Rest and Exercise Pairings Matter!

5-30-25
To make your programming as effective and efficient as possible it is important to pay attention to how you pair your exercises. Performing 2 or 3 exercises in pairs or tri-sets allows us to squeeze more total volume into a workout but when doing so it is often best to choose “non-competing pairings”
Non-Competing pairings means pairing two exercise together that focus on different muscle groups so that the local fatigue of one exercise won’t interfere with the execution of the other exercise.

An example of this would be:
Pairing an upper body push exercise with a lower body pushing exercise:
A1: Bench Press
A2: Goblet Squat

When planning a full-body workout this allows us to fit more exercises into the program with minimal interference between exercises.
Additionally, it allows us time to rest the muscle group for an adequate amount while performing the second exercise of time before returning for the next set.Pairing exercises together allows us to create greater workout density, meaning we can do more total work over the course of the training session.
To ensure the quality of training is high we need to allow 2-3 minutes between sets of strength exercises. One way to ensure adequate rest while still maximizing your workout density is to pair non-competing exercises in supersets and trisets. So you could pair an upper and lower body exercise together so that they would not be detrimental to each others recovery.
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Example Program:
     A1: Hang Clean
     A2: Ball Rollout
     B1: Bench Press
     B2: Single Leg Squat
     C1: Shoulder Elevated Single Leg Hip Lift
     C2: Dumbbell Row
     C3: 1/2 Kneeling Cable Chop
This approach is a great way to maximize the total exercise volume for athletes and general population clients who often have a minimal amount if time they can dedicate to training.