full body functional movement days. So our foundational days okay, those will always be there. And if I have clients that can only work out three days a week, I'm like that is what you should do. This month for our power programming, we're doing our three foundational full bodies and an upper day and a lower day. So if you can only work out three days a week, you're still doing your foundations. If you can work out four days a week, I'm changing it. You're going to do an upper day, a lower day and two foundational workouts.

Speaker 2:

This is just something I'm doing for the power programming. It's mixing it up a little bit. I do have clients that like an upper day and a lower day and I think it's kind of fun to mix it up, but these are still very much accessory days, because on the foundational days they're doing heavy squats, heavy deadlifts, things like that. So on the lower body day and the upper body day it's not so much chest press and things like that, it's those accessory muscle groups. But anyway, I hope you get the gist there. I wanted to just explain how I'm doing that, what that looks like, because I just think a lot of ladies on Instagram, especially, and I think I guess just a lot of people in general, do a five-day split and you don't have to do that. I actually got better results.

Speaker 2:

This is something I want to talk about too. I got better results when I did this full body programming, partly because I enjoyed it. So I probably put in a little more effort, to be honest, also because if I had to miss a day, I didn't feel bad. I could honestly put both of my accessory workouts into one workout, because they're accessory, they're not getting my heart rate up as much. They're hard, yes, but it's smaller muscle groups, so I could do both of those on one day if I needed to, something that I found for myself with having autoimmune issues, and I think you'll really like this.

Speaker 2:

If you are someone who has autoimmune issues or if you just struggle with fatigue, if you are kind of stressed, depressed mental health stuff, if you have body aches, any kind of that stuff all ties together for me. That's why I kind of lumped it together. But I would find that after a lower body day I would be so sore that I could hardly walk, and for one. You're not supposed to be that sore after a workout, especially after working out. As long as I have been Two. Then if I had something to do the next, yeah, I mean like if you're in the beginning of your workout phase, if you're in the beginning of your fitness journey, you're going to be freaking sore. Don't get me wrong. But you know, 15 years in I should not be not able to walk. That's not a sign of a good workout, that's too much.

Speaker 2:

And so for me personally, I knew it was just my body not able to recover. When I started doing these full body workouts, I noticed that I could do a set of heavy squats and then I could do a set of heavy chest press, so that I'm giving my legs a break, and then I could do a set of heavy deadlifts, and then I could do a set of heavy dead lifts and then I could do a set of heavy back pulls. So my legs are getting extra rest. So even if I'm doing three or four let's say, three lower body movements that are heavy, compound and three upper body movements that are heavy and compound, then I have a day of accessory work in between. Then the next day I'm working again heavy three leg movements, heavy three upper body movements. I'm recovered and I'm able to lift heavy consistently.

Speaker 2:

For me it really helped with my aches and my pains, it helped with my recovery and that was really important. And I find that with a lot of my clients when they come to me and they're struggling with soreness or just, you know, getting things done and how they feel, and we have like a lot of diet issues, gut issues, digestion issues that play into these things, and so that's another reason I think these full body workouts really really worked so well for me, because I was able to rest and recover and my body just felt so much better doing it this way and I noticed like damn, I'm not. Yes, I'm super sore. I was almost more sore though, because I was lifting too heavy. I didn't need to be progressively overloading that much. So I kind of scaled back and I also kind of incorporated instead of just doing the glute work on the two days a week and the other booty by Brett programming I changed that to accessories because I wanted to work my glutes, yes, and isolation movements, but I also wanted to work my biceps and my triceps and my core. So I definitely shifted things to work for myself and I just I've loved it so much.

Speaker 2:

I think this is maybe year three, maybe four, that I've done it this way and I just I've loved it so much. I think this is maybe year three, maybe four, that I've done it this way and I just love it. I don't see myself going back to any other way. Really, I feel really confident. Even if I work out three days a week, I usually can get in four. But even if I did three days a week and then I just if I was a runner and I liked to run, or a lot of my clients will do two workout classes a week and then they can do my foundational workouts three days a week. It really, really helps you to be able to get the body you want, work the muscle groups that needed to be worked, shape your body as well as enjoy running, biking, workout classes, cycle whatever. So it really just works.

Speaker 2:

And so I wanted to explain my own programming, a little bit of the scientific methods behind it, but also why it works for me. A lot of this. Obviously, I'm unfucking your fitness, so a lot of this is what works for me. It's not necessarily the science behind it. If I'm like I feel better doing it and I'm getting results, that's all I genuinely care about.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I understand there's compound and isolation, but if I'm feeling great doing it and my body's looking great and why would I change it? Right? This fits into my life, it fits into my routine and I like how I look and feel. So just something to think about. If you're wanting to incorporate this into your own workouts, I've explained to you what compound and isolation movements are. You can do that for yourself. You can do them on the same day, it's just I don't. And then, if you are looking for a program to follow that follows this method, you can join my Fit Club membership. This is exactly what we do inside of that. You can go to my website to sign up for that and, yeah, I hope this is really helpful.

Speaker 1:

I will talk to you next week. Thanks for listening to today's show. Go ahead and leave a rating and a review and, of course, follow the podcast so you don't miss out on any future episodes. And I would love it so much if you came to connect with me over on Instagram at ChristyCastilloFit. I will see you next time. Bye.