Intelligent Design in Training Part 4: Exercise Order, Sets, Resistance, Repetition, & Volume

Is Your "Warm up" Hurting your gains? Might be.

After we have done our due diligence to determine what exercises can most efficiently deliver the needs of our athlete and client, we are left with structuring those exercises within individual workouts. There are five major variables that we control during this process:

• Exercise Order: The placement of each exercise within the workout, or its placement before or after other exercises.

• Repetition: How many times a given exercise is performed in a given set, during a workout, and throughout the week.

• Set: a collection of repetitions. E.g., “3 sets of 12” or “3x12” would mean performing the exercise 

• Resistance: the type and difficulty of external stimulus, the clearest example being the weight moved

• Volume: The total amount of weight lifted. Generally, this is achieved by multiplying the weight used by the number of repetitions by the number of sets, or V= (WxR)xS. For 3 sets of 10 repetitions at 100 pounds, the total volume would be: V=(100x10)x3, or V=3,000 pounds.

In subsequent articles, each of these will be addressed separately with an additional post examining them in their totality. For this post, we will address exercise order.

Exercise order can make or break a training program.

 Done right, it amplifies adaptations, reduces injury risk, and maximizes results. But its effectiveness depends on respecting principles while remaining adaptable to individual goals, fatigue, recovery, and performance demands.

Exercise order is one of the simplest variables to address when designing a training program. Like other areas of program design, there is a general approach that can then be modified and adapted to the needs of an individual based on their specific goals and purpose of training. Sometimes these various guidelines conflict with one another, and in those situations a knowledgeable professional should be able to adapt and navigate to cater to the needs of the client.

The basic approach follows the following guidelines:

1. Training Priority Principle

   1. Exercises that focus on the primary goal (strength, hypertrophy, endurance, or a specific movement pattern) should be performed earliest in the workout so as not to be negatively affected by client fatigue

      1. If the principal goal is to increase the deadlift, the deadlift should be performed first.

2. Multi-Joint/Compound/Closed Chain (CKC) movements precede Single-Joint/Isolation/Open Chain (OKC) movements

   1. Compound movements precede isolation movements in order to maximize motor unit recruitment and minimize fatigue

   2. From a safety perspective, Compound movements stimulate more muscles and require greater neuromuscular coordination, so performing them earliest in the workout when the CNS is freshest reduces risk probability.

3. Neurological Demand

   1. Highly Technical or neurologically-demanding lifts require the greatest focus and CNS activation and should be performed at the beginning of the session. 

   2. These almost inevitably overlap with prior considerations.

4. Fatigue Management

   1. Exercises that induce the highest fatigue (that is, have a high fatigue ratio) should precede low-fatigue exercises.

   2. Failing to follow this guidelines can increase injury risk and interfere with the adaptive stimulus for later exercises

      1. I.e., if your goal is to increase your squat, but you perform heavy farmer carries first, you will not be able to execute your squat at full potential.

5. Movement Planes & Patterns

   1. Exercises that utilize the same movement pattern, movement plane, and/or muscle groups should be avoided unless programmed specifically for a guided purpose (see later)

   2. Overlapping patterns and planes reduces the potential of exercises lower in the exercise order, potentially undercutting adapting response.

   3. This does not mean you cannot utilize multiple patterns simultaneously; proper rotation of exercises in a given order or even within the same set maximize recovery and make an efficient use of time depending on training purpose.

6. Hormonal Considerations

   1. Exercise order directly affects hormone response.

      1. Compound lifts increase testosterone, but only when performed early

         1. This effect is dramatically reduced if performed later in the workout or following endurance training (cardio)

      2. Compound lifts with short intervals (such as those used for hypertrophy) increase Human growth hormone (HGH)

         1. Performing endurance work prior may diminish HGH upregulation.

      3. Long workouts following cardio increase cortisol, a hormone that reduces the anabolic response to resistance training.

      4. IGF-1 is indirectly affected base on impact to testosterone, HGH, and cortisol

Effects to Endocrine System by Exercise Order

7. Goal-Specific Considerations

   1. In specific use cases, these guidelines can be altered or completely ignored

   2. For hypertrophy, pre-exhaustion is a very powerful tool (performing leg extensions prior to squats to emphasize the quads) in order to increase stress on the desired muscle

   3. For prehab/rehab, pre-fatigue can also be used to “activate” a muscle so that it functions properly in complex movements

   4. For strength, the specific movement (i.e., deadlifts) should always be performed earliest and should be isolated from concurrent exercises

      1. Phrased differently, if your goal is to increase your absolute strength in the deadlift, do not perform other exercises during your rest interval from deadlifts.

   5. For maximal power development, Contrast Training that utilizes post-activation potentiation (PAP) can be used.

      1. This orders a heavy compound lift that is immediately followed by a maximal-effort plyometric movement, e.g., squats followed by depth jumps.

   6. For competitive athletes, such as boxers, MMA fighters, grapplers, and sprinters, technical sport work will always precede any other exercises.

      1. Fatigue Tolerance Training: Late-stage exercises may simulate fatigue-specific sport conditions to drive specific metabolic adaptations

      2. Contrast Training is also a consideration

   7. For prehab/rehab, exercise order is often reversed, prioritizing lower-load isolation exercises first

      1. Often, the first exercises are meant to activate the proper muscles and enhance joint stability

   
   

   

   Generalized Exercise Order Paradigm

Following this blueprint is fundamental, but it also falls on the training professional to understand when to make exceptions or alterations specific to the needs of individuals.

Exercise order can make or break an entire program. Cardiovascular training, often used as a general warm-up prior to resistance training, actually reduces your return-on-investment. Something as simple as sprinting prior to resistance training, and vice versa, create a different response. More often than not, this response is detrimental to the goals of the weight room.

One must also recognize the method of technical execution of any given exercise can alter its presumed placement in any exercise order. A compound exercise performed for power or speed will direct its order in the given program, and that position may change depending on the technical method used or the current programming phase.