- Dec 3, 2012
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I was reading a study over on Ergo-log, and it reaffirmed something that I've been doing for the last few years. Every few weeks I look at my lifts and break down my weakest and strongest lifts. I then move my weakest lift to the beginning of my workout. This does a couple things for me that I really benefit from.
First, it helps prevent boredom and keeps me from getting into too much of rut. When I do the exact same workout in the same order week after week I find myself turning on the autopilot and not really concentrating on what I'm doing. My progress suffers and that's when I tend to hit plateaus.
Second, it changes up the stimulus. Your body adapts to changes in stimulus, and that's what causes muscle growth and increased strength. Changing the order of exercises is yet another change to the stimulus that your body experiences, and it creates another change that your body has to adapt to.
It helps to bring along smaller, neglected accessory muscles faster, especially if you don't usually train them until after your larger muscle groups. The common thought process is to train large muscle groups and follow that up with smaller muscle groups i.e. Chest first then tris. Back first then, biceps. And that does work. The only problem this order presents is that no matter how good we are at isolating the larger muscle group, inevitably we always still use our accessory muscle at least somewhat.
I find that many times once I've completed my large muscle group training and moved onto smaller muscle groups, my smaller muscle groups are already at a level of fatigue that sometimes makes it difficult to achieve the number of sets and reps that I feel I should be able to achieve with the given weight. Often times the final exercise in my routine ends up being shakey and having terrible form, all in the name of just trying to get the reps in.
What I found is that when I move my one weakest exercise to the beginning of my routine, regardless of whether it's a small or large muscle group, is that this lift starts to increase in weight very quickly. It's never impacted any of my other lifts negatively that I've noticed, nor does it negatively impact my recovery, or anything else that I've ever noticed. Overall, it's a simple strategy that has always paid positive dividends for me, and it requires you to do basically nothing to reap those rewards.
This is not necessarily a novel concept either, and I'm not trying to take credit for "inventing" this idea. Just throwing something out there that I haven't seen discussed here that guys might benefit from. Give it a shot and let everyone know what you think.
First, it helps prevent boredom and keeps me from getting into too much of rut. When I do the exact same workout in the same order week after week I find myself turning on the autopilot and not really concentrating on what I'm doing. My progress suffers and that's when I tend to hit plateaus.
Second, it changes up the stimulus. Your body adapts to changes in stimulus, and that's what causes muscle growth and increased strength. Changing the order of exercises is yet another change to the stimulus that your body experiences, and it creates another change that your body has to adapt to.
It helps to bring along smaller, neglected accessory muscles faster, especially if you don't usually train them until after your larger muscle groups. The common thought process is to train large muscle groups and follow that up with smaller muscle groups i.e. Chest first then tris. Back first then, biceps. And that does work. The only problem this order presents is that no matter how good we are at isolating the larger muscle group, inevitably we always still use our accessory muscle at least somewhat.
I find that many times once I've completed my large muscle group training and moved onto smaller muscle groups, my smaller muscle groups are already at a level of fatigue that sometimes makes it difficult to achieve the number of sets and reps that I feel I should be able to achieve with the given weight. Often times the final exercise in my routine ends up being shakey and having terrible form, all in the name of just trying to get the reps in.
What I found is that when I move my one weakest exercise to the beginning of my routine, regardless of whether it's a small or large muscle group, is that this lift starts to increase in weight very quickly. It's never impacted any of my other lifts negatively that I've noticed, nor does it negatively impact my recovery, or anything else that I've ever noticed. Overall, it's a simple strategy that has always paid positive dividends for me, and it requires you to do basically nothing to reap those rewards.
This is not necessarily a novel concept either, and I'm not trying to take credit for "inventing" this idea. Just throwing something out there that I haven't seen discussed here that guys might benefit from. Give it a shot and let everyone know what you think.
