Exercise Selection
To begin with we have to look at something called positions of flexion. Positions of flexion is understanding that different exercises are going to stress a muscle through different ranges of motion. If we look at a biceps curl for example, there are many different ways to perform a biceps curl. Should we be doing a concentration curl, barbell curl or incline curl? There are so many ways we could be performing that curl, let’s now justify why you should be doing certain exercises.
Positions Of Flexion
It all comes down to what position of flexion the movement is stressing the most. The concentration curl typically has the arm forward of your centre line. Other exercises that are similar include preacher curl, crucifix curl or spider curl. However, the concentration curl has a great peak contraction because that is the position of flexion that the weight is emphasising. Change the position of the arm to behind you, like with an incline curl, that is now emphasising the lengthened position of flexion. Somewhere in between that would be where a typical barbell curl or dumbbell curl would typically fall in a mid-range position of flexion.
Short & Mid Positions of Flexion
Now we have a framework to understand that different exercises will stress different positions of flexion. What is typically recommended to do is start to go through exercises and workout which positions of flexion is being emphasised in those different exercises. Typically, the strong contraction movements that feel really good don’t have a lot of potential for real growth. Movements such as a stiff arm pull down, cable crossover, face pulls and concentration curls. These movements are always going to feel good because they are emphasising that short position of flexion or fully contracted position. Because of that these movements are going to be useful in an acquisition phase as there is not going to be great potential to increase loading on those exercises. We also wouldn’t emphasise these movements a lot in a strength or blast style phase either. They are still very useful, but with later phases of training these exercises are used more as finishers, or as activation drills before the meat and potatoes part of your workout. As for meat & potato exercises, we are talking about squats, deadlift, bench press, rows, chin ups, pressing movements etc. All these movements typically fall into the mid-range movements, where we are not getting a full stretch or contraction of the muscle but somewhere in between.
Long Positions of Flexion
Finally on the other extreme is the lengthened range or the long position of flexion. This is looking at exercises like dumbbell fly’s, incline curls etc. that stress that target muscle in its lengthened range and emphasises the stretch.
Now we can start thinking about movements as short, mid and long and give ourselves some categories for every single body part. Also keep in mind that there will also be intermediate movements as well. For example, looking at the biceps we have the concentration curl where the arm is elevated up to a 90-degree position with the torso. We then have the spider curl, leaning forward on an incline bench where we would be in a lower position. Then if we take the arm even lower for a barbell curl position, which could also match up to a preacher curl. There would then be a mid-range movement a bit lower, and then finally an incline curl for that fully lengthened position. Now we don’t just have short, mid and long. We now have short, short-mid, mid, mid-long and long. There are so many different ways we could categorise these movements to go further into subcategories. We don’t need to go that deep into it, but just for the most part understand short, mid and long to begin with, then fit in movements in between that. This will then give us a framework to start understanding exercises and where different exercises fall into different parts of a program. Just to reiterate it most of our strength and power-based movements, where we are going to create a lot of progressive overload will be in the mid-range movements, or short-mid or mid-long. Most of the stretch, end of workout stuff would be around the long-based movements. Then the pre pump activation work would be in the short-based position of flexion.
There is one other way we want to start thinking about exercises in general and that is categorising our movements, if you wish to go beyond the basic position of flexion.
Exercise categories include:
- Foundational- Base exercises
- Innervation- Isolation exercises
- Positional- Heel elevated squat, squat curls, 1 ¼ reps, barbell hack squat
- Endurance- Isometrics, snatch grip deadlift, GHR
- Pliability- Upper back press, RDLs, seated calf raises, pullovers, long range rows(cables), seated good morning
- Performance- Strength, deadlift, bench press, chin up, rows, loose training
These are all just made-up categories, look at making up your own long term. Use this as a base starting point to help get your head around thinking about movements in a slightly different way.
Foundational
Foundational exercises are going to be the base compound movements e.g., squats, bench, deadlift. Exercises we are going to get strong with generally. This is also closely related to the performance-based movements that allow us to use a lot of strength.
Performance
Performance movements will give us the opportunity to be using things like loose training or the use of momentum in our training.
Innervation
Between these two we have things like innervation-based exercises. This would be isolation movements but also movements that emphasise that shortened position of flexion that give that hard contraction.
Positional
Positional-based movements use this term for movements that start to emphasise certain positions. Such as the fully lengthened position for your quads by using things like heels elevated squats or squat curls where we are getting deep into a squat position and then holding it whilst we are curling a barbell. We may also be using certain intensifiers or rep variations like 1 ¼ reps where we are emphasising the bottom range of motion.
Endurance
Endurance base techniques and endurance base exercises like a snatch grip deadlift. The reason why it works so well is that it places the upper back muscles under isometric tension, that is the same with the erectors as well. They are placed under isometric tension whilst doing any kind of deadlift, which means they have to play a longer endurance base role to keep your position so you don’t fold in half.
Pliability
Next is pliability base movements which are mobility base movements that aren’t stretching or mobility work typically. But they are exercises that tend to emphasise improving pliability or mobility. We think of more stretch base movements like RDLs and upper back press that looks at improving thoracic extension and mobility through the mid back.
References
- Ganbaru Method, Eugene Teo, Published November 2019, Accessed January 13th Exercise Selection (ganbarumethod.com)
