Exercise Selection, Variety and Ordering

Exercise selection is something that a lot of people overthink. You would think that it would be easy to answer the question “What exercise should I choose?” But, it is actually quite nuanced, and it can leave people scratching their heads wondering what to do.

I remember back to when I started training and admittedly, for a good few years of coaching people, I was convinced that certain exercises were inherently better than other exercises. I also believed that if I could just crack the code on exercise selection, I would have the secrets to success. But this isn’t really the case.

After years of studying, and coaching hundreds of individuals, I have come to appreciate that exercise selection isn’t as important as most people think it is.

Now, don’t get me wrong, there are definitely better and worse exercises for a given goal, and for a given individual. We still want to understand exercise deeply, so we can adjust the exercise for the individual in front of us, but there are no secret exercises or mandatory exercises that lead to better results, in general. The body can only move a certain number of ways, and while there are differences in how much force a muscle can generate in different positions of a range of motion, that doesn’t mean we need to be overly complex in our exercise selection.

In this article, the goal is to tease apart some of the nuances around exercise selection, while also discussing how often you should vary your exercise selection. We will also touch on exercise ordering, as this is something that does actually factor into your exercise selection across a workout. I am going to assume that you already understand why exercise is important, the goals of exercise, the types of exercise we have available to us, and you have a rough idea of the general exercise guidelines. It would also be helpful if you had a good understanding of why and how we use resistance training to build muscle and strength. You can also visit our exercise hub, and read our content on resistance training and cardiovascular training, along with the rest of the articles in this series.

Before we get stuck in, I would just like to remind you that we offer comprehensive online coaching. So if you need help with your own exercise program or nutrition, don’t hesitate to reach out. If you are a coach (or aspiring coach) and want to learn how to coach nutrition, then consider signing up to our Nutrition Coach Certification course. We do also have an exercise program design course in the works, if you are a coach who wants to learn more about effective program design and how to coach it. We do have other courses available too.

Exercise Selection

For effective exercise selection, ideally, you would want to have a detailed knowledge of anatomy and biomechanics. Understanding basic human anatomy and the biomechanics of exercise will allow you to be much more comprehensive in your ability to select (and modify) exercises. We are currently developing a comprehensive course on anatomy and biomechanics, so if this is something you would like to better understand, then sign up to our email newsletter and you will be the first to hear about it when it launches (and you will get a discount too!).

However, you can still make good exercise selection decisions without having a comprehensive understanding of anatomy and biomechanics. Following some fairly basic guidelines and developing a basic understanding of exercise will allow you to choose better exercises for your specific goals.

In general, we want to choose exercises that are safe and appropriate for us. The exercise should be:

1. appropriate for your unique goals (i.e. strength, muscle gain, sports-specific, general health etc),
2. respect your available ranges of motion (i.e. we aren’t choosing exercises that force you into positions that compromise your joint integrity or don’t fit their structure),
3. safe for you to perform and progressively overload over time (i.e. the exercise shouldn’t become unsafe for you to perform as the weight progresses, or it shouldn’t be an exercise that is incredibly limited in its overload potential)
4. and ideally, it should be one that you enjoy.

To select an appropriate exercise, you must actually be clear in your specific goals. What exactly are you trying to achieve by exercising? Are you trying to get stronger, build muscle, improve sports performance, improve general health, etc.? Being clear on this is important, as it does actually dictate whether or not an exercise is appropriate for you and your goals.

However, you not only need to be clear on the overall goals behind why you are exercising, you also need to be clear on what exactly you are trying to achieve by selecting that exercise. Why are you trying to train that movement or muscle specifically? Are you trying to strengthen a specific movement pattern? Strengthen a specific muscle? Grow a specific muscle bigger? What exactly are you trying to accomplish with this exercise?

These are all questions you have to ask yourself before you even think about exercise selection. I know that isn’t what most people want to hear, as they just want to be given the secret training program that will magically help them achieve their goals. However, this simply doesn’t exist, because you haven’t actually specified your goals! If you get specific with your goals, then it becomes much easier to create a training program that will achieve those goals in record time.

You may not think this is important, but it really is. Having clear goals is what dictates our exercise selection and entire program design.

For example, the exercises you would get a powerlifter to perform aren’t necessarily going to be the exercises that you get a bodybuilder to perform. And they aren’t necessarily the exercises that you would get a person looking to improve their health to perform. Exercise selection needs to be individualised, and blanket statements like “this exercise is mandatory” or “you must perform these exercises to grow big muscles/get stronger”, are rather short-sighted, unless you are talking to a hyper-niche audience. 

You must remember that all exercises are literally made up. 

We have created exercises to target certain muscles or adaptations, based on the human body’s ability to move. It is all made up, and the exercises we perform today are more so based on the availability of certain implements or historic twists of fate, rather than hard science.

For example, the bench press was first performed as a floor press. The floor press was used by early Olympic Weightlifters to strengthen their pressing muscles for the clean and press, and clean and jerk. It only later included the use of a bench. The standardised bench height was also set in America in the 1950’s, and thus is set for men of an average height of ~175cm, which hasn’t been the average height of many European countries since the 1930s. It also wasn’t built with women in mind. Thus the bench itself is set at a height that is set for an increasingly smaller set of the population. 

This has implications for the way you perform the bench press, as it is much easier to keep your hips on the bench if you are able to put your feet flat on the ground and be at or around full spinal extension. If you have a huge range available to you, the hips are more likely to rise to help move the weight. 

We discuss this more comprehensively in the following video:

Similarly, the plate diameter was standardised in the early part of the 20th century, when people were much smaller. This influences the deadlift starting position, as it is based on the plate size. Starting the deadlift “from the ground” is actually completely arbitrary, as “from the ground” is actually just based on a standardised weight plate diameter. 

Similarly, the squat used to be performed without the use of a rack, requiring the lifter to balance a bar upright and then effectively let it fall onto them as they descended into the squat position (look up the “Steinborn lift” or “Steinborn squat” for videos of this).

So, we need to think beyond just looking at the lifts that have always been done. You need to be very clear on your goals and what you are trying to achieve with an exercise, if you are to have your exercise selection dialled in.

However, we also need to think about the ways in which the body moves, if we are to be precise in our exercise selection. There are only a few ways in which the human body can move, at least in a general sense. So understanding these movement patterns will allow you to make better exercise selection choices, and it will allow you to better tailor a program to your unique needs.

Broad Movement Categories

We can break down common resistance training exercises into 6 broad categories, which should then allow you to choose exercises that can appropriately build strength and muscle throughout your whole body. 

1. Squat Movement 
2. Hip Hinge Movement 
3. Horizontal Press Movement 
4. Horizontal Pull Movement 
5. Vertical Press Movement 
6. Vertical Pull Movement 

Breaking up the movements available to us like this makes life much easier for you. While we can think of exercise on a much more specific level, based on specific anatomy, biomechanics, etc., that is not usually the starting point and it may not even be necessary for the general trainee. 

By categorising exercises like this, the vast majority of people will be able to put together a very effective strength and muscle-building program by just choosing exercises from these categories. Of course, we can then further refine our exercise selection based on individual goals and how your body reacts, but we will likely still be choosing exercises from the same rough categories. There are some exercises that don’t fit neatly into the categories, but we are talking in broad brush strokes here.

Squat Movements 

Squat movements are potent builders of lower body strength and muscle mass. Virtually all lower body muscles will be working hard during a squat, but the main movers will be the quadriceps, adductors, and glutes. Other supporting muscles will be the hamstrings, calves, and all of the muscles of the lower back and core. 

Therefore, this is a great exercise variation for multiple different goals: 

1. If you are looking to build stronger legs for sport, or to reduce injury risk, this would be a great exercise category to include in your programme. 
2. If you hope to have more muscular/toned legs (or bum) for aesthetic purposes, then this is a great exercise category to choose. 
3. If you would like to improve your function in day to day life (stair-climbing, transferring in and out of bed, etc.), then this is a fantastic category that will help you improve the ease of these tasks, but also preserve your ability to do them longer into the future. 
4. If you find your legs get tired when you go hiking, running, or partaking in any other form of physical activity, this exercise will help you build the strength you need to perform these tasks with more ease. 

Note: There are many different variations of squat movements and the variation you choose should be based on 1) accessibility, 2) preference, 3) current level of strength/skill and 4) potential for progression. 

An example of the squat pattern is discussed in the following video:

* While split squats and lunges are arguably not squatting variations, we wanted to add them here to let you know that they are options that train the same muscle groups and hence can be chosen if desired. 

Hip Hinge Movements 

Much like squat movements, hip-hinge movements are also potent builders of lower body strength. However, the difference here is that they are a little more “hip dominant”, meaning they involve a greater contribution from the hip muscles, with less involvement from the knee extensors (quads). The glutes and adductors will be working hard, just like the squat, but the hamstring muscles will be working much harder during a hip-hinge movement, since the knee is straighter than it would be during a squat. When we have more hip movement and less knee movement, the hip extensors tend to be more dominant than the knee extensors, which is why you wouldn’t expect these to be the best exercises for quadricep strength/hypertrophy (although they will still be working, especially on exercises with more knee bend, e.g. deadlift). 

Hip-hinge movements also require the back muscles to do a lot of work, since the weight essentially wants to fold you over. To counter this, the muscles of your back (lower back all the way to upper back) and trunk/core have to work hard to stabilise your torso/spine. Therefore, these are great exercises for people looking to build their back strength too. 

Hip-hinge exercise variations are useful for multiple goals: 

1. If you are looking to build stronger legs for sport, or to reduce injury risk, these would be great exercise variations to include in your program. Remember, these exercises strengthen the hip extensors (hamstrings, glutes, adductors), which are common sites of injury in sport (especially hamstrings and adductors) and contribute greatly to performance (e.g. sprinting). 
2. If you hope to have more muscular/toned legs (or bum) for aesthetic purposes, then this is a great exercise variation. 
3. If you would like to improve your function in day-to-day life (picking up things with ease, getting comfortable bending over, etc.), then this is a fantastic variation that will help you improve the ease of these tasks, but also preserve your ability to do them long into the future. 
4. If you find your muscles (e.g. back/legs) get very tired when lifting heavy objects, helping someone else (e.g. a nurse helping to transfer a patient in and out of bed), or carrying things, then these variations will help you develop a higher level of tolerance. 

An example of hip hinge pattern is discussed in the following video:

* The Romanian and Stiff-Legged Deadlift names are often used interchangeably. In general, the only difference here is that people tend to use more of a knee bend in a Romanian Deadlift and a straighter leg on the Stiff-Legged Deadlift. You needn’t worry too much about the semantics. 

* While hip thrusts and hamstring curls are not technically Hip-Hinge variations, they do train similar muscle groups, which is why we included them here for additional options. 

* While the Trap/Hex Bar Deadlift is not included here, this is purely due to the fact that it is kind of a combination of the squat category and the hip hinge category. However, it is a perfectly good exercise that trains the lower body and posterior chain effectively.

Horizontal Press Movements 

Horizontal pressing movements are very popular movements for upper body strength. Some of the classic examples you are probably aware of is the push-up or the bench press. All other variations listed are very similar, but simply use different forms of resistance to train a similar movement. These variations primarily strengthen the chest, shoulders (especially the front of the shoulder), and triceps. The relative contribution of each of these muscles will vary based on your individual structure, grip width, the specific angle of the exercise, along with some other variables. However, most trainees needn’t worry too much about trying to isolate a specific muscle, especially if your goal is to generally gain strength/muscle (as opposed to bodybuilding, where one may have a very specific goal with regard to muscle development). 

Horizontal pressing variations are useful for multiple goals: 

1. If you are looking to build more upper body strength for your sport, then building up pushing strength and the associated muscle mass is a good idea. This may be just what you need to reduce injury risk, and give you that extra boost to hand off your rugby opponent, or to press off or away from your grappling opponent. 
2. If you hope to have a more muscular upper body (especially your chest/shoulders/triceps) for aesthetic purposes, then these are great exercise variations.
3. If you would like to improve your function in day-to-day life (opening heavy doors, stacking boxes, pushing away things etc.), then this is a fantastic variation that will help you improve the ease of these tasks, but also preserve your ability to do them long into the future. 
4. If you find your muscles get very tired when lifting heavy objects, helping someone else (e.g. a nurse helping to transfer a patient in and out of bed), or carrying things, then these variations will help you develop a higher level of tolerance. These muscles can be thought of as “hugging” muscles, so whether you are squeezing someone with a hug or carrying a large box with your arms wrapped around it, there will be some carryover. 

An example of a horizontal pressing movement would be the following:

* Clearly, dips are not “horizontal pressing”, but they work the same muscle groups and can be a nice option to add to your training. 

* While “flyes” are not “pressing” exercises, they work the chest muscles effectively. 

Horizontal Pull Movements 

Horizontal pulling movements, better known as “rowing” exercises, are great exercises for building upper body “pulling” strength. The muscles worked in these exercises include the lats, teres major, traps, rhomboids, rear delts, biceps, and some other muscles around the back of the shoulder that you needn’t worry too much about for now. Depending on the exercise, the spinal erectors (muscles that extend the spine, including the lower back muscles) and hip extensors (glutes, hamstrings, adductors) may also be trained to some degree, as some exercises require you to maintain a position similar to that seen half-way through a deadlift (e.g. bent over row variations). In general, rowing exercises with a wider grip and higher elbows will train the upper back muscles a little bit more (e.g. traps, rhomboids, rear delts), whereas exercises with a closer grip and elbows by the sides of your body tend to spread the load more so to the lats (big muscles under your armpit, spanning all the way to your lower back). However, when doing any rowing exercise, you are going to be training pretty much all of the muscles of your back.

Horizontal pulling variations are useful for multiple goals: 

1. If you are looking to build more upper body strength for your sport, then building up pulling strength and the associated muscle mass is a good idea. This may be just what you need to reduce injury risk, give you that extra boost to drag your grappling opponent down, or absorb a hard tackle. 
2. If you hope to have a more muscular upper body (especially your lats, upper back and biceps) for aesthetic purposes, then these are great exercise variations.
3. If you would like to improve your function in day to day life (pulling open heavy doors, carrying boxes, starting up the lawn mower etc.), then this is a fantastic variation that will help you improve the ease of these tasks, but also preserve your ability to do them longer into the future. 
4. Similar to the previous exercises, if you find your muscles get very tired when lifting heavy objects, helping someone else (e.g. a nurse helping to transfer a patient in and out of bed), or carrying things, then these variations will help you develop a higher level of tolerance. With a stronger back, including your upper back, lifting and carrying will be less of a burden.  

An example of a horizontal pulling movement would be the following:

* The muscles worked during face pulls are a little different, as these exercises primarily train the shoulder and upper back muscles, especially when pulling higher. 

* Shrugs do not necessarily resemble rowing exercises, but they are included here because they are effective for training the traps, which are also involved in rowing exercises. 

Vertical Press Movements 

Vertical pressing movements are very popular movements for upper body strength. One of the examples you are probably aware of is the overhead press (pushing a barbell over your head). All other variations listed are very similar, but simply use different forms of resistance to train a similar movement. These variations primarily strengthen the shoulders (especially the front of the shoulder), and triceps, along with the chest, traps, and even your spinal erectors, abs and obliques (depending on the variation – standing vs sitting). The relative contribution of each of these muscles will vary based on your individual structure, grip width, the specific angle of the exercise, along with some other variables. However, most trainees needn’t worry too much about trying to isolate a specific muscle, especially if your goal is to generally gain strength/muscle (as opposed to bodybuilding, where one may have a very specific goal with regard to muscle development).

Vertical pressing variations are useful for multiple goals: 

1. If you are looking to build more upper body strength for your sport, then building up pushing strength and the associated muscle mass is a good idea. This may be just what you need to reduce injury risk (e.g. shoulder dislocation), give you that extra boost to hand off your rugby opponent, or to throw off your grappling opponent. 
2. If you hope to have a more muscular upper body (especially your shoulders and triceps) for aesthetic purposes, then these are great exercise variations. 
3. If you would like to improve your function in day-to-day life (overhead tasks, stacking boxes, pushing the car when it breaks down etc.), then this is a fantastic variation that will help you improve the ease of these tasks, but also preserve your ability to do them long into the future. 
4. If you find your muscles get very tired when lifting heavy objects, helping someone else (e.g. a nurse helping to transfer a patient in and out of bed), or carrying things, then these variations will help you develop a higher level of tolerance. This is especially the case for anything you do overhead, as these exercises are fantastic for building that overhead strength. 

An example of a vertical pressing movement would be the following:

* In general, the higher the incline, the more your shoulders will be working. Therefore, if you find sitting all the way upright is uncomfortable, then you can still train your shoulders at 60-75 degree inclines. 

* While “raise variations” are not overhead pressing exercises, they do effectively train the shoulders. In particular, lateral raises are a great addition for someone looking to develop their shoulders, as they train the middle portion of the shoulder very effectively. Front raise variations are probably unnecessary if you do pressing exercises already. You can argue about whether the rear delts are part of the back musculature or the shoulder musculature, but it doesn’t really matter that much.

Vertical Pull Movements 

Vertical pulling movements, better known as pull-down or chin-up/pull-up exercises, are great exercises for building upper body “pulling” strength. The muscles worked in these exercises include the lats, teres major, traps, rhomboids, rear delts, biceps, and some other muscles around the back of the shoulder that you needn’t worry too much about for now. The muscles worked are very similar to those trained during rowing exercises, but through a different range of motion at the shoulder (overhead), and generally more biased toward the lats and teres major than the traps and rhomboids (although they are still working for sure, which is variation-specific). There isn’t a very significant difference between wider and closer grips here, so you needn’t worry too much about doing any single variation, unless it’s simply your personal preference.

 Vertical pulling variations are useful for multiple goals: 

1. If you are looking to build more upper body strength for your sport, then building up pulling strength and the associated muscle mass is a good idea. This may be just what you need to reduce injury risk (overhead strength is very important in any sport you are likely to fall over in), give you that extra boost to drag your grappling opponent down, or hit a powerful tennis serve. 
2. If you hope to have a more muscular upper body (especially your lats, upper back and biceps) for aesthetic purposes, then these are great exercise variations. 
3. If you would like to improve your function in day-to-day life (pulling open heavy doors, pulling anything down, starting up the lawn mower etc.), then this is a fantastic variation that will help you improve the ease of these tasks, but also preserve your ability to do them long into the future. Or, maybe you just want to show off to the family/friends/partner with your pull-ups, which is cool too. 
4. Similar to the previous exercises, if you find your muscles get very tired when lifting heavy objects*, helping someone else (e.g. a nurse helping to transfer a patient in and out of bed), or carrying things, then these variations will help you develop a higher level of tolerance. With a stronger back, including your upper back, lifting and carrying will be less of a burden. 

*Along with this, all pulling exercises (including hip hinge movements involving grip) can really help to strengthen your grip. Therefore, if you find your hands/forearms getting tired during certain tasks, this is an additional benefit. 

An example of a vertical pulling movement would be the following:

* Pull-over variations are a little different in that they isolate the lats a bit more than other variations listed. They will also train the triceps more than the biceps when the weight is in your hands. 

* For those who want to perform chin-ups but are currently unable, performing the downward (negative) phase on its own can help to build strength, provided you can jump up, have a low bar, or have a partner assist you. 

Movements vs Muscles

There are many exercises not included here, as this is not meant to be an exhaustive list of every exercise in each category or even entirely. However, hopefully, you are able to get a good idea of what kinds of exercises fall into each category. Of course, there are many other exercises that you could perform that don’t fit neatly into each category. 

There are also many muscles that you may wish to build that aren’t sufficiently targeted by the exercises already discussed. For example, many of you will want to do some direct work for your calves/biceps/triceps/forearms/abs etc. You can obviously allocate some training volume towards these muscle groups, although most of them do get trained to some extent by training the larger muscle groups (e.g. the biceps get trained while training the back). As a result, you likely won’t need to allocate as much volume of work to these body parts. 

There are also movement categories that aren’t covered here, such as carrying or locomotion. But again, this isn’t intended to be all-encompassing. Instead, it is meant to give you a general starting point to think about exercise selection when creating a program.

Now, you can also think of things in a more muscle-specific way. Rather than thinking of broad movement categories, you would instead break the body down into the major muscle groups. For example, the following are generally the major muscle groups that we discuss when talking about exercise (although there are actually many, many more muscles):

Understanding this is important for understanding the basic exercise guidelines, as they advise:

• At least 2 resistance training sessions per week, strengthening all major muscle groups. 

So it makes sense to be aware of what the major muscle groups are!

It is important to acknowledge that we tend to use the term muscle group when discussing these muscles, because they are generally a collection of smaller more distinct muscles that work together. For example, the quads are actually a group of 4 muscles. This is important to point out, because these muscles may actually have slightly different functions, and they generally tend to have different origins and insertions. As a result, certain exercises may target the specific individual muscles slightly differently.

There are also a variety of “secondary” muscles that we may also wish to target with resistance training. Most of these do get worked quite effectively with other exercises, so they may not need as much direct work as the major muscle groups. This is why they are often considered to be secondary muscles, and are really only targeted after the major muscles have been looked after. However, it is important to have a fuller picture of these, because for certain goals, we may wish to target these muscles.

There are, of course, even more muscles. However, this covers most of what the vast majority of people will be trying to target in the gym.

Now, you should realise that most exercises do actually target multiple muscles. So, while it is helpful to understand the function of the various muscles, we can generally get a lot of bang for our buck by simply thinking in terms of movement patterns rather than trying to specifically isolate idividual muscles. That doesn’t mean we completely ignore muscle isolation work, not at all. However, in general, most people are going to get the best results by choosing exercises based on the broader movement category.

However, we do still need to have an understanding of the functions of the muscles we are trying to target with our exercise selection. Further to this, it is incredibly helpful to have a basic understanding of muscle anatomy, as it really does allow you to make much better exercise selection decisions.

Biomechanics, Anatomy and Exercise Selection

Now, while this article is mostly centred around exercise selection, it does actually help if you have a rudimentary understanding of biomechanics and anatomy. Understanding a bit more about these will allow you to choose better exercises, as you will be able to understand why certain exercises seem to work the muscle in specific ways.

Really digging into this topic is beyond the scope of this article, but there are some key concepts that we can cover that will dramatically improve your understanding of muscle anatomy and thus allow you to make much better exercise selection choices.

Full Range Of Motion

The first thing to understand is the concept of full range of motion. When you first start exercising, you basically just learn choreography. Each movement is supposed to be performed a certain way. For most exercises, this way is described as the full range of motion for that exercise. However, this can actually be quite misleading.

You see, the full range of motion for an exercise isn’t necessarily the full range available to any specific muscle. For example, a full range of motion, ass sitting on your heels, squat doesn’t take the quads through their full range of motion (they never get fully lengthened, especially on the proximal side).

Further to this, a full range of motion on an exercise can actually take tension of the target muscle (and put it on other tisues or muscles). Again, with the deep squat as an example, setting the standard “full range” as being a squat that has you bringing your bum down as close to your heels as possible, may actually take tension off your quads, and shift it to the glutes, low back and other musculature.

In some cases, the tension is not only shifted onto other musculature, it is shifted onto other tissues and structure such as you tendons, ligaments and joint structures. For example, on the bench press, for some individual’s, bringing the bar all the way down to the chest is going to result in some of that tension being shifted to the shoulder joints and supporting tissues. This can lead to less than ideal outcomes (pain and injury), and potentially less muscle and strength gain.

This is why you will often hear people talking about “active range of motion” versus “passive range of motion”. An active range of motion is the range of motion available to you on an exercise in which you can actively get into, without external force pushing/pulling you into it. Whereas a passive range of motion is the range of motion you can actually get into passively, when there is an external force pushing/pulling you into it.

There are multiple examples of this concept. For example, bring your arms out in front of you. Now turn your palms to face up (i.e. supinate them). Now bring your arms overhead and try to keep your palms facing the same way. If you tried this, you will more than likely have seen that in that overhead position, you likely can’t keep your hands perfectly supinated. They likely turned into some sort of semi-supinated position.

So, if you do a supinated chin up, then you are more than likely going beyond your active range of motion at the wrist/elbow/shoulder to stay in that supinated position while at the bottom of a supinated chin up.

Now, this may not matter all that much for some people and some exercises, but for some people and with some exercises, the difference between passive range of motion and active range of motion can actually be quite significant.

We discuss this in a lot of our exercise videos on YouTube, in particular, the video on assessing shoulder range of motion and the video on assessing wrist and elbow range of motion.

So you have to understand what a full range of motion looks like for the specific movement, and then how that applies to your individual anatomy. Unfortunately, there is no quick way to learn this. You just have to experiment and build out your understanding over time. Of course, you can expedite the process by either binge consuming all of our content on the website and on YouTube, or get more specific help with comprehensive online coaching.

Different Muscle Ranges

As noted above, the full range of motion for a specific movement isn’t necessarily the full range available to any specific muscle involved in that movement. However, we do potentially want to train through all the ranges available to our muscles (we will discuss this more in a moment when discussing exercise variety). Now, it is beyond the scope of this article to dig deep into this topic, but it is actually incredibly helpful for exercise selection to understand what each muscle is capable of.

To really understand exercise selection, you do have to have at least a basic understanding of how muscles work. This is especially the case when we want to understand how to choose exercises to train the muscles through their full range of motion.

Basic Muscle Structure

Muscles are composed of many fibres (cells), which in turn are made up of myofibrils. Myofibrils contain sarcomeres, and these are the basic functional units of muscle contraction. These sarcomeres are made up of thin filaments (primarily composed of the protein actin) and thick filaments (composed of the protein myosin). These sarcomeres effectively work like velcro to facilitate muscle contraction. The way muscles contract is more formally known as the sliding filament theory.

Sliding Filament Theory

The sliding filament theory describes how muscles contract by the sliding motion of actin over myosin. Here’s how it happens:

1. Cross-Bridge Formation: When a muscle fibre is stimulated by a nerve impulse, calcium ions are released within the muscle cell. Calcium binds to the protein troponin on the thin filaments, causing a conformational change in tropomyosin, another protein associated with actin. This change exposes binding sites on the actin filaments.
2. Power Stroke: ATP (adenosine triphosphate) binds to the myosin head and is hydrolysed into ADP and phosphate, energizing the myosin head. The energized myosin head attaches to the exposed binding site on actin, forming a cross-bridge. Then, the myosin head pivots, pulling the actin filament toward the centre of the sarcomere in a movement called the power stroke. This releases ADP and phosphate.
3. Detachment: Another ATP molecule binds to the myosin head, causing it to detach from the actin and re-energise for another cycle.
4. Re-cocking: The myosin head returns to its original position, ready to bind to a new actin site and repeat the process, causing further sliding.

Muscle Length and Contraction

Now, you certainly don’t need to understand all of that, however, what is important to understand is that there is a point where these sarcomeres have very little overlap between the thin filament and thick filament, and there is a point where these are maximally overlapped. This is the end ranges of motion for that individual sarcomere. This is the case across the entire muscle.

As a result, there is a point where the muscle is maximally lengthened (called the lengthened range) and a point where the muscle is maximally shortened (called the shortened range). There is also a range in the middle, where there is a good degree of overlap between the thin and thick filaments.

• Lengthened Range: When a muscle is stretched beyond its resting length, the overlap between thin and thick filaments (and thus actin and myosin) is reduced. This reduces the number of potential cross-bridges that can form, generally resulting in a weaker contraction potential.
• Mid-Range: This is often considered the optimal length for power generation in muscle contraction. At this length, there is lot of overlap between the thin and thick filament (and thus actin and myosin) without excessive compression or stretching of the sarcomere components. This level of overlap allows a large number of cross-bridges to form, allowing for a strong contraction.
• Shortened Range: In the shortened range, the muscle fibres are maximally overlapping. This physically blocks further contraction and reduces the force produced because fewer myosin heads can attach to actin.

Now, you are unlikely to truly reach the limit of range for every single muscle fibre in a muscle, but it is important to realise that the muscle can be in varying degree of length and this does have implications for exercise selection.

The following is a table of some of the muscle groups, their lengthened and shortened range position, and some exercises that target those ranges. However, do realise that there are a lot of caveats to this table, as many of these “muscles” are actually collections of smaller muscles, all with different origins and insertions, and thus lengthen/shortened ranges.

Force Capabilities At Different Lengths

It is important to also realise that your muscles have different strength potential at different ranges. Due to the nature of the cross-bridging, your muscle is going to have varying levels of force capability at various lengths. In general, you are going to be stronger in the mid-range, as you have a good amount of overlap, while also still having a good amount of crossbridging potential.

You are going to be weaker in the lengthened range, as there is very little crossbridging occurring. You wouldn’t like to try to do a pull up while only hanging from a piece of velcro that is only attached at the very ends with very little overlap. You likely wouldn’t be very confident in your ability to pull yourself up in this manner, and you likely wouldn’t want to apply a lot of force. Well, your muscles feel the same way when they are in the lengthened range.

You are generally also going to be weaker in the shortened range, as there is already a lot of cross-bridging occurring, and not much potential for more. The sarcomeres become somewhat scrunched up, and are effectively beyond their optimal force generating position.

There is actually a lot more to this, but this starts getting deep into the weeds of biomechanics. But do realise there is more going on, especially around the joint structures, angle of pull, leverage and even stuff like elastic energy potential in support structures like tendons and ligaments. But we don’t need to dig into all of that to be able to choose exercises.

The key take away is that your muscles have different force generating capabilities at different portions of the range of motion. This is important to consider when choosing an exercise to train that muscle. We generally don’t want to choose exercises that are really hard in one portion of the range, but then incredibly easy for the rest of the range.

For example, for most people, the bottom position of a squat is significantly more challenging than the rest of the range. You are understimulating the muscles for the vast majority of the movement. So we ideally want to choose movements that better matching the strength profile of the muscles, or try to modify the movement by using accommodating resistance or other means, so that it is more challenging across the entire range of motion.

You can test this yourself, by getting close to failure with a deep squat, and then reducing the range of motion by going slightly less deep. Then get close to failure again, and then reduce the range of motion again. Repeat until you reach true failure for that muscle. You will likely find that have a LOT more reps in the tank despite reaching close to failure at various ranges. Then try this again, but instead do band-resisted squats. You will very quickly see that you get far fewer reps when the resistance profile is better matched to the strength profile of the movement.

As muscles move through their available ranges, they are going to have different force capabilities. As a result, your “strength” does vary across a movement. Where possible, we probably do want to choose movements that better fit the “strength profile” of the muscles. This is often referred to as matching the resistance profile to the strength profile. It is why you very often see bodybuilders using stuff like bands and daisy chains, and it is also why some machines feel much better than others (they will usually have some sort of cam that changes the resistance profile of the movement to better match the strength profile of the muscle being trained).

Joints, Range Of Motion and Exercise Selection

Now, we do also need to consider the joints when discussing exercise selection. This is actually a fairly large topic, and it is beyond the scope of this article. But nonetheless, it is important to consider a few key points.

Your joints (and overall anatomy) may not allow for the full lengthening, or indeed the full shortening, of a muscle. This may be due to previous injuries, bony structures that have developed in or around the joints, or just your individual joint structure. While the muscle may actually have more range available to it, the joint(s) or surrounding musculature may not allow you to get into that position.

For example, for some people, the bottom portion of a bench press may have their pecs in a fairly lengthened range. However, this bottom position may be too provocative to their shoulder joint and surrounding structures to be an exercise that can be used to adequately train that lengthened range.

Alternatively, there may be other anatomical or morphological reasons that the bottom portion of something like a bench press doesn’t allow for the fuller lengthening of the pecs. For example, the lengthening of the pecs on the bench press may not be possible if you have a big barrel chest. You see this quite frequently with individuals who are successful powerlifters. They hardly get into a lengthened range at all while bench pressing. Their anatomy allows them to stay in the stronger mid-range.

This is easier to see when you just follow the elbow (or upper arm) positioning at the bottom of the bench press. For some individuals, when the bar stops at their chest, their elbows are below the bench (i.e. behind the body). These individuals are likely bringing their pecs into a much more lengthened range. However, you will frequently see the really successful bench pressers barely even reaching a 90-degree angle at the elbow. They aren’t getting into a stretched range at all. So, when choosing an exercise, we have to not only consider the ranges this exercise is supposed to bring someone into, but we also have to assess this for the individual.

This does actually change quite a lot depending on how exactly you perform the exercise (i.e. in the above example, you could further exacerbate the issue by also arching the back a lot in the bench press, as this further shortens the range of motion). So not only does this knowledge influence exercise selection, but it also influences exercise execution.

The tricky thing is that this does change over time, especially if you gain/lose muscle and/or fat. Again, using the bench press as the example, if you build significant amounts of muscle, or you gain significant amounts of fat on your chest, then you will have shortened the range available. As a result, you may not be able to get into that more lengthened range with the bench press, as you are limited from getting deeper by the muscle/fat.

Your joints may not allow you to get into the shortened range too. Now, admittedly, it is more likely that other tissue (muscle or fat) prevents you from getting into this range. For example, someone with very muscular biceps or someone who has a lot of fat on their biceps, may actually be limited from getting into the fully shortened position for the biceps.

So again, you can’t just follow choreography and think “this exercise trains the shortened range”, because that may not actually be true for you. Your anatomy may not allow for you to get into this shortened range position.

You may also be limited by other joints involved the movement. For example, you may want to use the squat to train your quads. However, when you go to perform the squat, you find that your ankle range of motion limits your ability to get into a deep squat position. Alternatively, perhaps your shoulder range of motion doesn’t allow you to hold the bar on your back. As a result, the squat may not be a good exercise to choose if you want to train the quads, because the limiting factor is not the quads, it is the ankle or shoulder range of motion. Now, this can sometimes be worked on or circumvented (for example, by using some sort of heel lift to reduce the range of motion the ankle has to go through or doing some stretching/mobility work for the ankles/shoulders), but sometimes it is just a limitation you will always have.

It is also important to note that at certain ranges, the joints may be placed in a more vulnerable position. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but you do have to have a certain level of baseline strength and ability to stabilise a joint to be able to train in that range. I have seen many people seriously injure themselves trying to train muscles in the lengthened range, because they didn’t have the requisite strength to stabilise that position.

For example, I have seen many people dislocate their shoulder doing overhead tricep extensions. They didn’t have the strength and structural integrity to adequately stabilise the shoulder joint in that overhead position. Similarly, I have seen many individuals tear their muscles trying to train in the lengthened range (usually with too much load or with excessive momentum).

So, understanding a little bit about the ranges available to a muscle, and thinking about the surrounding joint structures and musculature is a good idea when really trying to be more precise with your exercise selection.

Stability

Now, one final note on how anatomy and biomechanics can be used to inform your exercise selection.

Muscles are able to contract their hardest, when there is more stability. This is incredibly obvious if you simply stand on one leg and have someone try to push you over, and then compare it to standing on two legs. You are going to be stronger when you are more stable. However, people forget this all the time while trying to train their muscles.

If we want to really get the most from our training, we ideally want to choose exercises that allow us to be more stable and secure. The less stabilisation your body has to do itself (i.e. stabilising the core and other joints) the more you will be able to contract the muscle of interest. This is incredibly important to understand if maximum muscle building is the goals.

If you want to maximise hypertrophy, then you likely want to choose exercises that have more stability. So, rather than doing something like a bent over row, you would ideally opt for something like a T-Bar row or some other chest supported row. rather than doing something like a standing barbell overhead press, you would do something like a seated shoulder press with a bar or even something like a machine overhead press.

However, there is still a benefit to training with somewhat less stability and requiring your body to stabilise itself more. This is especially true when we consider training for sports. While training the muscles in isolation is incredibly beneficial for building the strength and size of those muscles, this may not translate as well to the sporting world if you aren’t able to dynamically stabilise the rest of the body. The smaller stabiliser muscles of the core and around the various joints may not be as strong if you solely train with maximum stability all the time.

So, there is a place for training with more or less stability. And ultimately, it comes back to being specific in what you are actually trying to accomplish with training.

However, in very few cases is it a good choice to intentionally make a movement less stable. There is an argument to be made that this may be beneficial for rehabilitation from injury (e.g. strengthening the smaller stabilising muscles of the ankle after an ankle injury with some sort of wobble board training) and perhaps training stabilisation with the elderly. But for the vast majority of trainees, intentionally making an exercise less stable generally is not a good idea.

What This All Means For Exercise Selection

So, what does this all mean for exercise selection you may be thinking? Well, there are a few key takeaways from all this information.

• Some exercises are going to bias different portions of the muscle length, with some targeting more of the lengthened, mid or shortened range.
• If you want to choose exercises that allow you to lift the heaviest weights possible, then you are going to want to choose exercises that have you training in the mid-range.
• Training at the lengthened range of a muscle does seem to be beneficial for building muscle, although it is also potentially a range that has a higher risk of injury. Your muscles are quite weak in this range, and you are generally at the end ranges of joints when training here. So caution is warranted.
• As muscles move through their available ranges, they are going to have different force capabilities. As a result, your “strength” does vary across a movement. Where possible, we probably do want to choose movements that better fit the “strength profile” of the muscles.
• We ideally want to avoid movements that are very challenging in one portion of the range of motion, but then offer very little challenge for the rest of the range of motion (or at least we want to then train those portions of the range that are getting inadequately stimulated).
• It is rare that you will have an exercise that trains a muscle through its entire range of motion. So you will likely have to choose a variety of exercises for a given muscle group. Some will bias the lengthened, shortened, or mid-range. You can choose a movement that targets each of these ranges, but generally, we tend not to get too caught up in this unless there is good reason to. For most people, choosing exercises that allow them to train to a decent range of motion for a given muscle is all they really need to do. Occasionally fully lengthening and fully shortening that muscle across a training program is probably beneficial, but it isn’t something I would be overly worried about for the general trainee (however, it is helpful knowledge to have when trying to understand exercise better).
• Some exercises that are generally recommended may take you beyond the ranges you have available to your muscles, and similarly, some won’t adequately train those muscles through a full range of motion for you. So you will have to tailor your exercise selection to your unique anatomy.
• You must consider the range of motion available at the joints when choosing an exercise, and this is both the joints directly involved in the muscle contraction and the joints that are more peripherally involved. Some exercises may be good exercises for a muscle on paper, but you may not have the ranges available to perform that exercise effectively.
• We ideally want to choose exercises where the muscle of interest is the limiting factor, not other joints (for example, the ankles limiting the quad training), or indeed other muscles (for example the grip limiting performance on back exercises).
• We need to consider the stability demands of an exercise, and whether that aligns with what we ultimately actually want or need. If we are more concerned with maximum muscle building, then we likely want to prioritise exercises that have more stability. For sports, there is an argument to be made for choosing certain exercises that may not have as much stability, as you want to train the body’s ability to stabilise itself.

Now, there is more to this, and these are just a few points to consider. We do intend to create a lot more content around anatomy, exercise biomechanics and training in general. So if this interests you, then signing up to our email newsletter will allow you to stay up to date with the latest content.

Additional Exercise Selection Considerations

Choosing “the best exercise” is an area of training-related decision-making that beginner trainees tend to cripple themselves with. The baseline assumption is that the specific exercise one does is going to be the key difference between getting results and not getting results. This is not the case, which you may be relieved (or disappointed) to hear. In fact, most exercises are far more similar than they are different, and the typical trainee is going to rotate their exercise choices over time anyway, so worrying too much about specifics is a futile pursuit. 

While there is a lot to consider with exercise selection, I know this is an area that people really paralyse themselves into inaction over. So, I just want to cover a few extra points to help you choose an appropriate exercise.

Accessibility 

This is a very simple point, but an important one nonetheless. You should always consider what you have access to before anything else. This is one of the reasons training with barbells/dumbbells/free weights is such a great option; most gyms in most parts of the world will have the tools you require to continue your resistance training programme. While your favourite chest press machine might be more effective for chest development than a barbell bench press, the barbell bench press is likely to be accessible to you more often, which may be relevant if you are someone who travels regularly. 

Similarly, it may be the case that you just want to train at home with no more than a set of dumbbells and a kettlebell or two. As a result, you will need to choose dumbbell and/or kettlebell-specific variations of exercises, so, again, you choose based on that, rather than focusing on other criteria. 

Finally, please note that the equipment you have available is rarely a barrier to progressive training. You do not need the latest machines to make progress. It is extremely rare for even the best athletes in the world to have access to the best equipment, and very often they are using the very same relatively easily accessible equipment as everyone else. Once you have some means of applying some resistance to work against that you can progressively challenge your body with, whether that be through more weight, increased reps, or the addition of secondary resistance (e.g. free weights + bands), you can make progress. 

Preference/Suitability 

Believe it or not, you are allowed to have preferences. It can sometimes seem like going to the gym is all about forcing yourself to do things that you don’t like, in order to achieve results, but this is mostly untrue. While the pursuit of peak performance in a specific sport will require large trade-offs in what is enjoyable, this doesn’t apply as much for trainees with general strength and muscle-building goals. 

This is because hypertrophy is non-specific (i.e. not specific to any particular exercises) and strength is context-specific (i.e. your squat 1RM strength is only a useful measure of strength if that is your goal on that particular movement). Therefore, preferences are very relevant and can make the training process far more enjoyable, which can then lead to greater training adherence and outcomes. 

Along with this, suitability is a related point. There may be some exercises that just don’t feel right for you no matter how much you practise them, so if there is another exercise that trains similar muscles that just feels better to you, that is likely a better option.

For example, you can perform a deadlift from the floor with a conventional stance or a sumo stance. Most people will prefer one over the other, which then drives their exercise selection. This also applies to other exercises, especially if you have a significant injury history and/or disabilities that limit your performance in certain exercises. One example would be someone with Cerebral Palsy, who may find that exercises involving more stability and less balance are generally a better option (e.g. leg press vs lunges). 

Some exercises are also more or less suitable for certain training protocols. Some exercises are better suited to being used for lower or higher reps. For example, performing sets of heavy 3 reps with a wrist curl likely isn’t going to be a suitable way to train the forearm muscles. Similarly, trying to do a set of 30 reps for something like clean and jerks likely isn’t the best use of training time, and likely just increases injury risk.  

Strength/Skill 

The level of strength, skill, or competence related to a specific exercise also needs to be taken into account when choosing exercises. A conventional barbell weighs 20kg, which may be beyond your current level of strength for a given exercise. So you would have to use dumbbells or a machine to apply an appropriate level of resistance. Likewise, the barbell variation of an exercise (e.g. back squat) may be something you are really struggling with, so a dumbbell goblet squat might be an appropriate variation for the moment while you learn the skill of the movement and work your way back to using the barbell again in the future. 

There are no hard rules here, but in general, you should use the desire to apply an appropriately challenging training stimulus as a guiding light for selecting exercises. Trying to press the 20kg barbell overhead, even though it isn’t budging, isn’t an example of an appropriately challenging training stimulus, nor is getting stuck under the bar on the bench press. Outside of sporting competitions, there are no medals for squatting with a barbell versus a dumbbell, or sitting and standing off a chair versus squatting with your bum to your heels. At the end of the day, these are all just different methods of applying an appropriately challenging training stimulus, so focus on finding what that means for you rather than following predetermined choreography.

Progression Potential 

Very simply, can you make the exercise harder? Choosing exercises must be viewed longitudinally i.e. how will this play out over time? Purchasing one single kettlebell is a great way to begin engaging in resistance training, but there may come a point where progressing your kettlebell squat becomes impractical. While increasing repetitions with a light load is a viable way to progress, it is very impractical to begin doing sets of 20, 30, 40, etc., which will inevitably happen over time as you begin to gain strength.

This also applies to machines. Some machines, in some gyms, are not permissive of very heavy loading. It is not uncommon to see relatively new trainees stacking out the leg press machine in a commercial gym, meaning that he/she will now need to increase repetitions to progress the challenge of a set of leg presses (or move on to a different exercise that is more easily progressed). Therefore, if you know your gym has very limited machines, setting your sights on free weights for longer-term progress might be a better option. In our experience, “no more weights” is rarely a training obstacle, but congratulations if it is.

Specificity 

One of the key points to understand when it comes to resistance training is that strength is specific. I would probably argue that this is the most important principle of resistance training to understand, as it really helps you to grasp why you would design a program in a specific way, for a specific person. What it means is that we have “Specific Adaptations to Imposed Demands” (or, the SAID principle), so when we train with a specific type of resistance, in a specific position, at specific muscle lengths, with specific muscles, and a specific weight, the adaptations are specific to those criteria. 

For example, if you are trying to get as strong as possible in the sport of powerlifting, then the ultimate goal is to lift the heaviest weight you can for one rep. If you were to then design a program in which you trained primarily in the 8-12 rep range, then this would lack specificity for that goal, and you would not get the best results. You would get stronger, but the training wouldn’t be specific enough to get as strong as possible in a test of your 1 rep max. If that program also included a couple of sets per week in the 1-3 repetition range on the specific power lifts (squat, bench, deadlift), then that program would be much more suitable for that goal. 

Similarly, if powerlifting is the goal, and you never perform the squat, bench or deadlift, and just perform variations of those lifts, you likely won’t maximise your ability to perform those lifts. For sure, there will be a carryover from performing similar exercises that target roughly the same musculature, but it is unlikely that you will truly maximise your powerlifting performance by never or rarely performing the actual lifts you are going to be competing in. Lifting is a skill and to get good at the skill, you have to be specific in your training. You wouldn’t expect juggling to dramatically improve your ability to play tennis. They both use balls and require a lot of hand-eye coordination, but if time was limited, you would likely be better served practising tennis if you wanted to get good at tennis. Yes, there would be carryover, but it simply wouldn’t be the most effective use of the limited resource of time.

Having said that, you can also take this principle too far. You will see some extreme extrapolations of the principle of specificity, in which trainers/trainees try to make every exercise look like the task for which they are training. For example, you may see a boxer punching in the gym with weights in their hand, or a golfer swinging aggressively with cable resistance. This is not the ideal application, as strength training is not supposed to replicate the actions of sports, but instead support the strengthening of the muscles involved. Therefore, once you are improving the force-producing capabilities in your body as a whole, and the muscles most involved in your sport/daily life, you can be confident that you are doing the right thing. 

Resistance training is a means of improving the fitness quality of muscular strength, and the extreme example of specificity (e.g. punching with weights) may actually limit the strength outcomes from that training, making your time dedicated to that fitness quality less productive. At the end of the day, the most specific thing you can do when it comes to improving a sporting activity or activity of daily life is to actually practise that, so be careful not to put your efforts towards trying to replicate that in the gym, at the expense of time spent on specific practice. 

Examples of appropriate application of the principle of specificity would include: 

• Increasing squat strength to carryover to sit-to-stand ability. 
• Increasing lower body strength/high-velocity strength with partial squats for sprinting. 
• Increasing overhead pressing strength for individuals who struggle with overhead tasks.
• Increasing hamstring strength to reduce the risk of hamstring strains during sport. 
• Increasing hip-hinging strength and skill for individuals who have to pick heavy objects off the ground.

Exercise selection can seem complex, but it generally doesn’t need to be. The good thing about exercise is that there is more immediate feedback, which makes training more intuitive than the diet where feedback is generally delayed. For example, if you want to train your quads, and the exercise you have selected to train your quads is resulting in you not even feeling your quads doing work and you only feel it in your lower back, then you know something needs to change. It may be that you need to improve your technique or it may be that you simply need to choose a different exercise. So while you should certainly put some thought into your exercise selection, you are still going to have to test it in the real world. 

However, even if you do spend a lot of time thinking about what exercises are best suited for your goals and you test them out, the reality is that you are likely going to cycle through a variety of exercises throughout your training career. Some people also like to use exercise variety as a means to keep their program interesting, however, that may not be the best approach. So, we have to discuss exercise variety to round out this discussion.

Exercise Variety

It is likely a good idea to have a variety of exercises in a program. While we could allocate all our quad volume to squats, for example, and thus perform 10-20 sets of squats per week, this isn’t likely the most effective way to train for most people. For sure, if someone was incredibly focused on improving their squat, that may be a viable strategy. However, most people are looking for a more general increase in muscle and less specific increases in strength. 

Performing a variety of exercises for a given muscle group usually means that muscle is being targeted with a variety of different demands and thus is likely to grow in a more uniform manner. For example, if you compare the person performing 20 sets of squats to the person performing 20 total sets of squats, lunges, leg presses, and quad extensions, the person with more variety is likely to have more even development between all the muscles that make up the quads. They are also less likely to encounter overuse issues, associated with performing the same movement over and over. They also can probably perform more volume, can potentially overload for longer periods of time and will likely enjoy their training more, because they aren’t overloading certain areas more than others (i.e. the lower back can take a beating with squats, but someone who is performing a variety of exercises may not find the low back gets as fatigued). It is also potentially just more fun to have more variety in a program, rather than just doing the same movement over and over every time you train that muscle.

So it probably makes sense to have at least some variety in exercise selection. Unless you have very specific goals, having a variety of movement patterns in your program likely makes sense. As we touched on before, muscles can be trained through a variety of ranges, and certain exercises are going to bias certain portions of these ranges.

Rather than getting extremely fixated on this, we generally just recommend choosing exercises that train a variety of these ranges. Some exercises will bias the shortened range a bit more, some the mid-range, and some the lengthened. You can try to choose exercises that target each of these ranges specifically, but it likely isn’t necessary (although it likely is good practice). Similarly, there is some research to suggest that training at lengthened ranges may be slightly more beneficial for hypertrophy, but again, it isn’t necessary to overly fixate on this.

Just train through as full a range of motion as you can for a given muscle. This will generally mean choosing a variety of exercises for that muscle.

Now, I know your next questions are going to be, “Does that mean that we should just constantly cycle through exercises for a given muscle group?” and “How often should we change exercises?”

Exercise variety, and specifically the rate at which we change exercises, is a hotly contested subject among most trainees. Some people say we should change the exercises we do every week, some say we should never change the exercises and just focus on progressing those lifts forever, and like most things, the answer is somewhere in between. We need to focus on progressive overload, but we also must supply different stimuli to the body in accordance with our changing goals and needs. There are a number of points that we need to take into account to allow us to properly utilise exercise variety.

The rate of change of exercises is dictated by both the nature of the exercise and the strength quality being trained. Specificity is the governor of everything we do with regard to designing a training plan. We are looking to design a training program for a specific goal, and that goal may involve the use of specific exercises.

Training for success in bodybuilding requires no specific exercises but it requires specific adaptations (e.g. it doesn’t matter if you build your chest muscles using the chest press or the bench press, all that matters is that you build your chest muscles).

Whereas training for powerlifting requires that very specific exercises are used, as well as specific adaptations obtained. We could in theory only ever use three exercises for powerlifting and get good results, we would be hyper-specialised, but we would be very efficient with the demands of the sport. 

However, we need to realise that hyper-specialisation is not actually something desirable outside of sports/competition. If we only ever squatted, we would potentially open ourselves up to injury when we needed to run for the bus with a quick change of direction. The goal should be to create the adaptations we desire, while also being conscious of the longer term impact of our program design.

This may mean we have periods of time where we swap out certain exercises, even though they may theoretically be the most beneficial exercises for a specific goal. Alternatively, we may just change the loading parameters as a way to introduce exercise variety (for example, if we always do the bench press for low reps, we may introduce a higher rep block of training).

There is a huge individual response to recovery from a training stimulus. A lot of Olympic Weightlifting athletes, pretty much only ever perform about 8 different exercises in total, and they perform them with a high training frequency and rather high volume. Some people can squat with a very high frequency and get excellent results. But some people can’t recover from twice-a-week squat sessions even with the same daily volume someone else is able to do in their daily squat program. 

So although we can use overriding principles when designing a training program, your unique recovery must come first. This also must pay respect to your individual psychology. Regardless of if you have designed the training program that you know would be perfect for your goals, if you can’t adhere to it, it is useless. We must design training programs that are practical, while getting as close to optimal as we can.

The less organised training someone has engaged in before will also dictate how often we introduce exercise variety. Beginners need time to master the technique of lifting, so changing exercises frequently would be futile. However, what worked at the beginning will not work forever, and most advanced trainees could do with more exercise variety than the 4-8 exercises they probably have been trying to progress on for years.

Conversely, a diligent trainee may have figured out the handful of exercises that they have access to that really work for their body, and introducing more variety may simply not provide additional benefits. In cases like this, we may be best served just introducing more variety by changing the loading parameters (i.e. altering reps, rep tempo, volume, frequency etc.).

Most people will find that over time, progressing an exercise just becomes harder. There is obviously a natural slow down, as you get closer and closer to your capacity for that lift, and we can use exercise variety as a means of overcoming this. For example, we may have spent a couple of months progressing a certain lift, and in the last few months, progress has been very slow and almost non-existent. We may just swap out that exercise for something similar, and spend the next couple of months progressing that new exercise, until we find ourselves in a similar position again.

Having a bank of exercises that you can perform competently and which you feel you can “connect” well with is a good idea. It is also a good idea to keep a rough training log of previous performance in those exercises, so you can compare current performance to previous performance, and aim to be progressing over time. If you don’t have even a rough idea of how you did previously on that exercise, it can be quite hard to track progressions in strength over time (especially over years).

So how do we decide when to change exercises at a rate that isn’t too fast to lead to improvements, without staying on an exercise for so long that it leads to staleness?

It is very difficult to say for certain how often you should change out exercises, for most people, we tend to recommend sticking with an exercise for as long as you can still make progress on that exercise. You want to milk the exercise for all it is worth, before moving on to something else. If progress is still consistently being made, then there is no inherent reason to swap things out.

For beginners and even intermediates, progress can generally be made for long stretches of time without needing to change things out. However, as you get more advanced, you may find that you need to cycle through exercises at a faster rate. We still ideally want to keep things consistent for a few weeks, but we also don’t need to continue banging our heads against a brick wall trying to progress an exercise that simply isn’t progressing. 

It generally takes about 4-6 weeks to really get into a groove of being able to perform an exercise to your best abilities. Changing things out more frequently generally just means you are always training far below your potential, as you haven’t mastered the skill of performing that exercise. So we at least want to give the body some time to actually master and make progress on a given exercise.

This generally means sticking to the same exercise for long stretches of time, and just focusing on slowly getting stronger on those exercises.

However, this doesn’t mean we keep the program exactly the same for huge stretches of time. Introducing some degree of variety to a program every 4-8 weeks can make sense, and make training more enjoyable and even lead to better results.

We don’t need to make huge changes to the program to introduce some variety. Generally, I will keep the structure of the program the same, along with the vast majority of the exercises, and introduce some exercise variety into the program by simply changing the exercises for the smaller muscle groups. This way you still ensure that the big bang for your buck exercises get done consistently, and you are able to still enjoy some novelty in the program. 

This is especially beneficial for those who need a bit more novelty in their program to keep them consistent with training. We need to balance keeping training fun and interesting so you can be consistent and then actually making progress. So sticking to a few key lifts for a long period of time, and having a bit more flexibility in your exercise selection choices for the “less important” stuff in the program can be quite beneficial.

We also don’t need to make massive changes. We can make small changes to the exercise, so we are still training the same muscles, but we are just challenging them slightly differently. For example, we can change grip width, grip thickness, grip angle, range of motion etc. and still perform a very, very similar exercise.

In practice, say we wanted to train the chest and we find that progress on the bench press has been lacklustre. We could perform a bench press in numerous different ways, but still get a similar training effect e.g. thick bar bench press, wide grip bench press, close grip bench press, football bar bench press, pin press, floor press etc. So although we are still working a similar motor pattern, we are focusing on different aspects by implementing slight exercise variety. 

We could also just change the loading patterns, such as changing the rep range, tempo, or rest intervals. We can also cycle through RPE/RIR targets, as a means of exercise variety too. Variety doesn’t have to mean a totally different exercise. Practically speaking, most people will tend to just use changes in loading parameters, rather than switching exercises. However, some individuals do feel their training gets a bit boring if they are always doing the same exercise all of the time, and some variety in exercise selection can help keep them consistent with training.

Generally, I try to keep the training program the same for at least 4-8 weeks, and then potentially look to change some of the training parameters. After 16-20 weeks of a particular exercise, we may look to switch to something similar but different (of course, exercises can be swapped out earlier than this, if there is a good reason).

However, I will also generally start a session with a relatively consistent exercise (e.g. bench, squat, deadlift etc.) if the individual has particular numbers for that exercise to hit. An individual may want to improve their strength in a particular exercise, not because they think it will lead to more growth but rather because they enjoy that exercise. So that exercise will remain consistent until the numbers are hit, and we will introduce variety by way of changing the reps and sets of that exercise. 

I also tend to just recommend milking an exercise for all that it is worth before switching it out. That means you may be making slow progress on that exercise, but slow progress is still progress. Swapping the exercise out because it has stalled for a week or two generally isn’t good practice.

In general, I tend not to worry about this side of things too much. We are going to cycle through exercises over time anyway. For most people, there are no exercises that are mandatory, and we are just trying to find a handful of exercises that really work well for them and then get stronger at them over time.

Switching out exercises or making changes to the program very frequently, generally just leads to poor progress. This is fairly intuitive because you aren’t giving a consistent signal for the body to adapt to. It usually takes people somewhere in the range of 4-6 weeks to even get into the groove of an exercise, so if you are switching it out frequently, or making changes to the program frequently, it is going to be very tricky for that individual to actually adapt to the stimulus, because the stimulus is inconsistent. So we want to stick with an exercise for as long as we are still getting positive returns from that exercise, but we shouldn’t be afraid to make some slight changes to exercise selection as and when needed.

Exercise Order

Finally, exercise order is something that a lot of people stress over. This is both warranted and also oftentimes, overblown. Exercise order does matter, to some extent, but for most people, it isn’t going to be the make or break of the program. There are a number of considerations when deciding on exercise order and thus exercise selection, so let’s consider a few different sides of the discussion and see what we unearth. 

Some people will argue that performing your exercises in a certain order will either lead to better results by virtue of the exercise order itself, or will allow you to perform the subsequent exercises on your program more effectively and thus generate better results. There may be some benefits to certain ordering of exercises, as it may lead to a better connection to the movement’s subsequent movements and it may serve as a kind of warm-up for key joints/muscles for subsequent exercises. 

For example, some people will perform a quad extension before their heavy squatting movement, because they find it helps them to “warm up” their knees. Similarly, some people suggest that performing hamstring curls before squats will allow you to have “warmed up” knees and also provide you with some extra “pop” out of the bottom position of the squat.

Ultimately, there isn’t a huge amount of research to confirm or deny these claims, and we are left with using anecdotes and some basic reasoning. We could make up some theoretical hypotheses as to why certain exercise ordering would confer certain benefits or not, but there is nothing conclusive in the research. It is also unlikely that we will ever get this data, because it is likely to be more individual than generalisable. You may find certain exercise ordering works well for your body, but that doesn’t mean it will be more generalisable.

However, having said the above, there are potentially worse ways to order exercises. Performing certain exercises earlier in a workout may mean that your performance across the rest of the workout is severely limited. For example, you may perform a heavy set of squats, and as a result, your lower back becomes extremely fatigued. If you have some sort of heavy hip hinge afterwards, your performance in that hip hinge may be reduced, due to the low back now being fatigued.

As a result, you are getting a lower return on investment for your hip hinging, because your glutes and hamstrings are getting an insufficient stimulus, while your lower back is getting excessive stimulus. Similarly, if you do a lot of shoulder or tricep work before your chest work, your chest will likely be understimulated, because the shoulders and triceps are too fatigued to press the weights required to adequately stimulate the chest. 

We can also increase the likelihood of injury with certain exercise ordering too. For example, performing a heavy and fatiguing leg workout and then programming box jumps to finish the workout. There will likely be a lot of falls and scraped shins with that protocol. Similarly, performing a highly fatiguing shoulder workout and then trying to perform high-rep Olympic weightlifting variations is likely to lead to some shoulder issues as you try to catch a weight overhead in a fatigued state. 

So some exercise orderings make more sense than other exercise orderings. But how are you to order your exercises? Sure, you know that some ways are worse than others, but this still doesn’t really help you start to organise a program. Well, some people would suggest doing your “compound” exercises (exercises that work a large amount of muscle and generally involve more joints moving) first as the starting point.

The basis for this is that these exercises are usually higher skill requiring and they are also the exercises that you are more easily able to overload, and thus you “get more bang for your buck” with these exercises. The main benefit of having your compound exercises first in the workout is that it allows you to really focus on progressive overload with these exercises. As you are generally less fatigued at this point and thus you are more likely to be able to put your best effort into the movements here. 

However, some people advocate doing “isolation” exercises (exercises that generally only work a single muscle, usually with only one joint moving) first in your workout. The proponents of this method would suggest that you are going to be limited in even getting into certain positions (notably the shortened range) in a fatigued state later in your workout. So you can only adequately train certain movements when you are fresher.

For example, let’s say you have a quad extension later in your workout, after you have already performed a lot of heavy quad work with squats, leg presses, lunges etc. You are unlikely to be able to fully shorten the quad muscles at the top of the rep with this ordering, as you are too almost certainly too fatigued to consistently get into that fully contracted position. So the argument is that you should perform these isolation exercises earlier in the workout, so you aren’t limiting your ability to get into these positions by fatigue.

There are also arguments for performing isolation work first, as it allows you to warm up the muscles and joints that are then going to be put under heavy loads later in the workout. 

There is also an argument to be made that you could use isolation exercises earlier in a workout, to pre-exhaust certain muscles. This can be a negative (as discussed previously), but it can actually be a perfectly valid method to use. For example, you may find that your triceps take the brunt of the work in a bench press, and your chest doesn’t get sufficient work. So you might perform some tricep work earlier in the workout, so they can’t contribute as much to the chest work.

Ultimately, there are a variety of ways you could potentially order your exercises. In general, fatigue increases across a workout, and therefore the higher skill-requiring and higher priority stuff should be placed first as a baseline. This can be altered based on the specific goals, but in general, high-skill and high-priority work should go first. This may mean isolation work is performed first, or it may mean compound stuff is performed first. Ultimately, it all depends on the specific goal and adaptation we are trying to accomplish. 

We also have to factor in what the individual has access to, and what is practical in their training environment. If you have a number of exercises that require a squat rack, and if that individual trains in a public gym at busy times, it may simply be impractical to have to go away from the squat rack, and then come back and try to get the squat rack at different times during the workout. It may be more practical to just bunch those exercises together. It may not be the best exercise ordering in theory, but it means the workout actually gets done.

It should also be noted that it is important to try and perform the exercises in the same, if not a very similar order each time that workout is done. If you are constantly chopping and changing the order, you are going to be in varying states of fatigue going into each exercise each session. This will make it harder to accurately compare performance over time, and to be more precise with your progressive overload.

Exercise order across the week must also be considered. The way you order the exercises across the week can have a pretty big impact on performance in subsequent workouts. For example, it is quite common to see people training 6 days per week with a push, pull, legs style of program, repeated twice per week.

This is objectively one of the worst ways to organise this training.

Training your back, the day before you train the legs, is almost certainly going to impact your ability to actually train the legs hard. Even doing something like holding a barbell on your back to squat is more difficult if you have trained your back the day before, and if you do anything resembling a barbell row, your lower back will likely also be fatigued going into the lower body session. Training the shoulder girdle and pressing muscles intensely with a push session the day before legs wouldn’t be as bad. So we should at least reorganise it to push, legs, pull. However, we would likely be better organising it to legs, pull, push, as that is likely the best way to minimise overlapping fatigue, especially if the rotation is being repeated twice in a week. 

We can’t just look at exercise order in isolation, we must also consider what we intend to do later in the week, and what we have done previously in the week. Workouts don’t occur in isolation, they should be thought of as part of a larger training program.

The following exercise order rules can be quite helpful to keep in mind when thinking of exercise ordering:

• Compound before isolation: Start with compound exercises that involve multiple muscle groups and joints, as they require more energy and coordination. 
• Large muscle groups before small: Prioritise exercises targeting larger muscle groups before moving to smaller ones. This ensures optimal performance and energy allocation for the most demanding movements.
• Power and strength before hypertrophy: If incorporating power exercises (explosive movements like cleans or snatches) or exercises that are more strength focused, perform them earlier in the workout when energy levels are highest to maximise power and strength output.
• Pre-fatigue: In some cases, pre-fatiguing a muscle group with isolation exercises before compound movements can enhance muscle recruitment and activation. 
• Priority order: If a particular muscle group or lift is a priority for improvement, place it earlier in the workout when fatigue levels are lowest and focus can be maximised.
• Individual needs: Consider your individual goals, strengths, weaknesses, and preferences when determining exercise order. Adjustments may be necessary based on factors such as training experience, injury history, and recovery capacity.
• Crossover fatigue: You must take account of what else you have planned in the rest of the program, as exercise ordering is not just about individual workouts. The way you order those exercises across a week does also matter. Some exercises performed earlier in a training week will affect the performance of exercises subsequently in the week, so we must adjust for this.

Exercise Selection Conclusion

So, we covered a lot of information in this article. I know exercise selection is something that a lot of people really struggle with, but hopefully, this article has helped clear up some of the questions you had.

If you would like more help with your training (or nutrition), we do also have online coaching spaces available. You can further build your knowledge on all things exercise by interacting with our free content. We recommend reading our foundational nutrition article, along with our foundational articles on sleep and stress management, if you really want to learn more about how to optimise your lifestyle. If you want even more free information on exercise, you can follow us on Instagram, YouTube or listen to the podcast, where we discuss all the little intricacies of exercise.

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Finally, if you want to learn how to coach nutrition, then consider our Nutrition Coach Certification course and if you want to learn to get better at exercise program design, then consider our course on exercise program design. We do have other courses available too. If you don’t understand something, or you just need clarification, you can always reach out to us on Instagram or via email.

The previous article in this series is about Resistance Training For Muscle & Strength and the next article in this series is about Understanding Reps, if you are interested in continuing to learn about exercise program design. You can also go to our exercise hub to find more exercise content.

Paddy Farrell

www.triagemethod.com

Hey, I'm Paddy!

I am a coach who loves to help people master their health and fitness. I am a personal trainer, strength and conditioning coach, and I have a degree in Biochemistry and Biomolecular Science. I have been coaching people for over 10 years now.

When I grew up, you couldn't find great health and fitness information, and you still can't really. So my content aims to solve that!

I enjoy training in the gym, doing martial arts and hiking in the mountains (around Europe, mainly). I am also an avid reader of history, politics and science. When I am not in the mountains, exercising or reading, you will likely find me in a museum.