Shannan’s Journey

If the gym is packed, and you can’t access the equipment you want… find something else just as good.  May not be what you are use to doing, but the fact of the matter is, you probably could use something new in your routine to either break up the boredum of it all or, your body is screaming for a new move to hit and tweak the body in a different way.Always have a Plan B in case Plan A can’t be done to a "T." From an exercise selection standpoint, it’s easiest to just stratify things into the following categories:

Quad-dominant: front squats, back squats,
Hip-dominant: deadlifts, good mornings, box squats
Single-leg: lunges, Bulgarian split squats, scissor jump squats, step-ups
Horizontal Push: DB or BB bench pressing, push-ups
Horizontal Pull: rows, (DB or BB)
Vertical Push: overhead pressing
Vertical Pull: pull-ups, pulldowns (close or wide grip)

Of course, this isn’t an exhaustive resource; there are a lot of other facets (e.g., subcategories of "core" training), but on the whole, if you can’t get to an exercise, just figure out where it would be in this seven-category scheme, and then pick something else. Exercise selection is just one acute programming variable, and sometimes life gets in the way. There is always something else you can do in a gym.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 at 2:21 pm and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.