How Many Exercises Per Muscle Group (Per Workout Per Week)

How many exercises per muscle group (per work out and week)Show more

How many exercises for a muscle group?

So how many exercises should we be doing per muscle group to maximize growth?

There are a few things we need to look at so we can apply the answer to our own situation. Training experience is one and how much time we have to train is another.

When we first start focusing on basic compound movements is all we need. Those are squats, deadlifts, bench press, shoulder press and bent-over row. But as we progress to get the most out of our training, we need to add in new exercises to work the muscle through all its movement patterns.

For example, the chest is used to push like when we do a bench press, but it can also push upwards or downwards, and it brings our arm across our body. So we need to train it using exercises that duplicate these movements.

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Another good example is with the lats. The two main ways they work is to move our arm down in front of us and to down towards the side.

A couple of examples of this is a dumbbell bent-over row where your arm is coming from the front and toward the back of your body and a wide grip pull-up where your arm is coming down toward your side as you pull your body up.

You can see how the potential variety of exercises we could do is greater than the time we have in a given training session, especially if we’re doing full-body workouts.

Most full-body workouts only do one exercise per muscle group. However, we can still get complete development either by periodizing our exercises. For example, in the first two months, you could do a flat bench then switch to an incline for the next couple of months. For the final block, you do dips or decline bench and repeat the cycle.

Or you can set up your whole body training as an A and B workout. I even include a C workout in mine. Each one focuses on a different exercise for each muscle group, and I rotate through these workouts every week.

Full-body workouts should mainly consist of compound movements. I’ll put the five compound exercises I mentioned at the beginning of the video on the screen.

Do you see the flaw in this combination of exercises? If you just did these for your workout?

There are two pushing movements and only one pull. At the very least, we should have an equal number of push and pull exercises. It could even be argued that we should have more pulling exercises.

With an A and B workout, you could have one workout with two pushing movements and the other with two pulling for example bent-over rows focusing more on the lats and an incline elbow out row to target the upper back muscles.

Fixing the problem while keeping the same total number of exercises per workout and not making it any longer.

Something to understand when doing different exercises for the same muscle group is just because the emphasis is placed more on one area than another doesn't mean the rest of the muscle isn’t being worked.

For example, the incline press is for the upper chest, but the middle and lower fibres are still working just to a lesser degree. So your whole chest is getting worked.

Another reason we might want to choose a specific exercise is that we have an imbalance in a muscle group. Again thinking of the chest, we may feel our upper or lower chest is lacking, so we’ll prioritize the exercise that best hits that area.

In my case, my bicep development is a weak point and, in particular, the short head of the bicep. So most of the exercises I’m doing now emphasis the short head.

Another reason to add an exercise into our workout is to help with the mind-muscle connection. Being able to feel a muscle work is essential, especially when it comes to hypertrophy. The best exercises that help us feel a muscle are often isolation exercises.

The second benefit to an isolation exercise is that it only works the one muscle group. You’ll often see a guy with great shoulders and arms having a weak chest because his triceps and shoulders take over when doing the bench press—not allowing his chest to grow.

Training splits like an upper/lower body allow more exercises per body part, and five or six-day splits like a push, pull, leg allow even room for variety.