Resistance Exercise Selection For General Fitness

     This article I will show you how to decide what kind of resistance exercises to include in your training plan for maximum effect. Working as a Glasgow personal trainer it is essential to get my clients results as quickly as possible. To do this you have to make good choices about the exercises you pick. Here are 4 key characteristics of the kind of exercises you should be using.

Choose multi joint exercises over single joint ones. Exercises that use several joints are far superior to ones that only use one. Using multi joint exercises means you will work a lot more muscles, increase the energy cost of the session, increase lean body mass and improve joint health. Multi joint exercises also produce strength increases that transfer to the real world far more efficiently than single joint ones. Most everyday movements involve a complex interaction of many muscles. Training muscles by attempting to isolate them from other muscles by using single joint exercises greatly limits your ability to develop the muscular co-ordination needed for everyday movement patterns.

Avoid machine based exercises in favor of ones where you have to support your bodyweight to do the exercise. Self supported exercises are better because they force your abdominal muscles to activate to maintain good body position for the exercise which increases the energy cost of the exercise and greatly reduces the time you need to spend training your core. One of the primary functions of your abdominal muscles is to allow the efficient transfer of force from your lower body to your upper body and vice versa. Allowing a machine to support your bodyweight eliminates the need for this energy transfer and that training effect is lost. Chose standing exercises, especially ones that are asymmetrically weighted, because these will dramatically increase the activation of your core muscles.

Select exercises that you can easily and safely add weight to. If your only option to make an exercise more difficult is to do more reps then you will eventually train your way out of the rep range you need for your goal and experience diminishing returns for your efforts. Adding weight to an exercise when required allows you to increase the intensity AND remain within the desired training rep range.

Pick exercises that you can safely use without any need for someone else to "spot" you. Failure to complete a lift in some exercises can lead to serious injury. If your exercise needs a spotter, or a safety device like a power rack, and you don't have one then it limits your ability to train as hard as you should because you can't safely push to your limits. If you don't have someone to spot you on bench press you would be much better off choosing DB bench press or dips. They both work the upper body pressing musculature, and can be just as demanding, but are safer options without a spotter. It is always far better to choose an alternate exercise that works the same muscles without the risk of injury.

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