What Exercise Order Is Best for Muscle Growth? An Exercise Scientist Explains
Getting started on your gym workout can sometimes be the biggest hurdle, and after your warm-up, knowing exactly which exercise to begin with can be the next stumbling block. Thankfully, exercise scientist Dr. Mike Israetel PhD has explained how to quantify which exercises should take prime position in your workoust. And, it's more straightforward than you may have assumed.
Here's how to order the exercises in your workout programme for muscle growth.
Why Exercise Order Matters
In one of his YouTube videos, Israetel explains that you'll have more energy near the beginning of your workout, 'You'll have the most energy on first exercises. You've got [an exercise] that requires a crapload of energy to put in? It had better be early, because you're not tired yet,' says the exercise scientist.
When it comes to performance goals, this is also the case, 'If performance is your goal in certain exercises, it also better be early, because you'll perform best when you're not tired.'
He continues to give an example that if you have squats in your workout, and leg extensions, and you want to perform highly on squats, then it's better to do squats first. Israetel explains: 'First exercises will generally get the highest stimulus compared to later exercises. So if you want a huge squatting stimulus, do it first. If you want a huge leg press stimulus, do that first instead of squats.'
'First exercises will make the muscles trained, more likely to be limiting factors on later exercises,' says Israetel. Meaning, your first exercises will use muscles which will then limit your exertion of specific muscles during later exercises.
'For example, if you do cable push downs first for your triceps, and then you do dumbbell presses later for triceps and chest, because your triceps are completely fried, or very fried from that first push down exercise, your triceps are more likely the limiting factor on the presses,' he explains, 'Which means they get even more work from the presses, leaving your chest getting a little bit less work than it wanted to.'
However, there are some drawbacks for those first exercises. Israetel says, 'First exercises — because you're not grooving in the session yet, you don't have a pump yet, you haven't been moving around much — are unlikely to give you the best mind to muscle connection,' So, exercises that require a good mind to muscle connection should go a little later in your programme.
He also adds that for beginners, their first exercises will improve in technique much more than later exercises. According to Israetel, 'Technique has a fatigue component. If you're learning while you're highly fatigued, you're not learning technique nearly as well.' So if you want to get better at performing a movement, put it first.
Israetel continues that first exercises will reduce overall performance of later exercises, so it's important to make an informed choice on your programme's exercise order.
What Exercise Order is Best?
Israetel recommends that for building muscle naturally, it's important to put exercises first that:
1/ Performance goals: You want to improve the most on in performance.
2/ High-priority muscles: You feel stimulate the most high-priority muscles the best.
3/ Co-ordination and skill: That require the most coordination and focus.
4/ Lower rep ranges: That you want to grow stronger on in the lower rep ranges (3-6 or 5-10).
He adds a caveat that this means you can do isolation exercises first, but you can also do heavy compound exercises first. It depends on your goals, priorities and limiting factors.
He recommends to put exercises later that:
1/ High output: Have a large systemic or cardiovascular component, e.g. high rep walking lunges that can increase fatigue.
2/ Limiting factor muscles: That have limiting factor muscles that will interfere with earlier exercises, e.g. bicep curls before rows or deadlifts before squats.
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