This is gonna be a very high level overview
of exercise selection to give you some pointers
and general guidelines
or bumpers if you will, if you're picking exercises
for your own transformation plan.
Or to kind of double check,
make sure there's no red flags in the exercise selection
of someone who is writing your program for you.
So you can ask questions
and make sure they have a logical thought
process behind them.
Very generally, we're gonna look at
the length and the challenge.
Those are two different things in exercises.
A shortened length exercise just means
that muscle is getting to a shortened position
or training on average in its mid to shortened range.
For the most part, lengthened is just the opposite.
We are getting that muscle to a more stretched position
and training it in a more stretched range of motion.
This is different than challenge, which is specific
to the exercise itself.
So it could be in a lengthened position for the muscle,
but hard in the short position of the rep.
This would be an incline dumbbell curl as I have down here.
We're in shoulder extension
and elbow extension, getting to a lengthened position,
but it's not hardest there.
It's hardest once you get into elbow flexion,
the short position of the exercise.
So that is a short challenge, but a lengthened position.
Then we have things that are shortened,
challenge just the opposite.
It's hard when the muscle is in the shortest part of the rep
and a lengthened challenge hardest when you are in the more
stretched or lengthened portion of the rep.
So I put this general little table down here
to give you some examples
of the different combinations of these.
Whereas a short position lengthened challenge would be a
dumbbell creature curl.
So you're in shoulder flexion
and you're getting to a fairly short bicep position,
but it's not hardest here in the short position.
It's hardest when your elbow is extended,
the lengthened position of that exercise.
Now, that will be important when we look at
how we're picking what exercises and where to put them.
So here's some considerations
for lengthened versus shortened,
and generally speaking, when I say shortened exercise,
I'm talking about something that is going
to be harder in the short position, short challenge,
and then generally in a short position as well.
So these are going to be easier to recover from acutely,
so it's easier to train them at a higher frequency compared
to doing the same number of sets
and same intensity of a lengthened exercise,
which means we can drive more metabolic adaptations
with less fatigue carrying over between workouts,
even though you may feel you fatigue more quickly
between sets within the workout.
Those are the two different things.
Length and exercise benefits.
You can achieve a potentially greater mechanical tension
stimulus, which is going to help us
with preserving that muscle
Tissue or creating a stimulus to grow muscle tissue.
You can get that done in fewer reps
and fewer sets compared to the shortened exercises.
It will also help you maintain coordination
and strength in those length
and ranges, which can be beneficial for,
um, injury prevention.
So when we're programming this
or picking exercise to put in our program, if we're trying
to train with relatively high frequency
and a moderate to higher volume of, uh, exercises
and sets per exercise, we might want 60, 70, even 80%
of our exercises
to be a little more biased towards the shortened exercises.
So short, harder in the short position,
and slightly shorter muscle length to support our ability
to recover more frequently.
They also, as the calories get lower
and perhaps you're doing lower training volume,
a lower volume of lengthened bias exercises can help you
preserve muscle mass, since you may not have the
carbohydrates available as those calories come down
to support higher volumes of work or muscle glycogen.
So there's cases to use, either one, you just have
to pair it appropriately depending on
where our calories are, how frequently we're training,
how much training volume we want
to be utilizing in our program.
So what about if you have limited exercise selection?
What if you don't have a leg extension?
You don't have a cable machine,
you don't have APEC fly machine to train.
You know, those exercises in a more
short position very easily.
You only have free weights or you only have bands, right?
So for example, if no leg extensions available
and we're basically restricted to squatting patterns
to train our quads, how do we get higher frequency
with length and bias exercises without under recovering
or being hard to maintain that frequency?
That's gonna come down to effort management,
meaning we're not taking every set to failure.
We're leaving a couple reps in the tank on pretty much every
set, but maybe we do an extra set or two.
Again, not going all the way to failure.
That can potentially be a way to manage that variable.
What about if bands are the only feasible option
for some exercises?
Well, bands are less fatiguing on average than other
machines and cables
because their resistance, their challenge is very biased
to the short position as you stretch that band, as you push
or pull on that band resistance.
So higher volumes of band work can be tolerated
and you can utilize creative methods like reverse drop sets,
partials, et cetera.
You can use those more frequently to improve the efficiency
and stimulus of your workout.
So that's why understanding how to utilize some
of those things or having a coach that is, uh, you know,
very well versed in these principles on how
to manipulate these things can make your workouts much more
effective and get us to our goal a little more efficiently.