 Hey everybody, I'm Lance Goyke. Today I wanna discuss programming and periodization, writing a workout. We're gonna talk about one component of it and that is exercise order. So how do I decide what I do first, what I do second, what I do third? Are those things just interchangeable? Like if there's no equipment available, maybe I can just skip and then come back to that thing. We're gonna talk about them. So the two biggest things you wanna think about are what is my most important thing to do? That's the first thing. And then what is something that requires less fatigue in order for me to do it really well? Okay, so things that are technically heavy, things that are literally heavy with high intensity, those things require that my nervous system be fresh. It can't be fatigued because then I cannot demonstrate my physical abilities, my technique will be wrong or I just won't be able to access the same forces that are needed for like building strength. So an example is if I have a program that is designed for strength, I need to, let's say I'm doing powerlifting and I have my squat day today. I should put that squat first thing in the program or whatever variation of a squat that I am training that particular day. That should go first thing in the program. If I pre-fatigued my muscles with say a leg press and maybe a single leg split squat and then I go into the squatting, well, then I'm not training my maximal force output during the squat. Then I'm training my ability to squat while under fatigue. And if I'm going to a powerlifting competition, I shouldn't really be fatigued when I'm going to squat. And squat is a great example here because it's the first lift in the powerlifting meet. So for a strength program for building the squat, I wanna put that first. I wanna keep my nervous system as fresh as possible and I wanna challenge my force output. Now, if I am doing a bodybuilding program, then it's not quite as important, right? So the idea with a bodybuilding program is to force my muscle to have the most deformation. So I can do that with heavy weights but I can also do that with lighter weights and higher reps. So long as I push myself to like the brink of what I can actually do, I'm gonna get that hypertrophy stimulus. And so I can, if maybe for example, I am a great example, if I can't load my squat very well, I have a lot of mobility and I have the prerequisite technique that is required for squatting. But if I just can't load it very heavily without, for my case, it's getting injured and not wanting to squat the next week. Or maybe it's just like my knee doesn't bend because I had a previous ACL surgery and I can't really squat that low. It could be anything like that. Those are just a couple of examples. A second one's not really that great, I guess. But I could in theory pre-fatigue my muscle with some sort of like a quad leg extension thing or with split squats, which are also very technically demanding because my base of support is now narrower and there's more balance to kind of control. I could pre-fatigue my thigh muscles with those exercises and then go into some sort of squatting variation and still get really good stuff out of that program because my goal there is hypertrophy. It's not strength and force output. Yes, so that's the biggest thing. Exercise order, I need to make sure that I am prioritizing what I need to do. And we mentioned also the technique that is involved. So if there's a movement that you're not very good at, it might behoove you to put that in the beginning of the program. If your goal is like primarily technique-based, I would just say like the number one thing you're focusing on, put that first and probably interleave it with some other things that you still need to work on. The brain just learns things better that way rather than doing just squat after squat after squat if I'm trying to learn the squat, I might do a squat and then I'm also trying to learn a push-up. So I do the squat and the push-up and the squat and the push-up. And if I'm writing a program for someone like that, they're probably having trouble with those movements because they can't really access the mobility that is required for those things. So I might even do a squat and then a push-up and then some other sort of like, we call them neurological reset exercises, something to improve their mobility that will allow them to then squat and push-up better. Hopefully that helps. What about the topic of just like if equipment isn't available, can I skip and can I do the next thing? Well, it goes back to our examples that we've already talked about. If I'm training the squat, then no, I need to wait for a rack to be open and then I need to go squat in that rack while I'm fresh. If the goal is just general fitness, then it's probably not that big a deal. Just make sure that you're putting all your effort into every set that you do that day. So that is ordering your exercises.