How important is exercise selection for muscle growth?
Pretty much everyone in the gym will tell you that exercise variation is important element if you want to maximize your muscle growth and build a complete physique. It is pretty much common knowledge by now. However, to what degree is it important and how often should you switch your exercises is not known by many. This ends up usually in two different ways. The first one is where you train with too little variety and the second one is where you train with too much variety. So how do we fix this? Stick around and you will find out.
There is no ''must do'' exercises
There is no such thing as an ultimate exercise that you must do if you want to grow. You should have a selection of your exercises for each muscle group that you periodically rotate from month to month. You selection should depend on your preferences. A general rule of thumb is to have at least 50% compound movements with the rest being isolation movements. Exercises should be challenging ones as you need to sufficiently stress your body in order to force muscular adaptations over time. I will give you a list of exercises that you can choose from later in this article.
Benefits of variation
It has been scientifically proven that it is not only possible to target different heads of the muscle, but also portions of a given muscle fiber. This is called fiber partitioning. Bicep is a good example where you have 2 heads, long and short, but also different parts of these fibers are more stimulates with different actions. For example fibers in the lateral portion of the long head are recruited by elbow flexion, but fibers in the medial part are recruited by supination, and fibers centrally located are recruited by a combination of both. Long head is also more activated during the early part of the curl while the short head is more activated during the latter part of the curl.
This tells us that a combination of different arm curls can help you to maximize bicep size. For example the hardest part when doing standing barbell bicep curl is the early part of the movement, putting a lot of stress on the short head. If you combine this exercise with machine preacher curl where the hardest point of the movement is the latter part, you emphasize both heads and different parts of muscle fiber as well.
How often should you change your exercises?
If you are looking to plan your workouts for at least a month in advance (which you should) with a proper prioritization scheme, then you should pick exercises for that month and stick with them till the end of that meso cycle. The benefit of this is that your muscles get used to these exercises, so there is no motor learning and neural adaptations you can progress with this selection till the end of the month. This way you can easily track progress and follow a periodization scheme where you gradually increase the load. For example if you want to plan your workouts for chest, ideally you would train 2 times a week with 4 different exercises in total. After you finish this cycle, you would introduce variety by changing 2 exercises out of 4, this way you can still make progression on already familiar exercises but also have a variety. This is not a rigid rule so if you feel like doing this every 2-3 months it is also fine. From my experience the longer you stick with exactly the same exercises with the same rep range the greater the risk of injury if you train hard for progression.
Biggest trick for making the biggest muscle gains
Range of motion and perfect form. Yep, it is so simple yet so disregarded by so many people simply underestimating the power of it. I challenge you to try it on every single exercise. I cannot stress how important this is for your gains. First by doing a perfect form you will significantly reduce the risk of injury. You will also work the muscle that you actually want to grow instead of combination of different muscles due to swinging or moving etc. This also helps to preserve your recovery for the next session as it will be localized to the specific muscle instead of other muscles, meaning you will feel fresher for your next session.
Range of motion is important for maximum muscle growth and recruitment of all muscle fibers. For example when you are doing a hack squat or even a regular squat, the difference when you go all the way down compared to just partial rep is enormous. You will actually feel your quads burning as they are on fire. This will eventually result in greater hypertrophy. Always remember that form and range of motion always comes first. Ego lifting simply is not sustainable and it will result in an injury given sufficient time. That is a certainty.
Exercise selection
So to transition to the most interesting part, which exercises proved to be best for most people over time? I will give you a selection that you can choose from. My recommendation is to try them and see which ones work best for you. We are all different with different muscle architecture, meaning not every exercise will be equally beneficial for all of us. This is something that you need to test and see results.
Chest (Total weekly volume: 12 - 20 sets)
Barbell flat bench press (medium grip)
Barbell flat bench press (wide grip)
Barbell incline bench press (medium grip)
Barbell incline bench press (wide grip)
Dumbbell flat bench press
Dumbbell incline bench press
Vertical machine press
Dumbbell flye, pec dec flye, or high, medium, low cable flye.
Example plan:
Monday
Barbell flat bench press (wide grip)
Pec dec flye
Thursday
Barbell incline bench press (medium grip)
Vertical incline machine press
Triceps (Total weekly volume: 10 - 14 sets)
Barbell skull crusher
Dumbbell skull crusher
Dips
Cable tricep push down
Cable rope push down
Barbell overhead tricep extension
Dumbbell seated overhead tricep extension
Cable overhead triceps extension
Example plan:
Monday
Barbell skull crusher
Cable rope push down
Thursday
Weighted dips
Back (Total weekly volume: 14 - 22 sets)
Overhand pull up
Overhand weighted pull up
Underhand pull up
Underhand weighted pull up
Overhand wide grip pull down
Underhand medium grip pull down
Underhand close grip pull down
Bent over barbell row
Bent over dumbbell row
T-bar row
Vertical row machine
Example:
Tuesday
Barbell bent rows
Wide grip pull up
Friday
Weighted pull up
Vertical row machine
Biceps (Total weekly volume 14 - 20 sets)
Barbell curl medium grip
Barbell curl narrow grip
Dumbbell curl
Barbell preacher curl
Dumbbell preacher curl
Dumbbell decline bench curl
Cable curl, Bayesian curl
Hammer curl
Example:
Tuesday
Barbell curl medium grip
Wednesday
Dumbbell decline curl
Friday
Barbell curl medium grip
Saturday
Bayesian curl
Shoulders (Total weekly volume 16 - 22 sets)
Standing barbell overhead press
Standing dumbbell overhead press
Seated barbell overhead press
Seated dumbbell overhead press
Shoulder press machine
Dumbbell side lateral rise
Barbell upright row
Dumbbell upright row
Rear lateral rise
Cable face pull
Reverse pec dec
Example:
Monday
Standing barbell overhead press
Dumbbell side lateral rise
Tuesday
Dumbbell upright row
Rear lateral rise
Thursday
Shoulder press machine
Cable side lateral rise
Friday
Reverse pec dec
Barbell upright row
Traps (Total weekly volume 12 - 20 sets)
Barbell shrug
Dumbbell shrug
Close grip upright rows
Example:
Tuesday
Barbell shrug
Friday
Dumbbell shrug
Quadriceps ( Total weekly volume 12 - 18 sets)
High bar squat
Front squat
Close stance feet forward squat
Hack squat
Leg press
Example:
Wednesday
High bar squat
Leg press
Saturday
Hack squat
Hamstrings
Stiff legged dead lift
Lying leg curl
Seated leg curl
Standing leg curl
45 degree back rise
Example:
Wednesday
Lying leg curl
Saturday
Stiff legged dead lift
Gluteus (Total weekly volume 4 - 12 sets)
Barbell walking lunge
Dumbbell walking lunge
Sumo squat
Sumo dead-lift
Dead-lift
Glute bridges
Example:
Wednesday
Glute bridges
Saturday
Dumbbell walking lunges
Calves (Total weekly volume 12 - 16 sets)
Standing calf rise
Seated calf rise
Donkey calf rise
Example:
Wednesday
Standing calf rise
Saturday
Seated calf rise
There you go, I have given you a full list of exercises that I personally use and rotate regularly every month or two. Pick your favorites and truly master them when it comes to form and range of motion as those are the key elements to muscle growth and longevity.
For a more detailed guide on how to set up your workout plan for 3 months check out my free Workout 2.0 guide below!
