Exercise Variety

Hallo Christian, if you have the time…

Do you thing that using a variety of exercises for a muscle group is necesery, or helpfull… a lot or not…?

For example lets take two twins, the one performs only bench presses, overhead press, chin ups, squats and dead lifts, with some variation at intensity and volume, from time to time.

The other also uses exercises as dips, flies, rows etc.

and each one matches the volume and frequency of the exercises according to recovery,

what’s going to be the difference at muscle strength and size?

Thank you

[quote]high_intensity wrote:
Hallo Christian, if you have the time…

Do you thing that using a variety of exercises for a muscle group is necesery, or helpfull… a lot or not…?

For example lets take two twins, the one performs only bench presses, overhead press, chin ups, squats and dead lifts, with some variation at intensity and volume, from time to time.

The other also uses exercises as dips, flies, rows etc.

and each one matches the volume and frequency of the exercises according to recovery,

what’s going to be the difference at muscle strength and size?

Thank you

[/quote]

I won’t answer your question because even twins can have different responses to training.

However I will tell you that I am currently finishing an article on this very subject. I personally believe that most of your gains will be achieved through the big basics exercises.

Here is a quote from my upcoming article:

‘‘Strength coaches, those who have developed their craft by working with athletes, generally recognize how powerful performing a lot of sets for the same exercise can be a very strong growth stimulus. Ironically, performing more work sets of the same basic exercise will lead to more overall growth than the typical â??â??bodybuildingâ??â?? approach of doing the same number of sets, but divided into many different exercises. For example 10 work sets of squats will build more leg size than doing 4 sets of squats, 3 sets of leg press and 3 sets of leg extension.’’

That is not to say that I don’t recommend isolation and assistance exercises is worthless; to maximize your physique I do feel that isolation or assistance work needs to be used. But the bulk of your training volume should be spent on the basic movements.

OK, thank you very much coach!