Hunters Strength & Conditioning Blog
You, dear friend, are bombarded with exercise information on the internet. There are a million song and dance numbers showing you an infinite number of exercise variations. It’s difficult to tell what’s worth a shit and what isn’t. After a great question from an Instagram follower, I’m helping you develop your exercise bullshit meter. The truth is that not every exercise is worth a shit or worth your time.
We’ll discuss how to determine the truth about exercises, moving from general principles to your specific circumstances. We’ll also chat about how to consider the source when consuming exercise info.
Each section asks us a question about exercise quality, and I will give that question a detailed answer.
Let’s party.
Our first stop on this train line is at the near end of the general station. This station is manned by the brilliant and brutal basics.
Legendary strength coach, Dan John, developed a system to classify strength exercises that I’ve adopted and applied for a long time. The classifications are: hinge, squat, press, pull, crawl, carry. The classifications work because those are the main things we do as humans, whether on one foot or two, whether with one arm or two. So, they are the main movement patterns to be trained.
Hinge = Deadlift
Squat = well, Squat
Press = Pushups, Bench Presses, Overhead Presses
Pulls = Rows, Chinups
Crawl = Locomotion. Walking and running are progressions of crawling. This is where most direct “core” work fits as well.
Carry = Holding weight and walking with it in various positions
Mostly all strength exercises fit into these categories, sometimes in combination. But you see the brilliant, brutal basics listed at the front: deadlift, squat, pushup and press, row, and chinup. The movements that define the category are the ones that should be most often trained. Yes, variation is important, but only if the variation is designed to achieve a specific outcome. We’ll talk about that in the next section.
Each movement should have a specific goal or set of goals. Beyond whether or not they fit appropriately into one of the above categories, the goal is the main general consideration by which the exercises are judged. If it doesn’t have a goal, or does not by design meet the goal, it is a shit exercise. Let’s start with an easy example, squatting with weight on an unstable surface. From there we’ll build out a general set of goals.
Okay, so you’ve loaded up a bar or grabbed a kettlebell and you’ve stepped onto a bosu ball with both feet. Then you do yourself some squats. Nothing bad happens; but nothing all that good happens either. Why? Because you can’t load the squat heavily enough on a bosu ball to meet the desired goal of improving systemic strength. All you really get better at by doing bosu ball squats is bosu ball squats.
Each strength exercise should be designed to meet one or more of the following goals:
-Increased systemic strength (think traditional strength movements like squats, deadlifts, etc.)
-Increased strength endurance
-Increased muscular endurance
-Balancing strength from left to right (think unilateral exercises)
-Improving stability and joint mobility under load
-Maximizing muscle gain
Let’s stick with the squat and examine how it might be applied to achieve different goals from the list, and also how it might get applied in a way that contradicts the desired outcome.
To build systemic strength, you’ll do a squat variation that you can load relatively heavily. That might be a front squat, a safety bar squat, or a box squat depending on your current capabilities (more on that in a bit). You’ll do 1 to 5 reps per set, and it’s okay if you don’t go ass to grass. That’s not permission to do a quarter squat and call it good. You still want to get to around parallel, so you’ll choose the variation that allows you to do that. But putting your ass on the ground isn’t pivotal for systemic strength building because we’re optimizing for nervous system output, not muscle length or muscle growth.
If, however, we want to maximize muscle growth, we want as much controlled range of motion as possible because we know that is important for hypertrophy. So, we wouldn’t choose a box squat to meet a muscle growth goal. Most likely, we’d choose something like a front squat or a goblet squat because they allow us to achieve more range of motion.
We’d also choose front squats or goblet squats if we are concerned with building control at each end of the range of motion – although we can do that via other means than traditional strength training.
We won’t choose any of those squats if our goal is to balance strength and stability between the right and left sides of the body. We’d choose a lunge or a split squat variation or a variation that only loads one side of the body.
Those brief examples offer context, and context is king. Strength exercises must be applied in the right context to maximize their benefit. But what about those exercises that aren’t misapplied but are just shit? Well, if it looks like a circus trick, it’s probably shit. If there are bands strapped everywhere and weights in all kinds of weird places, it’s likely been designed to capture your attention not to meet one of the goals listed above.
Now that we’ve covered some general considerations, let’s move on to the specifics of each individual’s body.
Some movements are shit for some people while they are fine for others. For example, I do well with heavy deadlifting, but heavy squatting destroys me. Why? Because my joints and my levers are such that heavy squats disproportionately stress my body, causing some tissues to bear more than their fair share of the load. The result is that my nervous system takes way longer to recover and I end up with hip and back pain. So, I don’t squat heavy. (Truth be told, heavy squatting isn’t a great option for most people, so we do most of our heavy “squat” training with split squats.)
To understand whether or not a given movement matches your current capabilities, we have to examine a couple of things. First is movement capacity. The second is movement skill.
Movement capacity is the amount of controlled range of motion you can access. This is also called mobility.
Movement skill is your ability to apply movement capacity to a given movement by successfully organizing yourself to meet the requirements of the exercise with good form.
An example of movement capacity is the amount of range of motion you can achieve at each shoulder without having to “steal” range of motion from other joints – namely your spine.
An example of movement skill is using that movement capacity to successfully overhead press with good form.
An exercise makes sense for you where movement capacity and movement skill meet.
If you don’t have the movement capacity to get your arms overhead without having to move your head, arch your back, etc., then you shouldn’t overhead press.
If you don’t have the movement skill to organize yourself to press two dumbbells/kettlebells overhead while standing with good form, then you need to build the skill with regressed variations using kneeling positions and one dumbbell/kettlebell.
So, the question is how do you get a handle on your movement capacity and movement skill to determine whether or not a movement is good for you?
Well, does it beat the hell out of you? Do you feel disproportionate soreness on one side of your body or in one joint after doing it? Does it take you days to recover from it? If the answer is yes to these questions, the movement is likely wrong for you.
To get more precise, you need to test your movement capacity and your movement skill. We do that in Backcountry Ready with a series of shoulder, hip, and ankle mobility tests, as well as strength tests that tease out your current level of strength and skill with the fundamental movements.
Then we train appropriately hard with exercises that meet people at their current level of movement capacity and movement skill.
Now that we’ve covered the general and specific principles of evaluating exercises, let’s give you a lens for evaluating who you should listen to.
It’s really that simple. Is the person giving you a solid explanation and teaching you how to brilliantly and brutally execute the basics, or are they bombarding you on the daily with new exercise variations? If the former, they’re likely worth listening to – although, I can’t fully comment without knowing the person. If the latter, they’re just trying to get your attention by using shiny objects. Remember, the empty can rattles the most.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t offer a caveat before closing up shop on this article. While sometimes it’s easy to evaluate an exercise by following the sniff test, other times it’s worth it to try an exercise before determining its value.
At the beginning of the year, I was introduced to a piece of equipment called the Oov. The damn thing looks like a sex saddle. If I had learned about it in any other context than the one I did, I would have laughed it off as a gimmick. But I learned about it at a seminar put on for the tactical group I work with. It’s marketed as a core trainer, but it has a profound impact on sleep. Again, at first sniff in any other context it wouldn’t pass the test. However, I tried it at the seminar and that night slept better than I had in months. Now, I use the Oov almost every day and I have the data from my Oura ring to show my sleep improvements.
I use this illustration to goad you to try things. Yes, sometimes it’s obvious that an exercise is an extra dry moldy turd. And sometimes the outward appearance is deceiving. It’s important to give things a try, but to give them a try using the context from what we discussed earlier in the article. And do your best to avoid the rattling empty cans.