In the world of fitness there are thousands of different exercises you can perform in order to target different muscles and get in shape. Open any fitness magazine and you will most likely see 10 to 20 different exercises along with their supposed benefits. This abundance of information can be extremely overwhelming for your average person who just wants to get a good workout a few times a week. Where does one start to filter through all of this information and develop a good program with a few quality exercises?

The best place to start, but also the most challenging, is to ask yourself why you are doing that particular exercise. The answer should not be because the magazine said so, or your friend got great results doing it. At first this can be an extremely daunting task, but once you learn a few principles anyone can produce a great workout without a degree in exercise physiology. My recommendation is to scrap what you have been doing in the past. Read this post along with my post on “The Art of Toning” to develop a program that will not only get you results but also reduce the risk of injury and plateaus. A word of warning, this is one of the longest posts to date, which reflects the importance of the concepts. Learning how to develop an effective program is extremely important. I recommend reading this when you have the time to devote to reading it completely and allowing time to think about the concepts.

As I have stated in the past, your body performs two basic movements, it pushes and pulls. In order to develop a well balanced and effective program you need to have an equal number of pushing and pulling exercises for both the upper and lower body. My recommendation is to have two to three upper body pushing and pulling exercises, while having one to two different pushing and pulling lower body exercises.

To give a greater understanding of exercise selection and how different muscles perform pushing and pulling movements let’s go through a brief physiology lesson. First of all, your body has two kinds of muscles that perform movements, generally labeled primary and secondary muscles. The primary muscles are the main muscles that perform a movement while the secondary muscles act to help produce the movement. Beyond that there are two other categories of muscles, which can be classified as muscles of movement and muscles that stabilize. It is important to have a very general grasp of these concepts to select proper exercises.

The reason I avoid machines is that they only work the muscles of movement and avoid training your stabilizing muscles. This can set you up for debilitating pain and injury in the future. A decent rule of thumb is that you want the stabilizing muscles to be as strong as or stronger than the muscles of movement. This can be applied by performing free weight exercises or exercises that utilize cables or bands. These exercises require constant work from the stabilizing muscles to keep your body under control.

Once you understand the basic classifications of muscles it’s time to learn what the different muscles do. You have three main muscles in the upper body that perform pushing movements. The chest, triceps, and shoulders all perform different pushing exercises, with varying degrees of assistance. The back, biceps, and shoulders all perform different pulling exercises. In the lower body your quadriceps, calves, and glutes are pushing muscles, while your hamstrings and glutes are your pulling muscles. With this in mind, by selecting an equal number of pushing and pulling exercises you will maintain a balanced program that will produce a much healthier and fit individual.

The first step, now that you have an idea of the different muscles functions, is to assign different exercises to fit the different movements. The first exercise I like to start with is the upper body pushing movement. The simplest exercise you can select is the push-up. People have been doing push-ups ever since they were infants trying to press themselves up in order to stand up. The push-up primarily works the chest and gets assistance from the triceps and the front of your shoulder. There are many other exercises that can be selected to fill the role of the upper body pushing exercise, but this is the easiest exercise that requires the least amount of experience or equipment.

The next exercise that needs to be selected is an upper body pulling exercise. The best exercise you can select would be a pull-up. The pull-up works the different muscles of your back, while also working your biceps, and back of your shoulder. Most people have difficulty performing a pull-up so I would recommend two alternatives. The best alternative, if you belong to a gym, is to use the assisted pull-up machine. The machine has the standard pull-up bar with a pad that you rest your shins on while kneeling. The pad is attached to weights that will assist the movement, or make the pull-up easier. As you get stronger you can slowly decrease the weight that is helping you until you can perform a pull-up on your own. The other alternative, which is the same basic movement, is the lat pulldown. This would be the back up option if you don’t have access to an assisted pull-up machine.

For those of you who prefer to workout at home and do not have access to either of the above mentioned machines I would forget about that exercise and add a bent over row with a dumbbell. This exercise also works the same muscles as the pull-up just in a little different fashion. I typically incorporate some form of a row in most programs so this can be added in addition to the pull-up or lat pulldown if you exercise at the gym, since it does work different aspects of the back. This can be quickly explained by noticing that a pull-up involves pulling straight down towards the ground while the row involves pulling straight towards your body.

Once you have selected the upper body exercises it’s time to select the lower body exercises. In my opinion there are fewer quality exercises for the lower body making it a much easier process to select exercises. I have mentioned them in previous posts, but to recap the squat, lunge, step-up, and deadlift are the only exercises I use. I would recommend starting off with the squat as your pushing exercise since it requires less experience than the lunge and step-up. The squat primarily works the quadriceps and gets assistance from the glutes depending on the depth. You can refer to my post “The Squat” to get more details. The exercise I select to counteract the squat is the deadlift. The deadlift is a great pulling exercise for the lower body primarily working the hamstrings and glutes. These two exercises provide great balance and will provide a nicely sculpted pair of legs.

For the sake of length I am going to stop with exercise selection now. You could add more exercises to target different aspects of the muscles already worked by the above exercises. But if you apply the criteria I mentioned you will be able to effectively add more exercises into your program. The key is to avoid adding too many exercises. I would suggest doing a maximum of six upper body exercises, or three pushing and three pulling exercises, while incorporating a total of four lower body exercises, or two pushing and two pulling. The body gets the results when it is recovering, not when it is working. By forcing your body to do too much work, you are slowing the recovery process, which will inhibit the results.

In order to develop an effective program it is important to master progressions, or the ability to take an exercise and either make it easier or more difficult depending on your fitness level. Too often I see people struggling to perform an exercise that they noticed someone else doing. By trying to force yourself to complete the exercise you resort to using bad technique, which can lead to serious injury. The key is to select an exercise and resistance that you can comfortably perform with the proper technique for the desired amount of repetitions. When you can easily complete the selected number of repetitions you can either increase the resistance or select a more difficult variation of the exercise. By learning to master progressions you will have endless possibilities and will never hit a plateau.

Today I will walk you through a standard progression for the push-up. In the coming weeks I am going to add a feature to the blog called “The Exercise of the Week”. I will take a standard exercise and show some different progressions that can be used to either make the exercise easier or more difficult. But for now let’s start with the push-up. In my experience few people can perform a good quality push-up from their toes. This can be from a lack of chest strength, arm strength, shoulder stability, core stability, or many other reasons. Instead of struggling to complete a few reps of a poor quality push-up it’s better to make the exercise a little easier.

A push-up utilizes gravity and the effect it has on your body to add resistance. In order to make the exercise easier we need to lessen the effect gravity has on your upper body. This can be accomplished by standing up. The easiest form of a push-up is the wall push-up. Begin by standing about two to three feet away from a wall with your hands shoulder width apart. From that position slowly bend your arms to lower your chest towards the wall. When your upper arm is straight out to your side press back up. Once you are able to perform 12 repetitions with proper technique, meaning good body control, it’s time to progress the exercise.

To make the exercise more difficult you want to slowly lower the angle of your body so you are slowly increasing the effect of gravity. The easiest way to do this is to find a stair case and begin doing push-ups and as you get better slowly progressing down the stairs, or slowly changing th angle of your body. This can be replicated in a gym by changing the height of the bar on a squat rack, or by using a bench or aerobic steps to vary the height. Once you have managed to increase your strength to the point that you can perform a push-up on the ground you can make it slightly easier by performing a push-up from your knees. In the past this has been referred to as “girl push-ups” but this definitely isn’t the case and shouldn’t be viewed that way. It is just a slightly easier regression from your standard push-up.

Once you have mastered the standard push-up you can make it more difficult by adding instability like performing a push-up with your hands on a medicine ball or stability ball. You can also start the progression all over again by performing a one-handed push-up. Begin against a wall and slowly progress until you are on the ground. The concept of progression and regression can be confusing at first, but when you understand the principles you can make any movement easier or more difficult to match your fitness level.

The basic progression principles of progressions are changing the range of motion from limited to complete, changing the speed of the movement from slow to fast, changing the stability of the exercise from a stable surface to an unstable surface, changing the line of movement from a single line to rotational exercises, and changes isolated exercises to compound exercises. The push-up primarily focused on changing the level of resistance and at the end changing from a stable surface to an unstable surface. I would recommend evaluating all of the exercises you are currently doing and trying to figure out possible ways of making the exercise easier or more challenging. With a little thought and practice you can master progressions and open up a world of possibilities. They key to any exercise is always maintaining proper technique and control.

At first glance the ideas behind program design seem vary complex. However, when you begin to dissect all of the nuances there are just a few rules that can be applied to design an effective program. I would never recommend selecting a program out of a book or a magazine. Use these sources to generate exercise ideas, and then learn to alter the exercises to meet your fitness level and needs. Remember that it is important to always maintain balance of movements in the body. If you perform an upper body pushing exercise you also need a pulling exercise.

Take some time, review all of the concepts, and slowly begin to change your current program or develop a new program. It is extremely important to go into the gym with a clear plan of what you are going to accomplish. Not only will this keep you accountable to completing the workout, but it will also produce better results. With the proper knowledge, motivation, and hard work anything is possible. Good luck.

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