Exercise Selection

Exercise Selection

Last week I wrote an article titled "Getting Back to Basics". On of the areas I mentioned in the training section was exercise selection and since then I have received a few questions about exercise selection from people who wanted to know more about it. So I thought I would take this chance to expand upon the recommendations I made last week.

Why consider exercise selection?

I'd like to note that exercise selection is just one piece of the puzzle when constructing a training program. It isn't necessarily the most important thing but it is fairly important. Exercises are after all the basis by which we achieve our goals related to resistance training. Choosing exercises that are the right fit for you is something to be thoughtfully considered.

 

How to select an exercise

Numerous factors are involved when selecting exercises.  I have summarised them into what I consider to be the most important. Exercises should: be effective for your goals, suit your mechanics, not hurt you, be enjoyable and be good for making progress.

Effectiveness for your goals

I think this one is really important because first and foremost it reminds us that we should have specific goals. If we are just going into the gym to train without really having something that we want to achieve or if we just have a really vague idea of our goals then we might be wasting our efforts. Once we have a goal or goals we can select exercises which we think will best help us progress towards them. If that goal is development of strength we might want to choose a lot of compound exercises. If we want to to be really strong at squats specifically it makes sense to choose to do mainly squats rather than say a bunch of leg press. If our goal is to develop certain parts of our physique we can start thinking about compound and isolation exercises that best target certain muscle groups. If you want big arms, bicep and tricep focused exercises rather than calf raises are probably the ticket.

You can also consider the pros and cons of exercises that train similar muscle groups. For example you might compare a dumbbell fly to a cable fly for training the chest and you might decide that based on your weighing of the pros and cons of each exercise that the cable fly is going to be the better choice.

I do want to note that this does not mean that you should choose only isolation exercises because you think they are going to better isolate muscle groups. I'm just saying you should compare exercises critically to some extent to decide which is theoretically the better exercise choice.

Suitable for your mechanics

In this case I'm talking about biomechanics in regards to things like limb length, muscle strengths and weaknesses, mobility etc. For example there are numerous different deadlift variations in existence, the main two being conventional and sumo deadlifts. If you happen to have long arms and a short torso you might be mechanically better equipped to perform conventional deadlifts than those with short arms relative to their torso. This is an example of where limb length can be a factor you consider. If you have big quads and are good at squatting you might be better at pulling sumo. This is an example of where current muscle strength can be a deciding factor (interestingly we are now using current muscle strengths to decide what exercises we choose whereas when considering our goals we were thinking about which areas we lack in strength or size). All these things should be considered individually and together when making a choice about exercises when it comes to mechanics.

 Doesn't cause or worsen injury

Things to be considered in this case are current injuries and I suppose for lack of a better phrase "how you are put together". In a general sense we could say - "if it hurts don't do it" and that would be somewhat valid. I guess the problem with that is that you could just be performing the exercise wrong and there may not be anything inherently wrong with the exercise itself in relation to you. So assuming that you are performing an exercise correctly if it just doesn't feel right or it is causing you pain/injury then it might be intelligent to exclude that exercise.

When it comes to previous injury exercise selection is fair straight forward - if you have an injury and an exercise causes a problem with that injury, don't do it. In my case I have an L5/S1 disc protrusion and I find whenever I perform conventional deadlifts that area tends to flare up the next day. It's just the position that that exercise puts me in and the forces associated with my spine don't make my injury very happy despite me using seemingly correct form.

In regards to how we are put together what I am talking about there is things like joint structure. It is clear that anatomically we are all similar but there are specific differences and variations when it comes to attachments and bone structure. For example if we talk about the hip joint people have different sized femoral heads, different length neck of the femor, acetabulums of different sizes and orientation. This kind of thing can affect not only what stances feel comfortable/uncomfortable but indeed what exercises feel good/bad.

Enjoyment

How much you like an exercise is quite important. If you like the exercises you are doing you are more likely to adhere to your training program and put effort into the exercises. This is not to say that you should include exclusively exercises that you enjoy. Sometimes exercises which you don't enjoy doing are of great benefit and might be worth considering so long as you don't absolutely despise doing them. Further this is not always a fixed/unchanging thing. You might like an exercise for a while and eventually grow to dislike like it or become bored of it. In my case I typically enjoy doing decline dumbbell presses and eventually require a break from doing them because the difficult set up becomes tiresome at some stage.

Ability to progress

The ability to progress on the exercises you choose is something to be highly considered. Progression is a really important part of a training program no matter whether your primary goal is to get stronger or to build muscle. The two go hand in hand to some extent. I suppose there is always going to be some way to progress on most exercises. But you need to ask yourself "is it measurable?". Obviously the most measurable ways to progress are to add weight, add reps or even add sets. You could also do things like alter tempo or rest periods but these things don't have as much of an effect as the other things.

In terms of adding weight, compound exercises are going to be your best bet ie it is generally easier to add weight or reps to a compound exercise than it is to an isolation exercise. This is because multiple muscle groups are involved in compound exercises and more weight is being moved. because the weights involved are generally greater, if you increase the weight on a compound exercise it is usually a smaller percentage than it would be for an isolation exercise. For example if you are squatting 100 kg and you increase the weight to 102.5 kg, you have increased the weight by 2.5 kg or 2.5%. However, if you are curling 15 kg and you increase the weight to 17.5 kg, you have also increased the weight by 2.5 kg but the percentage increase is almost 17%! This is why at some stage it can becoming exceedingly difficult to continue to add weight or even reps to exercises like bicep curls or lateral raises.

I'm not saying that you should include exclusively compound exercises in your programming if your goal is physique development or that isolation exercises are worthless. But you should be aware of the limitations that can be sometimes associated with some isolation exercises. Ideally, you should look to include a combination of both which will allow you to make progress overall.

Big Picture Thinking

It would be a good time to note that exercise selection, whilst important, is just one aspect of a good training program. Each of the points I have outlined above needs to be thought about individually and together with the other points. Further to that exercise selection needs to be considered amongst the other training variables. For example sometimes exercises that work a muscle group most efficiently and can seem like a good choice when it comes to achieving your goals, might fall short in other areas like progression. In other cases an exercise which might not seem like a good choice to train a particular muscle group might be fine within the context of the entire program because total volume might be sufficient that the exercise being suboptimal in that regard might become relatively irrelevant.

Summary

Things to consider when selecting exercises:

- Effective for your goals
- Suits your mechanics
- Doesn't hurt you
- Enjoyable
- Able to make progress on

That is it for this week. Thankyou for reading. I'll be back with a new topic next week.

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- Evan