Eat Train Sleep

When I was new to the gym, I had no idea how to put together a training regime. A typical chest day would contain countless numbers of flat bench presses and flat dumbbell presses with a few sets on cables and the pec dec thrown in for good measure. However, as I have become more experienced I have learned to put a bit more planning into my exercise selections, ensuring that my routine contains enough variety.

Most people would think that this is common sense, however I still see countless numbers of people doing practically the same exercise countless number of times in the same routine. The prime example is biceps. How many people do you see doing standing barbell curls followed by standing dumbbell curls? Quite a few, right? What’s the point in travelling down the same road twice? Both exercises practically work the muscle in the same way.

Add variety to your training routine

When devising a routine it is important to get enough variety. And when it comes to exercise selection, variety has everything to do with angles . You want to choose a selection of exercises that hit a muscle at different angles.

For chest, this is simple. You have incline, decline and flat as well as fly movements. Most people know this. But, when you come to biceps, how do you make your exercise selection.

With biceps, the variety comes from two factors - the supination of the hand and the stretch on the bicep. Supination can be altered by using a hammer style grip or a standard reverse grip. The stretch can be altered one of three ways. Either have your arm straight down by the side of your body (standing curl), stretched behind your body (lying on an incline bench) or in front of your body (concentration curl). By selecting exercises that place a different stretch on the muscle, it ensures that your routine has enough variety to hit the muscle at different angles and promote well rounded growth of the muscle.

So, whenever putting together a routine for a muscle group, look at the various angles that you can attack the muscle. By ensuring you don’t select two exercises that work the muscle in the same way, I’m sure your will see an improvement in development and growth.

In part two, I will go through each muscle group and detail how to make the appropriate selection of exercises to provide enough variety in your routine.

Eat.Train.Sleep.