If you’ve ever stepped foot in a gym chances are you planned on improving your body composition and building some muscle mass.
If hypertrophy (growing a muscle) is the goal then one thing we have to think about is our exercise selection in our program.
When choosing which exercises we perform in there gym we must consider the following:
The first consideration is an an obvious one – does the exercise you’ve chosen deliver a hypertrophic stimulus to the muscle you’re trying to target? Do you feel the the desired muscle working on this exercise? Are you achieving a good ‘mind-muscle’ connection? Some exercises you will feel working better than others, this often manifests as a ‘ burn’ in the muscle. If you come off a set of bench press and feel your front delts burning, chances are you haven’t adequately trained your chest.
The second consideration is exercise to fatigue ratio. Ideally you want to minimise fatigue whilst you’re stimulating the muscle. For example a barbell squat is an can be a useful exercise for growing your quads, however doing 30 sets of heavy barbell squats per week is probably going to leave you broken! That’s why we would utilise leg presses, legs extensions and a whole host of other alternatives to grow the quads.
When designing your program make sure it’s set up to give you the most bang for your buck.
