In my previous post, I covered how to select the right exercises. Now we need to figure out how to arrange them. Just as with exercise selection, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all heuristic for nailing ordering. You’ll need to determine which variables are most important to you and use them to guide the process.
However, some general rules can help ensure that your workouts don’t suck. That’s what we’ll be going over here.
Exercise Ordering
General ordering considering fatigue/risk
The first question I ask when putting together a program is “What exercises absolutely need to go first?” I’m mostly thinking about this in the context of safety and what exercises are the most demanding, either from a technical or metabolic standpoint.
With that in mind, this is my general ranking of importance for each exercise “category”.
Olympic or power movements like power cleans, snatches, etc.
These movements often require a high degree of technical precision and explosiveness, both of which wane by the end of a long workout. Due to the high power demands and risk of injury when performing these movements while fatigued, they are typically done first.
Big lower body compound movements like squats, deadlifts, and leg press
These exercises use the heaviest loads and create a significant amount of systemic fatigue due to the size of the muscles involved. The earlier you can do them in the workout, the better it is to mitigate the risk of form breakdown.
Big upper body compounds like barbell bench press, barbell overhead press, rows/pull-ups
Upper body compound movements tend to use lighter loads than lower compound movements, but they’re still relatively taxing compared to isolation exercises.
Compound exercises that use lower loads and aren’t done with barbells, like dumbbell bench, dumbbell walking lunges, dumbbell step-ups, dumbbell overhead press, etc.
This includes various machine compound exercises, such as chest-supported rows, chest presses, shoulder presses, and hip thrusts.
Because these exercises are performed with dumbbells and/or involve movements with more degrees of freedom, they are safer to fail, and the loads used are lower, respectively.
Depending on the movement, these could be interchangeable with exercises from category 3. Some unilateral lower-body exercises are far more taxing than row or pull-up variations, but not as taxing or risky as barbell upper-body compounds.
Isolation exercises
These are exercises that train only one muscle or muscle group at a time. Think bicep curls, tricep extensions, lateral raises, calf raises, leg extensions, leg curls, etc.
The absolute loads used are lower for isolation exercises, which means they create less stress and fatigue, making them safer to do when fatigued.
Note: Prioritization and pairing can introduce competing priorities, making ordering more nuanced.
Prioritization
You will improve what you prioritize the most, so focus on the areas you care most about improving and put those exercises early in the workout. I generally like to separate prioritized movements from risky movements (if they’re different) by placing them on a different day. This way, I don’t have to choose priority vs risk.
If you want to improve your bench press while incorporating power cleans into your program, consider placing them on different days. Then you can fill in the rest of the workouts with less technical and/or lower-priority movements.
Pairing
If you use supersets—or any other type of multi-exercise sets—you may need to shuffle ordering around to prevent bad pairings. For example, deadlifts are a relatively taxing exercise. You could choose not to pair them at all, which is totally reasonable. However, suppose you want to pair them with something. In that case, you might consider a relatively low-effort isolation exercise that doesn’t engage the same muscles, such as a lateral raise or tricep exercise.
However, that depends on what other compound movements are performed after the deadlift. Bottom line, pairing can add another variable to the ordering problem—more on this in the section on pairing.
What this looks like in practice
Here’s an example of how I might order a workout that has every element:
A1 Power Cleans 3 x 5
B1 Barbell Front Squat 3 x 6
B2 Chin-ups 4 x 8
C1 Dumbbell Overhead Press 4 x 8
C2 Dumbbell Seated Bent Over Reverse Flys 3 x 12
Note: The power exercise goes first. The rest of the workout employs supersets, with the next series featuring a big lower-body compound exercise paired with an upper-body compound exercise. The last series is another upper-body compound paired with an isolation exercise.
Here is another example of ordering that is typical for my client programs (we don’t typically do Olympic lifts)
A1 Barbell Back Squat 4 x 6
A2 Dumbbell Single Arm Row on Bench 4 x 8e
B1 Dumbbell Bench Press 4 x 8
B2 Landmine Single Leg RDL 4 x 8e
C1 Cable Bicep Curls 4 x 12
C2 Alternating V-Ups 4 x 14e
Exercise Pairing
Although they are technically more efficient, most people who train in a busy commercial gym don’t even bother with pairing exercises. I don’t blame them. So if you only do straight sets—complete all the sets of an exercise before moving onto the next—then you don’t need to worry too much about this section.
However, if you do supersets or circuits, consider the following to enhance the effectiveness of your pairings.
Don’t pair exercises with overlapping muscle groups
Obviously, if you pair two exercises that use all or some of the same muscles, those muscles will be very fatigued. And very fatigued muscles don’t perform well.
If you, for instance, were to pair chin-ups with bicep curls, you would render both exercises significantly less effective—due to the biceps being absolutely fried—than if they were paired with a bench press or a cable overhead tricep extension. No overlapping muscles means you’re using the muscles involved in one exercise while the muscles involved in the other are resting.
Which, in a way, is what makes supersets so effective.
Don’t pair exercises using the same equipment
This one is more of a social limitation than a true logistical one. Commandeering two pieces of the same type of equipment is a dick move, especially if the equipment is in demand.
Using two barbells, both sides of a cable machine, or two popular machines at the same time is uncool, and you deserve to be judged for that. You gotta share the gym, and that means being relatively thrifty with equipment usage.
Try to pair barbells with dumbbells, dumbbells with machines, machines with cables, or anything with bodyweight - you get the idea.
Don’t pair grip-intensive exercises
This is a continuation of the first section, but it warrants its own section because it is often overlooked. There are many reasons an exercise can be taxing on the forearms.
You may be:
Holding a very heavy weight 👉🏼 deadlifts
Pulling a weight 👉🏼 rows
Pulling yourself up over a bar 👉🏼 pull-ups
Carrying weight as you walk around the gym 👉🏼 farmers carries
Holding weights while doing a lower body exercise 👉🏼 dumbbell walking lunges
Any exercise that challenges your grip strength or endurance should not be paired with another exercise that does the same, especially if it causes the grip to become the limiting factor in either or both exercises. That is, unless you have a way to remove the grip from the equation, such as with Cobra grips or lifting straps.
Don’t pair exercises that are metabolically taxing and/or technically challenging
Doing exercises while fatigued is inevitable in a well-designed workout. But the easiest way to add some extra slop to a movement is to pair it with a highly fatiguing movement.1
Here are some examples of exercises that probably shouldn’t be paired for this reason:
Deadlifts and box jumps
Burpees and bench press
Squats and jump rope
The risk of performing compound movements like deadlifts and squats is compounded (see what I did there?) by the loads you use and your level of fatigue. You might be able to get away with doing higher-rep, lower-load versions of these compounds, but if you’re training to improve strength with heavy loads, it's best to save your energy for those movements.
Summary
Hopefully, you now have a slightly better understanding of how to order and pair exercises. It’s also important to remember that these heuristics or guidelines are just that. Things are rarely going to be perfect, and you’ll learn what works and doesn’t work over time.
The name of the game is to get as much as you can from each exercise within your constraints. However, doing the work, even when it’s not perfect, is far more important than getting everything exactly right.
Be consistent and keep improving.
This was one of the major criticisms of CrossFit in the early days. Doing very technical movements for time and often pairing them with other very metabolically demanding exercises. It’s difficult to maintain some semblance of appropriate technique when you’re totally gassed.