What Makes An Exercise GREAT? - By Jeff Nippard
I have been following various Youtubers along the way all these years and one of the very few who provide a lot of value is Jeff. I 'm a subscriber to his newsletter and I 'm sharing with you an article I found useful for my gym goers!
It feels good. Or, put another way, it doesn’t feel bad. The exercise should feel smooth and natural. And it shouldn’t give you joint pain.
There’s high tension in the deep stretch. At the end of the lowering phase, you should experience a pulling sensation in the target muscle, similar to a static stretch. That’s how you know you’re getting high tension on the muscle at a long muscle length, which seems to be really important for hypertrophy.
You can add weight. If you can’t progressively overload an exercise, it won’t be effective for very long. That’s why you’ll most likely build more muscle with bench presses than with bodyweight push-ups, even though push-ups check the first two boxes on our list. Once your chest gets strong enough, it may become impractical to overload push-ups in a reasonable rep range.
Bonus tip: When you’re pressed for time, use “plug-and-play” options like dumbbells and selectorized weight-stack machines instead of barbells and plate-loaded machines like the leg press.
