 Hey everybody, I'm Lance Quakey. Today we are discussing programming, periodization writing workouts. And what I wanna talk about today is the difference between what we say doing straight sets where I pick one exercise, I do all of my sets of that exercise, then I move to the next exercise and I do all of my sets of that exercise and then I move to the next exercise and I do all of my sets of that exercise. Versus, that was a long comma, straight sets versus alternating exercises. So maybe I pair a squat and a pull-up and I do a set of squats and then I do a set of pull-ups and then I do a set of squats and then I do a set of pull-ups and then I do a set of squats and then I do a set of pull-ups. Okay, so why would I complicate things like that? Why wouldn't I just set one exercise up and do all of that and then put it away later and move on? Well, I'm glad you asked YouTube. Alternating exercises back and forth and back and forth between two different exercises is very good from a time efficiency standpoint. So if you're just looking for general fitness or you're looking for just a whole body exercise, maybe you're new to training and you need a lot of practice with a lot of different movements, then alternating exercises works really well. I pretty much put all of my first-time programs, first-time clients on that sort of plan. So they go in the squat and sometimes it's not really that challenging yet because they can't do the squat very well and very safely and I don't wanna load them up while they're not doing it well. So instead, what we'll do is your rest period will be a push-up and you're just gonna go and you're gonna do your push-up or your pull-up or whatever I'm pairing with it. And then the same story happens. So maybe they do their push-ups and they arch their back a lot when they do their push-ups and they can't reach their arms really long at the top while they're doing them. Well, I'm gonna give you those cues and I'm gonna say, hey, I want you to fix this, but I know that their major muscles are probably not getting super tired from doing that. So instead of resting, you're gonna go back and you're gonna squat again and you're just gonna go back and forth and back and forth. And then I can get four sets done in like 10 minutes if I'm really hauling, okay? Yeah, it's just, it's really efficient, especially for a newbie. The other example is, if I only wanna work out three days a week, I'm probably not gonna split, I have exceptions, but I'm probably gonna choose a whole body workout for each workout day. Maybe I'll write three days of workouts and each one will be a whole body. It'll train the legs and arms. It'll train the lower and upper body each day. And in doing that, I just, I get a lot, again, I get a lot more done if I alternate between the exercises. I can do a squat and an upper body push. And then I can do a deadlift and an upper body pull. And then I can do, sometimes I just write two and I alternate between those for three days a week. That way you do day one twice in a week. It's really efficient, it works really well. Especially from a program writing perspective. Or what I can do is I can say, okay, so my exercises that I'm most concerned with getting better. We talked about exercise order a few days back. Maybe my top three here are squats and I'm gonna put that first on my day one. And then deadlifts, I'm gonna put that first on day two. And then pull-ups because I've never done a pull-up and it would be really cool to do a pull-up. And that's day three. That's a really good way to organize everything. That's a really good way to structure my exercise. But I don't need to just wait and do only that exercise. I can alternate between the two. Now, okay, we've talked about alternating exercises. Why would I do straight sets? Where I take one exercise and I do all my sets before I move on to the next thing. If your primary goal is just hypertrophy or strength-based stuff like pure strength or pure hypertrophy, then I might structure it that way. And the biggest asterisk is on hypertrophy. Let's consider strength first. So, you know, if I'm training for powerlifting, I would want at least three lifts a week, probably four, but at least three. And one day would be a squat, one day would be a bench and one day would be a deadlift. And I'm gonna primarily put all my focus into that primary exercise. That's why it's my primary exercise, right? So, I'm gonna do all my squats and then I get into the assistant stuff, right? The assistant stuff is not required for me to squat. It is assisting my squat and helping me in my training. So, I wanna make sure I'm freshest when I do my primary exercise and then I'll throw in a little bit more fatigue with my assistance exercises. Now, I mentioned there was an asterisk for hypertrophy gains. And that's because if I have more time, if I'm willing to come to the gym, like four or five or six days a week, then I don't really need to pair things together. And in that case, I can do my straight sets. I can have a nice long hour workout and do four different exercises and just sit there for three minutes between each set to allow full muscular recovery. There's a plane outside. That's a really good way to do it. And a lot of bodybuilders have a lot of success doing it that way. But if you're just a normal person and yeah, you wanna put on some muscle, but you also have a family and a job and whatever else obligation that you need to attend to, then you probably don't have that much time. You probably don't have time to lift for an hour, 15, six days a week. And so in those cases, I think you get a lot more out of alternating back and forth between two primary exercises. So hopefully that shed some light on why you would pick programming straight sets across versus alternating two different exercises.