Principles To Consider When Selecting Exercises For Your Workout

Principles to consider when selecting exercises for your workout

Aiming to pack on some pounds of lean muscle mass is always related to lifting weight training. The range of exercises included in your workout have not not be randomly, as only training with weights is not enough. There are some important principles to guide of when planning your workout. Missing them lead to less muscle gains, while efforts put on this are quite high. A smart approach to setting your exercises program is what you need for getting the most of each workout. So, read further and find out most important factors to pay attention on when selecting exercises for your training routine.

Compounds exercises, less isolation exercises

For training any part of body the most suited are compounds exercises. They put a higher load on nervous, respiratory and cardiovascular system than isolation movements. Compound exercises are harder to perform, thus you get better results. Performing bench presses help you develop both body strength and muscle mass, while tricep curls act locally and with no benefits for whole body. Compound exercises are more specific for human body structure. But this doesn’t means that isolation exercises can be excluded at all. They also have their place in an workout, but they will never compete with compound movements. Especially if your goal is to increase body strength and muscle mass.

Thereby, regardless of your experience level, make compounds exercises a priority in your workout. Only after this you can include isolation exercises too. If you have  few time for training, than focus on compounds movements only. You lose nothing if avoid isolation ones, since most of big muscles are enough worked during basic movements.

Among most useful compounds exercises are squats, pull-ups, dips, bench presses and deadlifts. They work out large group of muscles as legs, back, chest, shoulder or arms.

High range of motion exercises

When it comes to range of motion exercises, than you have to choose the one with maximum range of motion. This term is used to describe the number of movements you have at each joints while doing a exercise. How you detect a higher or lower range exercise? Is quite simple, based on grip you use for handling weights you train with. The narrow is the grip, the lower is the range of motion.

For increasing body strength and muscles indicators more tailored are exercises with higher range of motion. This category of exercises elevates the complexity of movements, putting a bigger stress on muscles. Thereby, a shoulder-width apart grip is recommended for reaching maximum range of motion of exercises. Performing such exercises as barbell squats or bench presses allow for a greater range of motion when used a shoulder-width apart grip. And not only these exercises, but in case of all other movements the same principle remain available.

Use concentric and eccentric exercises

Concentric training stands for contraction of muscle when lift weights. Eccentric training is about stretching the muscle while lowering weights. Also, there are exercises the meet both type of training. Let’s take for example squats. When you goes down you do a eccentric movement, while coming back up is an concentric one. There have been done a lot of research on this principle. The results proved that exercises that include both concentric and eccentric phases are more effective for building muscle mass and strength than those including only one phase. This means that basic exercises, which are more natural for human body, a quite beneficial than machine exercises. This fact should serve you as a strong reason to put isolation exercises on second place, and give the priority to compounds ones.

Big weights or a high number of reps

As we said, there is no muscle growth with no loads training. Cardio training is also good for health, but you will never manage to build muscle jumping or running. These exercises are great for losing fat, while muscle grow when big stress is put on it. Many bodybuilder, especially starters, who heard something about loads importance, do a big mistake in this regard. They begin working out with big weights, much higher than their body possibilities. The result in most cases is overtraining, while others get injured. So, there is a big no for such a path. This is how you should not do. Smart people use progressive increase of loads. This means that you have to begin with low weights and increase them on a regular schedule. This can be a weekly or a 4-5 day schedule. Doing so, you not only avoid injuries and overtraining, but also keep your muscle grow continuously. Getting stuck into a muscle plateaus is impossible when using such a method.

If for some reasons you are not allowed to go with bigger weights, then there is an effective alternative to this. You can keep a high intensity training by gradually increasing the number of reps, hence the training duration. As a bodybuilder you should know that reaching a high training intensity can be done whether through bigger weights or a higher number of reps. Training with many reps with big weights is specific for more experienced bodybuilders, who know already which tactics work best for him or her.

Split training system

Split training is not the invention of modern bodybuilding. It is used from the very beginning of this kind of sport, and define they way you group muscles to be trained. There are 2, 3, 5 or even 6 day split training. The most common is 2-day split training. It is performed at every 4 days. In first day your train lower body( legs, back, biceps, arms), while the second day is for upper body( chest, arm, abs,triceps).

Three-day split is also very popular among bodybuilders. In first day are trained legs group muscles, in the second day chest and abs and during the third training is worked out back muscle.  Such a split gives you two days for recovery, which can be less for a poor physically prepared people.

There is also a double split workout, created by Arnold Schwarzenegger. It suppose training twice a day during six days. Such a split is ideal for pre-contest time.

There are many other principles to be applied when setting up an workout plan. However these ones are the most important and have to be known by everyone who is going to train hard for building muscle mass.