6. Alpha Exercise

Exercise Sequence and Selection

Copyright 2002,  Terry Duschinski.

Fat-to-Muscle Makeover

Ocala Family Physicians'

Medical Exercise Center

Call 804-5241

Email: Terry@FloridaFitness.com

If you've spent any time in the typical health club, you see it all the time. An exerciser finishes one machine, gets off and picks up the workout chart to record his or her performance. This is good so far but then a critical error occurs. After looking up from the workout chart, the trainee notices the next machine is currently in use. Assuming they are set up in a logical order that we will explain shortly, you will generally find the machines placed in a pattern.

Trying to make good use of time, the trainee heads for the next available machine – even if it's all the way across the room.

I'm guilty of this myself – in the grocery store. My wife is always lecturing me to get a cart and start in the dairy section at the far right, and then proceed systematically up and down each aisle. I zig-zag, and it annoys her and probably the other systematic shoppers as well.

I am much more systematic about my workouts, appreciating that the order of exercises and even the pace – the intervals between each machine – are important to maintaining standardized records and programming progression into my training.

If you understand grocery-store navigation, you will quickly adapt to this.

 A full-body workout may be achieved in as few as 5 basic exercises, depending on how directly and from how many angles you wish to stimulate your body’s 635 skeletal muscles. The basics consist of exercises that target buttocks and hips, plus one each for the front and back of the thigh, respectively, where the quadriceps and hamstrings reside. That’s 3 lower-body exercises, consisting generally of a leg press or squat, a leg extension, and leg curl.

Be careful with any overhead or upright pressing, commonly termed a military press. A heavy load lifted upright causes downward compression on the spine, and should be avoided during your first several weeks of training.

The next step beyond the basic 5 would include limbs that swing out from the body. The lower body muscles that perform this function are called the hip abductors. Squeezing your legs back together utilizes the hip adductors. Abduction means moving away from the center line of the body; adduction means moving toward the center line.

Hopefully, you've noticed that we try to include strengthening for both sides of any joint. These are called antagonist muscles. Develop strength in balance; an imbalance can leave you susceptible to injury due to a lack of counter-force production. Muscles generate movement but they also stop movement. They are the limb accelerator, but also the brakes.

A variety of upper body exercises are possible because the shoulder sockets accommodate movement in just about every direction. Besides the various pressing and pulling motions, you might also want to add a lateral raise (which is really shoulder abduction), and perhaps a chest flye.

The basic 5 has grown into at least 9. If we consider the flexion and extension capability of the torso, we'd want to do an abdominal crunch and a back extension. Ditto for the arms, meaning a biceps curl and triceps extension or pressdown.

Eventually, although certainly not in the early workouts, we'll want to address the calf muscles, and perhaps the wrist/forearm muscles also. This completes just about everything except our eyelids, and one sensitive area I would not advise exercising without extreme caution. The muscle group to which I refer are those of your cervical spine, the neck muscles. If you do any neck exercises, move very slowly, very gently, and start with a very light resistance. Progress very gradually.

The exercises we select comprise our grocery list.

Hopefully, you are in a well-organized facility that provides a circuit training area where patrons are expected to follow an order and not hog any particular machine by using multiple sets or an excessive number of repetitions.

I've introduced the exercises in the basic order you'll want to perform them. Begin with your body's biggest muscles, and proceed down your lower body. Then go to the primary “pulling” upper-body exercise, followed by the primary “pushing.”

If additional upper-body exercises are included, a pull-push-rotary sequence is advised. As you remember from our previous session, pushing or pulling exercises involve multiple joints and are termed compound movements. The resistance arc is linear. A rotary exercise, such as lateral raise for the shoulder or a chest flye, targets a single-joint and the movement is rotational.

Getting from one machine to the next without having to wait may be a problem. This may throw off the pace of your workout, but do the best you can. 

Sequence of exercises is important because you don’t want to fatigue smaller muscles that will be needed as secondary connectors in the exercise of larger muscles later. Performing biceps curls, for instance, before the pulling exercise for the large muscles of the back may cause the set of row or pulldown to stop when the biceps can’t take any more. But the biceps are not the targeted muscle in a row or pulldown. The muscle you’re aiming to fatigue and stimulate growth from is latisimus dorsi, the large fan-shaped muscle of the upper back. For an adequate set of row or pulldown, keep your biceps fresh; wait until later in your workout to thoroughly fatigue them.

If this isn’t registering, just remember that you don’t want to put the bread into your shopping cart, before you place the milk – unless you like squashed bread.