How to Design Exercise Programs, Part 3: Exercise Selection
This post covers exercise selection: the specific exercises in each workout. For optimal results, the exercises in your workouts should be based on how the human body is actually designed to move.
We are Born Knowing How to Move
Movement is inherent in our DNA; we are born with movement programmed into our central nervous system (CNS). As babies, our parents DO NOT teach us how to roll over, crawl or walk; these movements are already programmed in the CNS and we just need to develop the muscular strength and coordination to perform them.
Gravity Controls How we Move
Ponder this: a 4-legged animal can walk almost immediately after being born; however, for us humans, it takes approximately one year to develop the strength and coordination to successfully ambulate on two feet. Why this difference? Easy, gravity.
Every time your foot makes contact with the ground, your body is accelerated downward by the force of gravity. At the same time, the ground exerts an equal and opposite force upwards into your lower leg called ground reaction force (GRF); these two competing forces intersect around the body’s center of gravity, commonly called, “the core.”
4-legged animals have 4 points of contact with the ground and a spine that is horizontal to gravity; whereas we humans have 2 points of contact with the ground and a spine that is perpendicular to gravity. This difference means that we can consider the first year of our lives as a strength and conditioning program to learn how to control our bodies in an upright position while balanced on our feet.
The stages of human motor skill development are listed below. During these stages, our muscular and CNS systems are developing the timing, strength and coordination to integrate movements of the hips, pelvis, spine and shoulders.:
Extending the spine - ‘tummy time,’ the first ‘core exercise’ we all do
Rolling over - the first time shoulders and hips work together
Sitting up - developing spinal stability
Belly crawling - improving coordination between shoulders and hips
Crawling - strengthening muscles responsible for walking
Cruising (which is standing and walking while holding on to stable objects) - learning how to be stable in gravity
Walking - the coordination, strength and timing to make movement happen.
The Exercises that SHOULD be in Your Workout Program
The reason for the background on motor skill development is that when it comes to the exercises in your workout, remember this axiom:
Exercise is movement and movement is a skill that requires mastery.
Walking is a complex pattern of movement occurring in all three planes of motion at the same time. The CNS coordinates various muscles to function as a single system to create efficient movement, therefore, exercises that focus on isolated joint movement or muscle action are completely contrary to how the body actually functions.
Human gait can be broken down into specific movement patterns, and it’s these patterns that dictate the specific exercises that should be performed in a strength training program designed for longevity.
There are five basic patterns of human movement that can be found in the gait cycle:
Squatting (or hip hinging)
Lunging (or stepping)
Pushing: forward and overhead
Pulling: from the front and overhead
Rotating: a combination of pushing and pulling
If you look at most ground-based exercises for the lower body they consist of either a squatting movement with both feet on the ground or a lunging movement involving transitioning from one foot to the other. Upper body exercises involve either pushing a weight away from the body or pulling a weight closer to the body. Rotational exercises are a combination of pushing and pulling and involve the torso and hips rotating against one another.
Common exercises based on these patterns include:
Hip-hinges: Romanian Deadlifts, deadlifts, kettlebell swings
Squats: bodyweight, barbell, dumbbell (goblet), kettlebell (goblet)
Single-leg: lunges in all planes, split-squats, rear-foot elevated (Bulgarian) split-squats
Pushes: chest press, shoulder press, chest flies, triceps presses
Pulling: barbell bent-over rows, seated rows, 1-arm dumbbell rows, pull-ups
Rotating: medicine ball chops, cable chops, standing twists
These movements are considered the basic patterns of human movement and because they require muscles, fascia and bones to work together to produce coordinated movement, they should be the foundation for any exercise program designed to improve mobility, muscular strength and metabolic conditioning, the key components of longevity.
The Human Body as a Mobile Device
A mobile device provides an accurate analogy for how various body systems function together to generate movement. A device is a collection of different pieces of hardware, specifically plastic, metal, glass, wires and circuits. When first built into an integrated system, this hardware is relatively useless unless there is an operating system to organize how it all functions together as a single entity capable of performing a variety of functions from writing texts to searching the internet to actually making a phone call. The operating system initiates the commands that tell the circuit boards, memory cards and other digital components how to work as an integrated system to perform a variety of tasks.
The muscle, fascia, elastic connective tissue and skeletal structures can be considered the hardware of the human body. Just like the individual components of a device, the various structures of the human body need a central operating system to initiate the commands for performing specific functions. The CNS plays the role of the operating system that organizes the signals to the hardware to initiate movement. Unlike your device, which needs specific instructions from software telling it what functions to perform, the CNS is a self-learning system constantly receiving a variety of inputs that determine the outputs that result in the execution of specific movements.
An app is software that tells your device how to perform a specific function; for example, Instagram allows you to share videos of your favorite meals and outfits with your friends. Think of a squat as an app that tells your muscles how to function to create the movement.
GIGO is an old software programming term standing for garbage-in, garbage-out, which means that if the software used to perform a function isn’t well written then it will be inefficient or unable to properly perform the assigned task.
Applying this analogy, it is easy to see how traditional muscle-isolation exercises can be considered faulty software because they provide garbage input: using only one or two muscles at a time to move a joint while it is held in a relatively stable position. This approach toward exercise works against the inherent learning capabilities of the CNS, which has the ability to activate muscles in an effort to learn and refine specific movement patterns.
A workout based on the movement patterns might look like:
Workout for 40-something adult interested in strength training for longevity:
Warm-up
Exercise Intensity Reps Rest Sets
Hip bridges (hinge) Bodyweight 15 30 sec. 3
High plank (push) Bodyweight 1 - 45 sec. 30 sec. 3
Cable squat to row 15RM 15 30 sec. 3
(squat and pull)
Lateral lunges Bodyweight 10 30 sec. 3
(single leg)
Workout
Dumbbell RDL (hinge) 10RM 10 45 sec. 3
Dumbbell incline chest press 10RM 10 45 sec. 3
Dumbbell 1 arm row (pull) 10RM 10 45 sec. 3
Reverse lunge (single leg) 10RM 10 45 sec. 3
Dumbbell shoulder press (push) 10RM 10 45 sec. 3
Medicine ball chops (rotatation) 10RM 10 45 sec. 3
This is a sample program of how to organize movement patterns into a comprehensive workout. This workout is designed to use a weight heavy enough to cause fatigue by the 10th rep and would be done 3x/week to stimulate muscle growth and strength gains, both essential components of exercise for longevity.
Into Action
Exercise programs based on the foundational movement patterns allow you to improve your operating system’s ability to move the hardware. In other words, exercises based on the patterns your body already performs can allow you to strengthen your muscles, fascia and connective tissue work more efficiently as a completely integrated system so that you not only look better, but move better as a result - and THAT is the key to longevity.
Finally, taking the analogy a step further, if you watch a lot of videos on your phone, you drain the battery rather quickly, very similar to how a high-intensity interval training (HIIT) workout drains the energy in your body, but that will be a post for another day.
If you want to learn how to design your own workouts, along how to structure a long-term program for success, then pick up a copy of: Functional Core Training, my e-book that explains the science so you can develop the workouts that can enhance your quality of life: