Exercise Selection for Better Muscle Growth

The best exercises for muscle growth have been hotly debated for decades. In many cases, peoples choices around exercise selection have stemmed from their own personal bias. This bias will narrow the lens toward specific movements and modes of training, affecting the progress of the lifters as they will be missing out on the benefits of a wider scope of exercise selection.

To make the right choices for the lifter, its important to have a framework covering the components specific to the goal. In this article we are going to investigate several considerations for how to select the right exercises specific to growing muscle.

Muscle Structure

If we look at things from a physiological perspective, the variances in muscle structure i.e. fascicle orientation, give us an indication that we need to adopt a multi planar/multi angled approach to hypertrophy.

Skeletal muscle can be categorized into four groups based on its anatomical arrangement:

1. Parallel: A muscle with a common point of attachment, with fascicles running in parallel to each other. Parallel muscles can be divided into fusiform and non-fusiform types based on their shape. Fusiform muscles are a more spindle shaped (their diameter at the center is greater than at either end), whereas non-fusiform muscles are more rectangular with a constant diameter.
   The biceps brachii is a fusiform muscle, whereas the sartorious is non fusiform.
2. Convergent: Convergent muscles have a common point of attachment from which the muscle fascicles extend outward, not necessarily in a parallel pattern, allowing the muscle to cover a broad surface. The orientation of these muscle fibers can often result in differing effects during contraction, such as not pulling in the same direction depending on the location of the muscle fiber. These muscles generally involve more versatile movements.
   The pectoralis major is a convergent muscle which can be trained in a multi planar fashion.
3. Pennate: These muscles have a tendon that runs through the length of the muscle. The fascicles pull on the tendon at an angle, meaning they don’t move far or have limited contractile range of motion. However these muscles tend to have more muscle fibers than similar sized parallel muscles, thus they can carry more tension. There are 3 types of pennate muscles; unipenate, bipennate and multipennate. These are all characterised by the orientation of the muscle fascicles onto the tendon.
   An example of a bipennate muscle is the rectus femoris.
4. Circular: A ring like band of muscle that surrounds a bodily opening, constricting and relaxing to control flow, like the muscles surrounding the mouth. It is important to mention this is not a skeletal muscle type we train for strength and hypertrophy.

Muscle Action

For hypertrophy training, it’s important to understand joint and muscle actions. Each exercise involves specific actions from joints and muscles, to move and contract forcefully when performing repetitions.
An example of this is looking at the biceps brachii, which has two heads (long and short head). The biceps actions is to flex the elbow and supinate the forearm.
Research has indicated that the lateral portion of the long head of the biceps is recruited for elbow flexion, where fibers in the medial portion of the long head are recruited for supination. The short head of the biceps sees greater involvement as the elbow moves toward flexion (contracted position). This is the opposite to the long head of the biceps, as its more active in the early phases of the movement. This supports the notion of exercise variety through full contractile range of motion, in programs to ensure complete muscle stimulation.

Exercise Types: Compound vs Isolation?

Movements in the gym are categorized into two main groups; compound and isolation. Compound exercises are movements that use more than one joint in order to be performed. They also involve multiple muscle groups.

The name isolation pretty much gives it away, they are movements specific to a muscle group, and occur at one joint only. This limits the participation of any other muscle group, with the goal of centralizing focus in a specific area.

There always will be debate for which movement is better. The short answer is both, and it depends (I know how boring!). Like everything, exercise selection is context specific and comes down to the lifter, their goals and individual situation.

Lets look at some of the pros for compound movements:

• Activate and use large amounts of muscle in a single movement
• Time efficient for stimulating large amounts of muscle mass
• Generally you can lift the most amount of weight with compound movements making them great for strength training

Now, lets look at some of the cons:

• Movements are more technical in nature
• Breakdowns in the movement can come from other areas than volitional fatigue of target muscles
• Some lifters don’f fit the mechanical profile for some compound movements, making them a poor exercise for hypertrophy

Lets look at the pros for isolation movements:

• Great way to centralize work in a muscle group
• Great way to increase the stimulus (through volume) but potentially not increase the fatigue demand too much, compared to compound movements
• Great environment to work to volitional fatigue (safe and less areas to breakdown)
• In most cases very simple movements that are easy to learn and execute

The cons to isolation movements are:

• They have a smaller degree of muscle activation compared to compound movements. This means they require less energy to be performed
• Less involvement for stabilizer muscles good lead to movement function issues
• May be time consuming to focus solely on isolation movements during a workout
• Can potentially cause imbalances in ones physique if proper exercise programming and selection is not adhered to

For the purpose of muscle growth it is undoubtedly beneficial to have compound movements in a training program. They recruit lots of muscle, stimulate stabilizer muscle groups, and activate antagonist muscles as well. This can help maintain a degree of movement functionality that is important for day to day function, and injury prevention. However, if we look at the training considerations for creating a hypertrophic specific training stimulus, a lot of those components sit in the pro’s section for isolation movements. This means we should have a combination of both movement types and specifics of movements is ultimately down to the athletes needs and abilities.

Another consideration to mention here is the recovery demand of the movement. Some movements are highly fatiguing, like most free weight movements compared to machine and cable movements. This is due to the degree of muscle damage generated from the eccentric phase of a free weight lift. It’s important to consider the amount of highly fatiguing movements, to lower fatiguing movements when putting a program together. When training for growth both volume and effort are extremely important. It may be advantageous to send a large portion of that volume and effort toward lower fatiguing movements like machines and cables over free weights.

Individual Considerations

There are many individual considerations that influence exercise selection, like the anthropometrics of a lifter. Individual bio-mechanics is heavily influenced by one’s proportional bone structure. This differs how one person moves to another, meaning how one loads and accesses tension in specific muscles can also differ. Based on this information alone, a uniformed approach to exercise selection seems very ‘cookie cutter’.

Other things to consider are the skill level of the client. Are they able to complete the movement with a high level of skill and precision? This may sway your exercise selection toward, or away from guided movements like machines. Its important to understand that when training for growth, if a lifters skill and proficiency isn't high enough for a movement. it will be hard to achieve an acceptable proximity to volitional fatigue. This is why its important to not have a bias toward complex movements. The training stimulus would be extremely low, if the lifter isn’t skilled enough to perform the movement with the required effort.

The last consideration is access to equipment. We have to work with what is available to the individual. It may not be an optimal circumstance overall, but its about making the training program optimal for the individual in their circumstance.

Important to note: Exercise Order

I think its important to discuss exercise order to a degree, as it can influence exercise selection. In general it makes a lot of sense to place the bigger, multi jointed movements at the start of the session, then transition to the smaller movements as fatigue starts to accumulate. However, this should not be the only way we look at exercise order for program design. Placing any exercise first in a training session will allow you to perform that exercise to the best of your ability. This may be more beneficial when targeting weak body parts for example. Exercises that are done later in a session could be negatively affected by the accumulation of fatigue. This may see a desire for very stable, mid range muscle movements, like the bench press for example serving more purpose later in a training session.

As hypertrophy training is more stimulus based than movement based, we can also use the initial movements in a program to potentially correct any movement dysfunctions whilst stimulating the target muscles. An example of this could be lat pullovers to drive thoracic extension as well as stimulating the lengthened position of the lat.

In summary, it might be more beneficial to order exercises based on how important they are to the individuals strengths/weaknesses. Larger muscle groups don’t have to be at the start of a training session, and remember as the exercise order goes down, fatigue accumulation increases, which will affect the hypertrophic stimulus that a movement will yield.

Removing Personal Bias

In a lot of cases coaches and athletes have a personal bias toward specific movements being ‘the best’ for muscle growth, example being the barbell back squat. When we look at the barbell back squat, for some it is a terrible exercise for hypertrophy. In many instances lifters don’t have the skill, bio-mechanics, or simply cannot execute the movement to a sufficient level of effort. This makes the barbell back squat a poor movement for hypertrophy in this case.

Its important to understand as lifters and coaches that we select movements based on what’s most appropriate for the goal, and ability of the client. This should remove any personal biases toward any specific exercise.

When I still hear people voicing strong opinions toward certain movements for growth, it does make question whether they are programming based on personal bias, or whats best for the client.

A very simple way of removing personal bias is thinking of the global components to creating a sufficient training stimulus for growth. We need a high amount of mechanical tension on our muscles, training them through their full action/contractile range, with a relevant dose of volume and effort. We then need to match these global components with the individual considerations discussed above, and that’s your frame work.

In Summary

The architectural variances in individual muscles supports the notion to adopt a multi planar, multi angled approach to hypertrophy. Each muscle and joint serves specific actions when shortening and lengthening. This information gives us an insight into what exercises to select in a workout and training program. Those exercises selected will stimulate our muscles sufficiently, through their full contractile range of motion, and lead to hypertrophy. Its important to understand the pros and cons to employing certain movement types in a program. What exercises you select should be heavily based on the individual considerations of the lifter, which should remove all personal bias toward any particular movement. The selection of the exercises should be based on the goal and ability of the client, whilst taking into the consideration the global components to creating a hypertrophy specific training stimulus.