“This is an order” is something you expect to hear from your spouse or boss. At times, they’re the same person. Exercise order is not an order to exercise, but rather the sequence in which you perform exercises, so that you get the best results.
Taking a 10,000-foot view, exercise order doesn’t matter. The fact that you’re dressed and have made it to the gym is a win. But when we zoom in, exercise order matters, depending on your goals.
Cardio before weights or weights before cardio?
Biceps curls before chin-ups or biceps curls after chin-ups?
Ask 10 gym bros, and you’ll get various answers. They’re not wrong because it’s not an exact science. But the answers here will work for most people most of the time.
Why Exercise Order Matters
It matters when you have a clearer sense of what you want from your workouts. Is it improved power, a better bench press, enhanced cardio endurance, fat loss, or more muscle?
Once you know, it’s time to focus.
Then think of your body’s energy stores like sand through an hourglass. The moment you begin your warm-up, energy drains. Whatever your goal, you want to start with the most important exercise. Start where you have the most energy because you’ll have better mental focus.
If you save it till last because you treat it like delicious candy, you’ll have nothing left to give.
What most people train for is as follows: power, strength, muscle, fat loss, and improved cardio engine. Exercise order matters for those goals. Some want bigger biceps, improved grip strength, or to do more chin-ups. These are performance and vanity goals. Exercise order matters for them, too.
Let’s see what works for most people most of the time.
Exercise Order For:
If you want to get more out of your workouts, here are general recommendations for the order of exercises. In each, it is assumed you’ve warmed up and you’re ready to train.
Note: I’ll be using straight sets (just one exercise, then rest), supersets (paired exercises), and triset (three exercises back-to-back) for example purposes.
Muscle
Muscle is king. Building or maintaining it needs to be a top priority. Exercise order is less important than volume, effort, and intensity, but it still plays a part. Here’s what I would do, depending on whether you’re doing full-body or upper- or lower-body workouts.
Full Body Workouts: Almost always start with a compound lower-body exercise, like a squat or a hinge, as both recruit the most muscle and rev up your muscle-building engines. Then, a compound press or pull variation in a superset fashion. For example:
1A. RDL 6-12 reps
1B. Barbell bench press 6-12 reps
Notice that the RDL requires grip strength, whereas the bench press does not. That’s important because pairing exercises with grip-strength demands may reduce performance on the second exercise.
If you choose to perform a triset, having an isolation or mobility exercise as your third exercise works well. For example, if you want bolder shoulders.
1A. RDL 6-12 reps
1B. Barbell bench press6-12 reps
1C. Lateral raise 12-15 reps
Upper & Lower Body Workouts: These workouts are trickier because fatigue is a bigger factor. Compound exercises that train two or more muscles usually come before isolation exercises, though there are exceptions. I like to perform these workouts in trisets so you get a little more rest between exercises.
Here are two examples of what I would do.
Lower Body: Quad Focus
1A. Heels Elevated Goblet Squat
1B. Assisted Single-Leg RDL
1C. Leg Extensions
Upper Body: Pull Focus
1A. Chin-ups
1B. Dumbbell Bench Press
1C. Band pull-aparts
Your important exercise goes first, another compound exercise second, then an isolation exercise that hones in on your focus area.
Strength
Strength and muscle go hand in hand. You improve one, you improve the other. If you want to do both in the same workout, do the strength move first, then supersets and trisets for muscle later. For example:
1. Trap bar deadlift 3-4 sets 3-6 reps
2A. Split squat 3 sets 8-12 reps per side
2B. Dumbbell bench press 3 sets 8 reps
Training just strength makes things trickier. Choose two to three exercises, with more sets, fewer reps, and more rest between sets, so you can repeat with a similar effort. It’s best to start with a lower-body move, followed by an upper-body move, and make the third move your choice, depending on whether you want more lower- or upper-body strength.
For example:
1. Barbell squat variation 3-5 sets 3-5 reps
2. Barbell bench press variation 3-5 sets 3-5 reps
3. Deadlift variation 1 set 3-6 reps
Train the second lower-body strength exercise for fewer sets. If your third exercise is an upper-body strength movement, perform the same sets and reps as the second exercise.
Power
Power = Force x Acceleration.
Force is a push or pull resulting from an object’s interaction with another object, such as gravity acting on you during a push-up. Acceleration is the rate at which an object changes its speed, such as sprinting to catch the bus.
When you combine both, power results.
Producing powerful movements in the gym requires freshness. When improving power is your goal, it should be at the beginning of your workout. Many don’t have time for standalone power workouts, so it’s best to train power alongside muscle and strength.
Here’s how I would do it.
1A. Med ball slam 2 sets 8 reps
1B. Squat jump 2 sets 6 reps
2A. Chin Up 6-12 reps
2B. Split Squat 8-15 reps
When you combine power and strength, great things happen. Here, you’ll alternate between a heavy lift and a similar explosive movement. This combination creates a strong neuromuscular response called post-activation potentiation (PAP), in which the muscles generate more force after being stressed by high-intensity activity.
It sounds fancy, but it’s an effective way to improve both power and strength.
Here’s an example.
1A. Romanian Deadlift (3 sets of 4 reps)
Rest 2 minutes
1B: Depth Jumps (3 sets of 5 reps)
Fat loss
Fat-loss workouts are similar to muscle-building workouts; the only difference is a calorie deficit or surplus. A calorie deficit is the main driver of fat loss, but there are a few exercise-order things to make your training fat-loss-friendly.
One method is Peripheral Heart Action training.
PHA training is a form of circuit training that alternates between upper- and lower-body exercises with minimal rest. By continuously shuttling blood between the upper and lower body, it raises your heart rate, improves circulation, and burns more calories.
You could do this with trisets, for example.
1A. RDL
1B. Bench press
1C. Split squat
Or grouping exercises into a circuit works well for PHA. For example,
1A. Split squat
1B. Chin up
1C. Hip thrust
1D. Floor press
1E. Alternating reverse lunge
Another difference between muscle- and fat-loss training is that I program slightly more compound exercises for fat loss (more muscle trained = more calories burned) and less rest between exercises.
Exercise Order Housekeeping
I’ve yet to answer the question: weights before cardio or cardio before weights? No question sparks more debate on the gym floor because it’s a massive “it depends” question. It depends on your goal.
If it’s your goal to improve your muscle, strength, fat loss, or power, weights come first. Cardio is second, and preferably performed on a different day. But if it’s your goal to run a half-marathon, then cardio comes first, with weight training supplementing your running to keep you injury-free.
When supersetting, trisetting, or performing circuits, the performance of one exercise shouldn’t interfere too much with the other. But there are exceptions because it’s a goal-dependent question.
Wrapping Up
Does exercise order matter?
If showing up and working on exercise consistency is your thing, exercise order isn’t a big deal. But when you move past that and have specific goals, then yes, exercise order matters.
Taking orders from your spouse or boss, well, that’s a different matter.
If the exercise order is something you struggle with, please reach out to me here.
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