Exercise Selection and Programming:
Building the Foundation for Effective Training
When it comes to training programs, one common misconception is that there is a one-size-fits-all exercise or routine. Yet, seasoned fitness professionals know that crafting the perfect program requires more than generic templates—it involves understanding the deeper principles of exercise selection and sequencing.
In this article, we’ll break down how to tailor your training regimen for strength, hypertrophy, or sport-specific goals while optimizing performance and minimizing injury risks.
The Core Principles: Why Exercise Selection Matters
Exercise selection is a nuanced process that goes beyond simply choosing popular or “best” movements. It requires assessing personal goals, biomechanics, experience levels, and the physical attributes that make certain exercises better suited for specific individuals.
Why is this important? Because no single exercise works the same for everyone. Factors like limb length, mobility, skill level, and muscle fiber type can drastically change how effective an exercise is for different people. For example, while a conventional deadlift is a powerful full-body strength exercise, it might not be the best choice for hypertrophy or for those with a taller build due to its high fatigue cost and potential joint strain.
Building Your Individualized List Of Exercises: Key Considerations
1.) Goals Define Your Choices
- Strength: If your goal is strength, prioritize compound lifts that allow you to move heavy loads with low reps, such as back squats and deadlifts.
- Hypertrophy: For hypertrophy, consider exercises that create isolated tension, like stiff-leg deadlifts for hamstrings or barbell hip thrusts for glutes.
- Sport-Specific Training: For athletic training, incorporate movements that mimic game situations. For instance, soccer players may benefit from unilateral exercises like single-leg squats to improve stability and strength in dynamic settings.
- Fat Loss: There doesn’t need to be a huge change in your training when the goal is fat loss, because your strength training should be focused around maintaining muscle and strength while losing body fat from the calorie deficit. If any training is manipulated for the sake of a fat loss goal, it would be done by adding cardio into the weekly training routine or lowering volume/intensity due to recovery being impacted from the deficit.
2.) Movement Pattern Specificity
- Every training program should have the fundamental movement patterns in place throughout the weekly training routine: Push, Pull, Hip Hinge, and Squat. However, your goal should dictate which movement patterns are most important and which specific exercise variations should be used within those movement patterns.
3.) Mind-Muscle Connection
- How well you connect to the muscle you’re training is a direct correlation to where you’re directing tension, which is important for targeting the intended muscle, overloading the specific muscle, avoiding indirect tension (i.e. joint stress, non-target muscle, etc.), and developing the skill of exercising.
4.) Site Specific Soreness
- This can act as a post-training gauge for how effective you were at targeting the intended muscle groups during the session. For example, if you performed bicep curls in your workout but the only soreness you feel the next day is in your elbows and your traps… Well, it’s safe to say that you were either a.) doing the exercise incorrectly or b.) you selected a bad bicep curl variation for you, personally.
5.) Progression Potential
- How well you can progress an exercise over-time is a big indicator that you’re choosing a great exercise variation. It’s also an indicator of how long you should keep an exercise in your training program.
6.) Stimulus To Fatigue Ratio
- The stimulus to fatigue ratio, made popular by Dr. Mike Israetel from Renaissance Periodization, is a way to assess how worthwhile an exercise is for your given goals. If it creates a great stimulus, but also delivers a great amount of fatigue — than it’s important to use it sparingly. But if the stimulus is very high and the fatigue generated afterwards is low, then it might be a great exercise to use at a higher frequency.
7.) Injury Risk Potential
- And lastly, the potential for injury is something you need to weigh out with every single exercise you choose for your training plans. Lifting is intended to keep you far away from injury, so we do not want to get injured in the act of becoming more resiliant.
To summarize these points, while also providing a framework for applying them into your training routine, I’ve filmed a YouTube video covering them all and showing you exactly how to integrate them into your training program:
Crafting the Ideal Program: From Warm-Up to Finish
- Warm-Up and Priming: Begin with a dynamic warm-up and activation exercises that target the joints and muscles you’ll be using. This primes your body for the heavy work ahead and minimizes injury risk.
- Compound Lifts as Pillars: Next, focus on your primary compound movement for the day. This could be a heavy squat, deadlift, or bench press, depending on the muscle group targeted. These lifts demand the most energy and should be done early when you’re fresh.
- Accessory Work: Integrate exercises that complement your main lift. For example, if your compound lift is a back squat, follow it with lunges or leg presses to target related muscle groups and improve overall muscle balance.
- Specialization and Isolation: This part of your workout adds volume with exercises that target specific muscles, such as leg extensions or tricep pushdowns. These help build muscle endurance and refine weaker areas.
- Finishers and Conditioning: Conclude with high-repetition sets or metabolic conditioning for muscle burnout or to add a cardiovascular component if fat loss or conditioning is a goal.
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Exercise Sequencing: Optimizing Your Training Flow
The order of exercises within a workout matters, especially when maximizing volume and intensity while reducing fatigue. Use the sequence of prepare, prime, build, and enhance:
- Prepare: Warm-up movements that increase heart rate and flexibility.
- Prime: Activation exercises like face pulls or light squats.
- Build: Your heaviest, most technical compound lift.
- Enhance: Accessory and isolation movements.
Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
- Ignoring Personalized Needs: Using general programs, such as the ones in my app The Tailored Trainer, can work for a lot of people. However if you reach a point that progress has stalled or things just aren’t clicking for you inside the general program you’re running, it’s time that you learn these key factors and begin to individualize some of the exercises to match up with your personal needs — because at the end of the day, you are DIFFERENT than every one else! And sometimes this leads to different needs in the gym.
- Overloading Without Progression Potential: If you fail to choose exercises that you can progress with over time, you will fail to progress your physique and overall strength over time as well. So even though overly complex or unstable exercises might look impressive and get a lot of views on instagram, they offer very little benefit and they cannot be scaled effectively.
- Neglecting Stimulus-to-Fatigue Ratio (SFR): Exercises should have a favorable SFR—meaning the training stimulus should justify the fatigue they produce. For hypertrophy, exercises like stiff-leg deadlifts or leg presses offer high stimulus with manageable fatigue compared to traditional deadlifts which may be more effective for those with strength goals.
Mind-Muscle Connection and Effort
Achieving muscle growth isn’t just about moving weight; it’s about moving weight with intent. Exercises should help you focus on the targeted muscle, ensuring you’re not over-relying on secondary muscles or joints. Moreover, track localized muscle soreness to gauge exercise effectiveness; soreness should be in the muscle, not in surrounding joints or unrelated areas.
And once this mind muscle connection is strong, remember that your effort accounts for the majority of the results you see. Which is why you must push yourself to maintain a high rate of perceived exertion (RPE) and/or train close to failure (RIR), especially in hypertrophy-focused training. For strength, keep reps slightly below a max RPE or RIR to manage fatigue and ensure consistent performance.
Injury Prevention and Long-Term Viability
Not all exercises are worth the risk, especially if you have a history of joint pain or injury. For seasoned lifters, substituting high-risk moves with machine-based alternatives or using specialty equipment can preserve joint health without sacrificing muscle growth. Always assess whether the potential injury risk aligns with your current goals and training level.
Conclusion: Train Smart, Not Just Hard
Selecting the right exercises and structuring your program isn’t just about variety—it’s about strategic choices that align with your goals, body type, and skill level. Understand the principles of exercise selection, build workouts that support progressive overload, and listen to your body for long-term gains and safety.
