FT Questions....

[Scott Stevenson]

Hey just completed tier 1 of the program and loving it but got some questions about Muscle rounds on tier2\tier3

When performing more then 1 set for muscle rounds how do you go about exercise order.

For example
Back thickness x2
Back Width x2
Chest x2
Delts x2
Triceps x1

Would you perform your 1st set for say back thickness then rest and perform another set for back thickness.
Or do you Perform 1 set for back thickness rest then move onto the next exercise performing it in a circuit style


For example.
BOR6X4 rest
BOR 6X4 rest
CG Pulldown 6x4 rest
CG Pulldonw 6x4 rest and so on...

or

BOR 6X4
CG Pulldown 6x4
Smith Incline Press 6x4
Smith Shoulder Press 6x4
Pressdowns 6x4

Then repeat running through the exercises again

Actually, both options are available to you. Typically, for the sake of warm-up time from a practical sense, you'd do all the MRs for a given muscle group right in a row. (You'd need less warm-up of when doing all the MRs for a given muscle group in a row.)

Because MR's are chosen on the fly, this also gives you an in the moment sense of what aspects of the muscle you've just trained in picking the MRs. For instance, if you've done a machine flat press for chest but felt very little in the upper pec area (from the feel of the exercise and pump thereafter), you might pick an upper chest exercises next.

However, alternating through MRs for different muscle groups means greater recovery so the previous MR doesn't impact performance on the next one. For folks that are not terribly strong and haven't focused on progressive overload, really relish lifting really heavy weights a/o have the sense that greater loading is tantamount to making greater gains, this would be an option.

This latter options might NOT be the best one for someone who's trying to bring up a weak muscle group (chest is a common example) where they are perhaps not able to focus well on targeting that muscle ("mind muscle connection"). The pre-fatiguing effect of the previous MRs can help in this respect and, because of this fatigue, the tendency to want to lift superheavy loads can be set aside when the best thing can be to find that exercise that really targets the weak muscle. (For chest, then, this might mean doing a pec fly with a mat / pad between the shoulder blades to help with retraction and keep the anterior delts out of play, which will mean event lighter loads.)

So, the decision comes down (among some other things like machine avaialblbity perhaps) to time (warm-ups) and preference for greater loading vs.the possible need to focus on targeting a weak muscle group using a pre-fatiguing a strategy.

-S