The Best Way To Exercise?

The Job Analogy

If two different companies offered you the same job for the same salary but one of them required you to work two to three times as many hours per week under more dangerous conditions, would you consider both job offers equal? Of course not. Nor should you consider two exercise programs equally effective if one of them requires a greater time investment and carries a higher risk of injury even if both result in the same degree of physical improvement over time. Your long term return on investment and risk versus reward ought to be considered.

What if you really like the job and want to spend more hours working? Some people claim to like working out, but if they answer honestly when questioned you’ll find they do for psychological and social rather than physiological reasons, and what they really like isn’t exercise but social interaction with people who share their interest in exercise and other similar values. The next time you’re at the gym watch and you’ll see people spending far more time talking to or looking at other people (or trying to draw attention to themselves and checking to see if other people are looking at them) than actually exercising. There is nothing wrong with this if people understand and are honest about their reasons and there are psychological benefits from exercise itself, but most people would be better off exercising in the most effective manner for physical improvement and finding other activities which are much better suited to their social and psychological wants and needs.

Mike Mentzer performing leg extensions

What Is The Best Way To Exercise?

Most discussions on the relative effectiveness of different exercise methods are short sighted, focusing only on the degree of change in some factor over shorter time frames and ignore the issues of efficiency and safety, which are equally important. In the long run any reasonably effective program can maximize your genetic potential for all of the general factors of functional ability, but if a method requires a larger time investment to do so or causes more wear and tear on the body or carries a greater risk of injury it is not equal.

The means goal of exercise is to stimulate the body to produce improvements in the general factors of functional ability, but the real goals of exercise, the end goals, are the various improvements in your life that result from accomplishing the means goal. Every hour you spend working out that you don’t need to and every bit of unnecessary wear you put on your body that can contribute to a loss of functional ability in the long run detracts from the greater enjoyment of life that is the real goal of exercise.

It’s not just about building muscle, losing fat, and getting fit. It’s also about doing so more efficiently and more safely so that you are able to spend more of your life enjoying the benefits of exercise than pursuing them, or worse, suffering the harm of poor exercise choices. This is why I do and teach high intensity training, and why I am so critical of the time wasting and harmful bullshit promoted by much of the fitness industry. In the long run, when you take everything into account – results, efficiency, and safety – HIT really is the best way to exercise.

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  • Lifter Apr 8, 2016 @ 19:31

    Without a doubt! It has faithfully served me well for over four decades…and still progressing. The difference between my 70’s workouts and my 2016 version is the volume. What I “got away with” in my teens and 20’s is vastly different than what I can practically use nowadays. But the premise remains as valid today as it’s always been…and always will be.

  • John Shalvey Apr 8, 2016 @ 19:53

    Love the analogy!

  • Donnie Hunt Apr 9, 2016 @ 0:28

    Take this article and combine it with Drew’s article, “Getting The Most Out of Every Rep”. You won’t want to do much exercise, lol. It’s amazing to me just how quickly you can get the job done when you focus on keeping tension in the muscles, don’t attempt extend the set. You’ll be done with you’re workout while the guys across the gym who were standing talking when you came in, will be still talking.

  • Damien Apr 9, 2016 @ 6:27

    Hi Drew. Just out out pure curiosity, does posing practice eat in to your recovery abilities. At the nth degree it probably does, its just that im older ( 47) and want everything left in the tank for recovery but i also actually enjoy flexing and posing. Thanks mate – love ya work.
    Damien

    • Drew Baye Apr 9, 2016 @ 11:25

      Hey Damien,

      Although practicing the mandatory poses or your posing routine can be demanding it won’t interfere much with recovery and adaptation between workouts unless you’re really overdoing it.

      • Damien Apr 18, 2016 @ 18:38

        Thanks Drew. Love your work mate

  • Jack Apr 12, 2016 @ 9:55

    Hey Drew,

    I know the muscles get more flexible as you get stronger but not where I would like to be. Do you have any input on flexibility?

    Thank you

    • Drew Baye May 23, 2016 @ 17:17

      Hey Jack,

      Assuming no unusual injuries or physical conditions a proper strength training program comprised mostly of dynamic exercises will increase flexibility to or maintain it at a high enough level for most activities. If you are performing purely isometric workouts or want to increase your flexibility further supplemental stretching may be required. I cover this briefly in the TSC ebook.

  • Jim Apr 13, 2016 @ 14:21

    Drew I notice in a lot of HIT books and articles by Darden and Jones they advocate standing overhead barbell press as one of the best exercises if you are going to use free weights in your training. Now I notice all the other fitness programs, Starting Strength, etc advocating the standing overhead barbell press as well. I can never find availability for a squat rack or some other rack where I can perform standing overhead barbell presses in my commercial gym anymore because everyone is doing them. Is there any extra benefit to the exercise as opposed to a seated DB press or machine/plate loaded press like Hammer? I mean you have to use less weight for an overhead standing barbell press and if I want maximum strength and muscle mass I figured you would want to choose an exercise that allows you to use the most weight. Anything special about the standing overhead barbell press?

    • Drew Baye May 24, 2016 @ 13:46

      Hey Jim,

      First, you do not need to use the heaviest possible weight in an exercise to maximize muscular strength and size gains. Your intensity of effort – how hard you are working relative to your momentary capability – matters far more than how much weight you use. A broad range of loads and repetition ranges can be equally effective if you train to momentary muscular failure.

      Second, how you perform an exercise is far more important than the equipment you use, and you can safely and effectively train your shoulders and triceps with dumbbells, properly designed machines, isometrics, or bodyweight. The standing barbell press does not provide any general physical benefits that can’t be obtained by performing shoulder presses with other equipment.

  • Ondrej Apr 18, 2016 @ 12:26

    I like the idea of keystone habits. HIT once a week and quality sleep daily means: Improvement in all trainable factors of functional ability, increased NEAT=more movement, normalised appetite and good food choices, low stress.
    So basically traditional workouts, scheduled cardio, sleep and special diet won’t work much better long term as this two step intervention.

  • Damien Apr 18, 2016 @ 18:51

    Hey Drew. Ok a more training oriented question. I completely agree with the 1 set to failure protocol. However, something plays on my mind. Ive always read and been lead to believe that a certain amout of muscle fibres contract maximally to lift a weight – as apposed to fewer muscle fibres all contracting sub maximally. There fore when ive finished my one all out set to failure, I’ve stimulated thise fibres that contracted maximally. If i was then to reduce the weight -as in a decending set fashion i could keep going which suggests there were fibres that were not used in the first set. Therefore 1 all out set followed by a decsending set would gaurentee all fibres being stimulated. Then again, i dont want to use anymore reps than nesessary to trigger adaptation. Just a thought that bugs me mate. As always – love ya work 🙂

    • Drew Baye Apr 21, 2016 @ 13:19

      Hey Damien,

      A muscle fiber either contracts maximally or not at all. Muscle fibers are grouped into motor units of different sizes, and are recruited in order from the smallest to the largest depending on how much force the muscle needs to produce. During an exercise as some motor units fatigue and the combined force they are capable of producing decreases more motor units are recruited to produce the level of force required to overcome the resistance. If you continue the exercise to the point of momentary muscular failure it means all of the motor units in the muscle have been recruited and fatigued to the point where they are unable to produce the required level of force, which is enough to effectively stimulate improvements in strength and size. Additional sets are not necessary, they just retrace the same recruitment pattern adding to the stress the body must recover from without significantly improving the stimulus for growth.

  • Al Apr 29, 2016 @ 9:01

    Hi Drew, since i am a longtime fan and know your work i understand the importance of intensity over frequency or volume. But what of people who LOVE exercise, especially calisthenics? For instance, my friend loves pullups and he says he does them every day bcuz it feels good. Calisthenics is like an addiction, he says. (and I know many people are addicted to calisthenics).

    So my question is, let’s say my friend is put in this high intensity program where he trains only once or twice a week (training to failure, one set, etc.). Since he’s addicted to pullups, can he do pullups every day as long as he doesn’t train them to failure? That way he can have the best of both worlds.

    I hope I am making sense, Drew.

    • Drew Baye May 23, 2016 @ 17:48

      Hey Al,

      Teach your friend how to perform pull ups correctly and he’ll no longer think they feel good. Problem solved.

  • Martin Petkov Mar 20, 2019 @ 9:24

    Another brilliant article, Drew!

    I bought and have been exercising according to Project Kratos a few years ago. Great results and I enjoy the freedom of being able to exercise at home. I started on 3x a week, then 2x, then 1x for some time. And for the past 6-9 months 1x a week Kratos style full body workout and 1x bodyweight based HIIT workout. I’m questioning the value of this HIIT workout and whether it is better to just do 2x bodyweight Kratos style workouts a week.

    Long story short, I did some DNA testing with DNA fit and my results came showing 9% power/strength to 91% endurance distribution. This is in terms of gene expression, fuel utilisation and muscle fibre type I (slow) predominance. I was wondering what your recommendations for adjusting the HIT workouts would be, if any, in light of this?

    Be well
    Martin

    • Drew Baye Jun 14, 2019 @ 15:30

      First, you would be better off doing two circuit strength training workouts per week than alternating strength training with sprint interval training.

      Second, you may respond better to higher rep range/TUL and recover more quickly, but like most things this would require experimentation to determine for yourself.