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Order of exercises
shellyenglersnyder
Posts: 14 Member
Is the order in which you do the exercises important? The gym that I go to is pretty busy. Someone was using the rack but the chest press was open so I did that first instead of squats. Is that ok or should I make sure to do the exercises in order?
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Replies
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The squat sequence includes your warm-ups (from body weight squats to weighted squats) since you're not doing cardio, so that's usually done first.
If you're warm enough and stretched enough to bench first, then do so.
Usually any lifting program has you go from hardest to easiest, due to the fatigue factor. But it's perfectly fine to make do with what you've got rather than waste a perfectly good warm-up on waiting forever for some rack to open up, and by then your muscles will be cold again and you risk injury.0 -
dani's right on the money, but i did want to say do not do deadlifts first!!
one day the squat rack was taken, so i thought what the heck i'll do my dl's first. then did my squats. i was dizzy after the first set and barely made it through. i also PR-ed on my DL so maybe that had a lot to do with it :laugh:
personally, i almost always do squats first, as i feel they warm up my whole body the best versus OHP, bench, etc. but i have stared murder at some douche doing him DLs on the power squat rack while i did my ohp first.0 -
Agreed, I'll occasionally do them out of order on bench day because the squat rack is taken (luckily never had to do it on OHP day since I've never tried cleaning the bar), and I hate it. It just feels better to start with the squats. And I've never done squats last; I doubt I'd make it...0
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The squat sequence includes your warm-ups (from body weight squats to weighted squats) since you're not doing cardio, so that's usually done first.
If you're warm enough and stretched enough to bench first, then do so.
Usually any lifting program has you go from hardest to easiest, due to the fatigue factor. But it's perfectly fine to make do with what you've got rather than waste a perfectly good warm-up on waiting forever for some rack to open up, and by then your muscles will be cold again and you risk injury.
^^
This.
Try to do them in order, it IS important for both those reasons, but if its really an issue that day for some reason, its not a big deal.0 -
Thanks all! I'll make sure not to do squats last. I probably wouldn't be able to either!0
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Also just wanted to add that it's a good idea to do warm-up sets for your upper body lift as well.....the only lift which it's really not necessary to do warm-up sets is the last lift (Pendlay row and deadlift) only because you have already trained lower and upper body in the first 2 lifts. This is as per Mehdi's recommendation and I find it to be spot on
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