By Yesol An
Imagine an apple orchard with trees that have an overabundance of apples. From an amateur perspective, this seems amazing because of the prospect of a large harvest. However, this can be detrimental. Having too many apples results in less nutrients for each one, resulting in small and less tasty fruit. To combat this, trees need to be pruned to the optimal number of young fruit on the branches.
Now, think of each tree as a muscle group of the body while time and energy are its nutrients. If you try to incorporate too many exercises, each movement won’t receive enough time and energy to make it impactful. Thus, it’s wise to be strategic in deciding the type and amount of accessory exercises to pair with your main compound lift.
Focusing on a specific muscle group or movement pattern and choosing a handful of related variations will help to cause stress more effectively to your muscle fibers, ultimately strengthening them over time. If you have too many movements, your workout routine might be getting too long. Long workouts require a large amount of energy and can be a big time commitment, which could be difficult to sustain long-term.
On the flip side, if you sacrifice the number of sets you perform for each exercise, it is most likely not enough to cause sufficient stress to the muscle fibers.
The same idea can be applied to working on too many muscle groups in one day. Each muscle group may not be getting the attention needed to break down the muscle fibers for strength growth. At Beyond Strength, we talked to Coach Joshua Miller of the University of Virginia’s Swim & Dive team, and he compared programming a workout to a cooking recipe: “If we’re going to make something spicy, let’s make it spicy. Let’s get really good at that spicy piece”.
Adding too many different ingredients can create a confusing dish where there is no distinct flavor. Similarly, create workouts that are focused on one main movement pattern, and then build around that.
While trying new movements is great for building your toolkit of exercises to choose from, it may be more beneficial to stick to the basics. Making sure that you’re using the right technique and properly activating the correct muscles for each movement takes a lot of reps to master.
Once you feel bored with those exercises or notice a plateau in your fitness goals, then try learning one new movement. Fully understand the purpose of the movement, the muscles that are being targeted, and how to properly execute it.
Creativity is good, but make sure you have a solid foundation to branch out over time.
