Condor

Hey,

Quick comment/question. Lets pick three exercises that primarily work the chest...Flat bench press, incline bench dumbbells, and dips (leaning forward, of course). Each of these hit a slightly different angle and I think work well together.

Now, the question: Would it be better to do all 3 of these in one workout (3x1), or would it be better to do one of these exercises (i.e. bench press) until chest is completely cooked, then do exercise #2 NEXT WEEK (i.e. incline dumbbells) and so on. (1x3)

The reason I ask is because I see a lot of routines that have people running all around the place doing 3, 4, & 5 exercises in one workout for one muscle group. My theory is that if you do a really good job on the first 1 or 2 exercises, the later ones for the same muscle group in the same workout are going to be weak.

Now of course with the many-exercise-per-workout method, you could rotate the order of exercises week to week so you start with different ones (i.e. bench, incline, dips week 1...incline, dips, bench week 2...dips, bench, incline week 3...) so that no one exercise gets all the beginning energy.

Do the workouts of 3, 4, and 5+ exercises for a single muscle group have any synergistic effect I might be missing? I hope I did alright explaining here.

strawser9

Totally and completely up to you. Its always good to hit every angle of a muscle. If you want to do all three every week, change the order up each time or each month so your heaviest sets come on different exercises each week.

As long as you hit it hard and eat to gain, you can expect to see results regardless.

Also, you do not need 5 exercises in a successful routine. The exercises you have picked are some of the best, and hit major/minor very well...do 5 sets of each as hard as you can and you won't be missing flys

Prime

to hit my "chest" when I workout, I label it as a horizontal push and I do those 3 exercises on the same day, and don't see them a again until the following week.

I start with a higher intensity, which is 6x4 for slow incline DB press, then later 3x8 for flat bench, and end with 2x10 for dips. I also do horizontal pulling in the same day to balance it out.

I like to do it that way for a few reasons, one so I am mixing it up a bit in the same workout, and two so I am covering two different levels of intensities in one workout.

but like strawser said, it's up to you. as long as your eating enough and training hard you'll gain.