How many exercises do you do for a muscle group and why?

O

orthodox_christian

New member
Going to a gym with many machines and most of them good ones, I think I started doing too many exercises.

Pros:
  • if one machine is occupied, I can easily go to another one.
  • you hit the muscle from different angles (especially on back)
  • the same exercises bocomes not that good after a while.
Cons:
  • I feel like there are too many exercises to deal with and I've seen some videos where the main idea was that "if you get really good at a lift and do it often, you will develop that muscle" - e.g. doing a lot of chinups & stop doing other vertical pulling exercises = you will have a big back
  • harder to take notes and follow progression.
  • something GVS said about doing the same exercise, but with low reps one day and high reps another day. In a way, it feels so different, you feel like you do another exercise when you use high reps vs low reps.
I was thinking of switching to only 2 exercises per group (or per movement) - one a free weight, the other one a machine.
  1. Push / 2. Pull / 3. Hinge / 4. Squat
  2. Biceps / 6. Triceps / 7. Delts / 8. Abs
So, how many exercises do you do for a muscle group and why?
 
@orthodox_christian I do a mashup of an upper/lower 4 day split. 5 exercises a day. Each day will start with the compound first.

Like for eg:
- Monday - flat bench
- Tuesday - Barbell Squat
- Thursday - Incline bench
- Friday - RDL, Hack Squat

After those are out of the way, I'll do 4 accessories/isolations. Either machines, dumbbells or weighed calisthenics like pull ups/chin ups for my back.

All in all, each muscle group gets in about 9-12 sets. But I train like a powerlifter on the barbells (either lower reps or my modified 531) and go higher (8-12) reps for everything else. If it becomes too hard to progress on an accessory/isolation, switch to another alternative exercise and get strong at that too. It's just what's worked for me.
 
@orthodox_christian I do a posterior/anterior split 4 days a week. I keep my main lifts (5x5) the same and do minimal tinkering with accessory work. I swap out exercises for similar one in between meso cycles and modify the volume a bit if I want slightly different focus.

But overall, the exercise count stays identical since I don't want to drop any movement patterns. I might get rid of the second horizontal pull on posterior day 2 as it's a bit redundant and move my second core workout also to posterior day.

I'm also looking to maybe cut back one exercise, but I haven't figured out yet how to do it in a balanced way. Near the end of a meso, the 5x5 work becomes quite taxing.

This was last meso, still tinkering for the new one.

Posterior day 1 (Legs First) :
  • Legs: 5x RDL
  • Vertical Pull: 5x Chinups
  • Horizontal Pull: 3x Wide Grip Chest Supported Row
  • Rear delt: 3x Reverse Pec Dec
  • Biceps: 4x Seated incline curls
  • Brachi*: 4x Hammer curl
  • Core: 3x hanging leg raise, 3x crunch Machine
Posterior Day 2 (Legs Last) :
  • Vertical Pull: 5x Pull ups
  • Horizontal Pull: 5x Bent Over BB Row
  • Horizontal Pull 2: 3x Narrow grip Cable row
  • Rear Delt: 5x Face Pull
  • Biceps: 4x Cable Curl
  • Brachi*: 4x Cable Hammer Curl
  • Legs: 3x Seated/ 3x lying leg curl
Anterior Day 1 (Legs Last):
  • Vertical Press: 5x OHP
  • Incline Press: 5x BB Incline bench
  • Flat press: 3x DB flat bench
  • Side Delt: 3x Cable Lateral Raise
  • Triceps: 3x Cable Extension, 3x Dips
  • Legs: 3x Leg Press/3x Calf Raise
Anterior Day 2 (Legs First):
  • Legs: 5x Squat
  • Flat Press: 5x BB flat bench
  • Incline Press: 3x DB Incline Bench
  • Vertical Press: 3x DB Shoulder Press
  • Chest Fly: 3x Cable chest flies
  • Side delt: 3x Cable Lateral Raise
  • Triceps: 3x DB skullcrusher
  • Core: 3x hanging leg raise/3x crunch machine
 
@orthodox_christian Yep that was exactly the idea. I can only train 4 (consecutive) days a week so full body was out of the question due to recovery issues, and an upper/lower split was too leg heavy for my goals. I wanted to train everything twice, so bro split wasn't an option either. PPL seemed great, but I didn't like the idea of having to rotate every week.

So I decided on this weird concoction lol. This allows me to train all body parts twice, while still approximating the 2-1 upper/lower ratio of a PPL and while still not ideal, at least my muscles get one day to rest before training them again.

A little unconventional it seems, but the more I get it fine-tuned, the more I like it. Works amazing for my specific schedule.
 
@eliashaile Really like this split. I’ve done push-pull in the past but programmed a bit less intelligently. You’ve given me a few ideas to work with. Are your 5x5s all working sets at the same weight or ramping up/down?
 
@curiouswalrus They are all at the same weight with the last one an AMRAP set. I'm relatively new so I am still aiming for lots of linear progression there.

I use my warm up sets to "ramp up" to the weight and then crank out my 5x5s. As long as I complete my 5x5, I add 5 lbs.

It doesn't work every time anymore though, but I do 7 weeks of buildup followed by a deload now. So I just start with a slightly lower weight (about 3 RIR) and then add 5 lbs for 7 weeks.
 
@orthodox_christian As few as possible. For back I‘d do one horizontal and one vertical pulling movement per day and then do that twice a week with different exercises on each day so I include narrow and wide grips, but I don’t do every movement in ever training. For chest I always have one pushing movement and one fly movement, also alternating. For even less complex muscles such as biceps or triceps I‘d just do one exercise per training.

Most muscles have one or two main functions, so I just do few movements and do other exercise variations in later mesocycles.
 
@jefhe08 This is where I’m trending as well. Pick the exercises that really work for you and give you the best stimulus and take them as far as they’ll go. Keep it simple.
 
@orthodox_christian I do a rolling push pull legs twice a week with a day rest in between. Push day 1 chest has me doing incline db pressing and a cable chest fly. Push 2 has me flat benching and doing dips.

Front, middle and rear delts and other small muscles usually get 1 exercise having already been worked in the compound lifts but they are still trained to failure.

I train rear delts on both push and pull days and am tempted to see how throwing them into my leg day goes too lol.

I’ll back squat on my first leg, stiff leg on second leg day but conventional deadlift on my 1st back day.

Biceps and triceps are always 2-3 exercises, my arms respond well to high stimulus.

My work outs go for about 1.5 hrs, I am consider moving some stuff around to train twice a day perhaps biceps triceps and rear delts get shifted to their own dedicated sessions and I add some ab work in.

I’ve been going at this for 1 meso so far, so will give it a few more before I say that it’s the right thing for me but so far it is yielding gains. Others I speak to say you shouldn’t mix it up so much but week to week I have this structure in place that never changes so the consistency is there so I think it will work long term.
 
@orthodox_christian Doing a ULPPL, weekly volume is the following:

Chest: 15

Back: 18

Side delts: 9

Triceps: 9

Biceps: 9

Quads: 15

Hamstrings: 9

Glutes: 3 (only the abdutor machine)

Calf: 9

Abdominal: 9 (3 at the end of every upper focused workout)
 
@orthodox_christian Weekly - 14 back 14 chest 8 side delts 8 triceps 8 biceps 12 quads 12 hamstrings 8 calf’s. I add 4 sets of hanging leg raises on one leg day and 4 sets of heavy machine crunches on the other. Do an upper/lower split.
 
@orthodox_christian When I started lifting , on my own without a trainer, I used StrongLifts 5x5 - I forgot how I discovered it but it was useful for a) introducing me to the main compound lifts (squat, bench, deadlift, overhead press, bent over row) and b) a simple program to follow (3-day split, full body each day)

I decided to work with a personal trainer to help me get in shape for my wedding - he designed 2-week programs for me, with splits ranging from 3-5 days depending on my travel schedule - he had me so 3x10 rep ranges in order to focus on hypertrophy - still barbell compound lift based but a lot more accessory exercises

After my wedding I decided to take lifting more seriously and started working with a strength coach to improve my form and prevent injury - this coach turned me on to Jim Wendler’s 531 Program, which I’m doing now

At first I found it confusing - I know how to plug numbers into a spreadsheet but I didn’t understand the Why behind the percentage based weights, why the training max is different from the 1RM, why there were so many different templates, and other questions I had - I started reading his books and joined the 531 sub-Reddit - a lot more of Wendler’s thinking makes sense to me now and I can see how simple it is to follow

Right now I’m doing the First Set Last variation - I like the focus on 1 main lift and doing 3 work sets up to a PR, followed by 5x5 sets - and then doing accessory lifts of 50 push total reps (ie 5x10), 50 pull, and 50 single leg or core
 
@orthodox_christian PPL - doing 2 sets of 3 different exercises for primary movements.

I did 2 sets of 2 exercises last mesocycle but was recovering really quickly, so far this seems to be an improvement.
 
@purpleflower2 That’s definitely a lot but can’t argue with progress. If you ever stall or hit recovery issues you can confidently dial it back and keep chucking along 💪
 
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