The principles of quality exercise selection
The training industry, and strength/general preparation training in specific tends to repeatedly exhibit a race to the bottom in terms of novel exercise selection and application. When trying to comb through all of the noise to dial in the best possible programming decisions for yourself or your athletes, it can be incredibly valuable to perform a heuristic evaluation of what composes a quality exercise selection decision for any of the qualities you’re trying to train.
In short- what are the simple rules of thumb when it comes to picking an exercise, and how do you apply those to complex scenarios?
At its most basic, the questions that should drive your exercise selection choices are as follows-
What type of adaptation am I trying to make?
Is this exercise progressable in stimulus?
The first key heuristic of a good exercise is that it trains what you’re trying to train, with enough stimulus to actually make an adaptation away from baseline. The majority of issues that arise from faulty exercise selections is that they ends up being an example of what my old boss would call “All stones, no birds”.
This essentially means that by trying to train to many things at once in an exercise, you end up training none. Be explicitly clear with what adaptation you’re shooting for. Is it absolute strength through muscular and neural output? Hypertrophy through challenging the tissue with high amounts of mechanical tension through large ranges of motion, specifically at end ranges? High levels of neural output by moving at maximal or near-maximal speeds? Start by defining the destination in terms of adaptation, then use the exercise as a efficient delivery system that gets you where you’re trying to go.
“If a man knows not which port he sails, no wind is favorable.” - Seneca
By starting here, you’ll also be able to control for the rest of stimulus in the program. Is the athlete getting a ton of high intensity sprinting on the field currently? No need to add more to the point of maladaptation, etc. Furthermore, this will allow your scope of programming decisions to narrow significantly as you begin to view exercise selection as a funnel through which to deliver the stimulus that drives adaptation, and nothing more.
The second question necessary for quality exercise selection is “Is this exercise progressable in stimulus?” The best exercises have a nearly limitless capacity for stimulus progression, and drive enough high output stimulus by design to push the needle and cause an adaptation.
Let’s start by defining what we mean by stimulus. Stimulus is an external input that takes the body out of homeostasis, and drives an adaptation. The main examples of this stimulus are mechanical load (resistance training,etc), metabolic demand (aerobic training,etc) and environmental factors (temperature, altitude, noise, etc.).
For our purposes, we’ll stick to mechanical load in this instance, specifically when chasing more anaerobic qualities like strength and power. Our goal is to progressively increase this mechanical load changing the work (Force x Displacement), while keeping in mind Newton’s second law (Force = Mass x Acceleration) . We can do this by using a combination of the following tactics-
Increasing the mass of the object we’re displacing (heavier weights)
Increasing the total displacement of the object we’re moving (for example, going deeper in a squat)
Increasing the moment arm - defined as the perpendicular distance between the axis of rotation and the line of force. This allows for increased torque (for example, progressing from a Glute-Ham Raise to a Nordic Hamstring Curl)
Increasing the acceleration at which an object of a specific mass is displaced (A good example would be sprinting faster, or jumping higher)
Effective, Lindy exercise selections are so progressable because they drive at least 3 out of the 4 above potential inputs. Why is sprinting so universally agreed upon as one of the most important exercises for increasing speed and power? Because it’s infinitely progressable in acceleration and displacement (you can always sprint faster, and at different ranges of distance) and it is easily modifiable in terms of mass.
The most tried and true resistance training exercises have a moment arm that increases as the muscle lengthens, as well as being stable enough to progress in total force. Think of Romanian deadlifts, prone hamstring curls, and nordic hamstring curls as key examples of this for the posterior chain of the lower body.
By picking these modalities with a high capacity for stimulus, you can train them for weeks, months and even years on end with very small modifications in exercise application for variabilities sake, and continually make progress.
There’s always a handoff between biomechanical optimization and capacity for stimulus progression. What you’re looking for are exercises that are somewhere in the middle, meaning that they’re biomechanically advantageous enough to train the adaptation you’re trying to train, and progressable enough that you can continuously train like hell and push the needle.
Happy Hunting.
