Whenever I talk to people about their exercise routines, inevitably, they tell me what exercises they are doing. What most people don’t realize is that exercise selection is actually only the fourth most important variable in exercise program design.

What? The actual exercises are not that important in an exercise program? Yep, you heard me right. Exercise selection isn’t that important.

The single most important variable is your progression model. After that, it’s intensity. After that, it’s volume. And only the fourth most important variable is the exercises themselves.

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Original source: here.

What do I mean by all that? What does “progression model”, “intensity” and “volume” all mean? That’s what we’ll cover in this article – essentially – what factors should be considered when designing a personal fitness program and why. This is for you whether you’re designing your own programs, or if you’re a personal trainer, designing for clients. And if you want to just skip all the theory, and have a proper program designed for you, feel free to fill out this questionnaire, to see if you qualify to work with us.

Progression Model

Above all other variables, this one is king. Because exercise should be progressive. You may be a complete beginner right now, but the body responds to exercise consistently, predictably, and if you’re a beginner, quickly (within 1-3 days). So yes, you can get stronger literally workout-to-workout at first (your first 1-3 months of exercise).

And if you do the exact same sets, repetitions and weights after 2 weeks of starting a program, you are shortchanging your results.

A person with all the wrong exercises, but with an appropriate progression will make far better progress than another person with all the right exercises, but no progression. Of course, ideally, we have both: proper progression, and correct exercises.

What are different ways to make progress? The most obvious is to increase the repetitions, or increase the weight. But there are other methods of progression:

  1. Increase the number of sets
  2. Decrease the rest periods in between sets/exercises
  3. Use more complex exercises
  4. Do the reps faster
  5. Do the reps slower (yes, both faster and slower are progressions for different reasons)
  6. Use a greater range of motion

And different progressions will have different physiological effects on the body. Here’s how they break down:

  • Increasing weights increases strength
  • Increasing reps increases muscular endurance
  • Increasing sets also increases muscular endurance
  • Decreasing the rest periods between sets/exercises increases cardiovascular endurance
  • Using more complex exercises improves coordination
  • Doing the reps faster increases speed and power
  • Doing the reps slower increases muscular endurance
  • Increasing range of motion increases flexibility

As you can tell, selecting a proper progression model takes some thought and consideration in terms of what you want to improve. And if you’re looking at the above list like a menu, and thinking “I want everything” (strength, endurance, coordination, power, flexibility, etc.), you’ll get nowhere. I would just pick your 1-2 top priorities, and stick with those progressions.

For our fat loss clients, here’s a typical progression that I might use for a hypothetical exercise:

Workout 1: 10 pounds, 15 reps

Workout 2: 10 pounds, 16 reps

Workout 3: 10 pounds, 17 reps

Workout 4: 10 pounds, 18 reps

Workout 5: 10 pounds, 19 reps

Workout 6: 10 pounds, 20 reps

Workout 7: 12 pounds, 15 reps

Workout 8: 12 pounds, 16 reps

…you get the idea.

And that may be a typical fat loss progression. But I want to point out 2 things:

  1. This is typical. You specifically may not be typical.
  2. This is our progression for fat loss. If your goals don’t include fat loss, a different progression may be more appropriate.

Intensity

When I refer to intensity, I don’t necessarily mean effort. The sport science definition of intensity is the percentage of your maximum strength that you’re working at. That is, if the most amount of weight you can lift for 1 repetition is 100 pounds, 80 pounds represents 80% intensity. 50 pounds represents 50% intensity. You get the idea.

Intensity is the second most important variable when it comes to exercise program design, because it has the second biggest impact on your results. Additionally, intensity will influence your decision for variables lower down on the priority scale. For example, if you select 90% intensity, you know your volume (which will be explained in the next section) will need to be lower than if you selected 50% intensity. At 90% intensity, you may only be able to do 2-5 reps. At 50% intensity, you might do over 30.

And different goals necessitate different intensities.

  • If your goal is strength and power, you may want to use 80% intensity or higher
  • If your goal is toning, and muscle mass, you may want to use about 60-80%
  • If your goal is muscular endurance, you may want to use less than 70% intensity (yes, there’s overlap with muscle mass)

Volume

The sport science definition of volume is sets x reps x weight. So if you’re doing 3 sets of 10 reps, with 100 pounds, your volume is 3000 pounds for that exercise.

But in conventional gym lingo, the weight is taken out, and volume just refers to sets and reps.

Volume has the third biggest impact on your results.

Basically, after having selected the appropriate progression, and the intensity, volume just falls into place. In a nutshell, you can’t do many reps at a high intensity, so intensity and volume are inversely related. That is, the higher the intensity, the lower the volume.

  • If the intensity you selected was 80% or higher, you might do that for maybe 3 sets of 3, or 5 sets of 5, or somewhere in between, but you likely wouldn’t be able to exceed 5-6 reps per set, because the weight is just too heavy.
  • If the intensity you selected was 60-80%, you could probably do 6-20 reps per set. So your volume would be higher.
  • If the volume you selected was under 60%, you could probably do 20 or more reps per set, so your volume has the potential to be high.

Exercise Selection

Finally comes the least important part of a program: the actual exercises. The exercises simply determine which muscle is working. You can stress different parts of a muscle, but that’s basically it.

Just look at the material above. If all you know is which exercises a person is doing, you don’t know:

  • Whether they are working on strength, endurance, flexibility or power
  • Whether they are going to make progress
  • Whether they have sufficient volume and intensity to reach their goals

…and more.

Of course, that’s not to say that exercise selection is not important – it is, but it’s not the single most important variable.

As you can tell, there’s quite a bit to exercise programming, so hopefully this article helps you put together your own programs. But if you want it done by a professional, so you don’t wonder whether you’re doing it right or not, feel free to fill out this form to see if you qualify to work with us.