I was preparing to post about my own workout guidelines but then I decided instead to provide a quick primer on just some of the more common definitions and variables out there that one can consider when deciding “what exactly should I be doing at the gym?”  There are a bunch of them!  I mention a few books in my other posts and I’ll identify them here as well. Although there are a plethora of workout books out there, the only ones that I find any value in really at all are the ones that provide some information about the science behind it all.  Books full of prescriptive routines that are supposed to do this that or the other just don’t make sense to me, maybe because I’m the kind of person that like to know why I should do a certain thing in terms of how it is going to actually work and not “just do it because it will result in XYZ”. So before I provide just a tiny sampling of the available information out there, here are a few god references that I used in preparing for my Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist® certification:

Both are great sources of material and mostly focused on training for sport specificity but you can learn a tremendous amount to benefit your own workout as well.  Here are some of the highlights that I think are most relevant for the recreational gym-goer (but really if you want to get serious get a trainer, see my post on trainers). I’m only going to provide a primer here, in future posts on how I build my workout routines I’ll share some thoughts on how to use what you learn here.

Definitions & Considerations:

• Single Joint aka Assistance Exercises:  These are generally focused on a single muscle group and only involve one joint.  There’s not considered all that great if you’re after sport performance but if you’re about tailoring parts of your body to simply look better, well you’ll want to incorporate these and you most likely already do.  Think curls, tricep extensions, abdominal exercises, etc.
• Multi Joint aka Core Exercises:  Core here doesn’t mean your trunk or or abs, in means core as in like “the essential exercises”. These generally have more direct application to sport and involve multiple joints and muscle groups making them a much more demanding set of routines.  Think squats, deadlifts, military press, bench press, olympic lifts, etc.
• Power Exercises: These are multi-joint exercise that are done at high rates of speed.  So, for example, a squat is generally performed slowly but you wouldn’t have much success doing a clean, a push press or a snatch without a serious burst of speed.
• Exercise Order:  Generally it goes Power, Core, Assistance.  The rationale is pretty clear I hope, do the things that will take the most of amount of energy, skill and concentration first.  This is primarily a safety concern. There is another arrangement called pre-exhaustion though which is cool to work in; that’s where you work a large muscle group with a single joint exercise first in order to tire it out before doing a multi-joint exercise on the same group.  For example if you really want to blast you hamstrings you can do leg curls before squats.
• Upper/Lower Alternate:  A scheme where, in the same workout, you hit both upper and lower body but alternate each set.  This can help those who are on a time budget as you can minimize idle time in the gym as you’re resting one group while working another unrelated one at the same time.
• Push/Pull Alternate:  A scheme where you order our workout to alternate between pushing type exercises and pulling type. It has similar benefits to upper/lower but here there are potentially related muscle groups working every set.  Examples of push type would be bench press, shoulder press or tricep extension where pull would be lat pull, bicep curls and bent over row.
• Supersets: Everyone loves to super set! Some people get it wrong though, at least per the working definition. The idea is to train two muscle groups sequentially with no rest but those two groups should be opposing each other.  Or, in strength training terms the agonist and its antagonist (the main working muscle the the one opposing it respectively).  An example here would be to run set of chest and back.
• Compound Sets:  I love these and never even new they had a special name (although some use it interchangeably with supersets but now you know that’s wrong).  It’s like a super set but you choose two exercises that hit the same muscle group and nail them, back to back.  I love to do preacher curls and jump right into a set of supinated bicep curls.
• Split Routine:  This is where you alternate body parts between workouts.  You’ll see a lot of prescribed workouts indicating what to do on M-W-F for example, I don’t like those myself because its easy to mess up the routine if you miss a day.  I prefer to think of a “body part list” and just start working on whatever is next. For example one day you may work chest and back, then the next legs, then the next shoulders and arms, etc. Who cares what day of the week it is?
• Strength: Seems obvious but in reading more of the science behind resistance training you’ll find that its important to distinguish between terms. Strength refers to how much you can lift at slow speed (bench press, squat, etc)
• Power:  Refers to strength as a function of time.  In other words how much weight can you move at high speed or how fast can you move a specific amount of weight.
• Hypertrophy: This basically means building mass.  Yes, there is a different set of guidelines for putting on mass versus building up strength.  I’ve cover the details of repetitions/sets/rest in another post.
• Muscular Endurance: The ability for a muscle group to perform a repetitive task for a some amount of time.
• Anaerobic:  Exercises that rely on energy systems in the body that can produce in the absence of oxygen.  I’ll have a whole different post covering energy systems as its incredibly fascinating stuff! For now think of exercises that don’t involve activity for much more than 3 minutes continuously. There are finer granularities to cover here but that will have to be part of another post or this one will turn into a mini-book.
• Aerobic:  Exercises that rely on energy systems in the body that can produce in the presence of oxygen.  Basically any continuous activity that lasts for longer than 3 minutes will hit this energy system but you may very well run into readings that use 10, 20 or even 30 minutes as a delimiter for calling something aerobic.
• High Intensity Training:  There are a few different flavors of this out there.  The most general way to describe the concept that I can think of it like this:  Short busts of intense (difficult, high exertion) activity with minimal rest periods.  The activity can be just about anything but in my experience we’re talking body weight exercise, light barbell/dumbbell work and plyometrics.  Maybe up to 1 minute on and then using the upper/lower split idea moving right into another body part for the same period; do this for like an hour.  The goal is to train your metabolic systems (more in a future post on energy systems) at an intensity level that is simply not possible to do for long durations.  There are huge benefits here, unbelievable benefits that I’ll cover either in their own post or in the upcoming one on energy systems.