The Case Against Fixed Exercise Programs

Maybe we all need a little more freedom in our workouts

For the past year I’ve been violating one of the core principles of exercise program design– I’ve been going to the gym with no set plan for which exercises I’m going to do.  

Maybe I’ll bench press.  Maybe I’ll do cable chest presses, or dumbbell bench presses.  Once in a while I even use fixed-track machines, if everything else is in use.  

And you know what?  It’s worked out well.  I’ve put on muscle, and I’ve gained strength on every exercise despite only doing 4-6 sets of almost any given exercises per week.

So what’s going on here?

People who are totally new to working out often go to the gym with no real plan and just do whatever looks interesting.  This can lead to really uneven development, as certain body parts get a lot of work and others get neglected entirely.

The “correct” way to work out is to have a fixed program that tells you exactly which exercises to do and how much of them.  Three sets of squats at 5 reps, three sets of Arnold presses at 8 reps, etc.

A little-known study published a few years ago suggests that there may be a middle ground which is superior to both of these extremes.  

Published in 2020, the study by Rauch et al on training regimens featuring autoregulated exercise selection found that self-selecting exercises is likely to be advantageous for muscular hypertrophy. 

The study divided 17 strength-trained men into fixed and autoregulated (I don’t think this is a correct use of the term autoregulation, but that’s neither here nor there) exercise selection groups.  Both groups worked out on the same schedule for the same number of sets for 9 weeks.

At the end of the study, the self-selected exercise group had gained significantly more muscle mass- and all of them had gained mass, whereas at least one of the fixed selection group lost a bit of muscle.  

The average gain was 2.47%, which is great for 9 weeks of progress in already strength-trained individuals.  The average for the fixed group was 1.37%, which is in fact pretty average.  In comparative terms, the self-selected group did 80% better, albeit with a huge margin of error given the small sample size and short duration.

Strength gains were more equivocal, with the self-selected group gaining significantly more strength on the bench press but not the squat.

The results are open to a bit of interpretation.  The short length and small sample size leave large margins of error, a common problem in exercise studies.  However that biases the study towards type 2 errors- a failure to find a significant result that was actually there.  

The effects on muscle mass were more impressive than the effects on strength.  Of the two, I think mass is more relevant- it’s what most people ultimately care about after all, but I think it also makes for a more fair comparison.  The fixed exercise group was doing a better job of “training to the test” by sticking to the squat and bench press, whereas the self-selected exercise group spent more time doing other exercises.  

Over the long run, greater gains in muscle mass should lead to greater gains in strength.  Strength and mass are more correlated in the long run than in the short run– they can only diverse so much.  

There are also three potential interpretations of why the self-selected exercise group did better.  

The first is that they worked harder because they had a greater sense of agency over their workouts.  

The second is that different people respond better to different exercises, and people have an instinctive sense of this, so allowing some freedom to self-select exercises makes workouts more effective.

The third is that the self-selected exercise group benefitted from greater variety in their exercises.  If this is the case, then fixed workouts with more variety might have performed as well as self-selected exercise workouts.  

I find the first explanation most compelling, especially given research which shows that giving people some freedom of choice enhances intrinsic motivation.  

The third also probably has some truth to it- different exercises do a better job of targeting different muscles, or even heads of muscles, so some variety is helpful once you’re past your newbie gains.

The second theory may well be true, but it hasn’t been tested yet that I know of.  

Another reason I think there’s a real effect here is that the self-selected exercise group performed more total volume load– in terms of reps times weight– than the fixed exercise group.  Yes, take that with a grain of salt because a hundred pounds on one exercise isn’t equivalent to a hundred pounds with another exercise.  Still, it was a 23% difference– that’s pretty big.  

And the sum total of research to date does suggest that total training volume is the main driver of muscle growth.  Menno Henselmans goes over that pretty thoroughly in this article– suffice to say, most methods that work for enhancing muscle growth do so by helping you train for more volume without proportionately more fatigue.  The key to big muscles is ultimately just lifting more weight.  

So how does this look in practice?

It’s not just “do whatever you feel like.”  A self-selected exercise program won’t prescribe specific exercises, but it should prescribe specific movement patterns to ensure that no muscle gets left behind. 

A segment of a fixed exercise workout would look like this:

A1) Chin-ups, 3 sets of 5 reps

A2) Arnold press, 3 sets of 5 reps

That’s a superset, meaning you alternate the two exercises.  With a self-selected exercise program, it would look something like this:

A1) Downward pulling, 3 sets of 5 reps

A2) Upward pushing, 3 sets of 5 reps

And then you would have a separate lift of allowed exercises, ideally three or four per movement pattern, like so:

Downward pulling: Chin-up, pull-up, parallel grip chin-up, or cable pull-down

Upward pushing: Arnold press, barbell military press, unilateral dumbbell shoulder press, unsupported seated cable shoulder press

Get that?  For each exercise, you have a limited selection of movements to choose from.  There are options, but you will push something upward and pull something downward.  

This has a few obvious practical advantages and disadvantages.  

Advantage: you can pick whichever exercise uses equipment that’s available, so it speeds up your workout.  You should still rest of course, but no more ten minute waits for the thing you want to be available.  

Disadvantage: It’s harder to track progress.  You’ll need to track it by exercise rather than by workout, and progress will only be visible over longer time periods– weekly to monthly, rather than daily to weekly, depending on your rate of progress.

Arguable disadvantage: It can get harder to group exercises together for circuits or supersets.  This can be fixed by incorporating a lot of dumbbell movements, since dumbbells can be carried over to other parts of the gym to be near whatever other equipment you’re using.  

I find this style of workout more fun and motivating, the research backs it up and I’m getting good results with it, so I’m going to stick with it for the time being.  

The lesson here is that while working out doesn’t exactly have to be fun, it does help if you enjoy it, or and more than that, it helps to be motivated so you want to do it instead of just forcing yourself.  Allowing yourself a little freedom of choice appears to be one way to do that.