Accessory Exercises

Move Lesson Four: Accessory Exercises

Accessory exercises are usually single joint or more simple exercises that are an accessory to the big compound lifts. Compound exercises are the big bang for your buck exercises that make up the majority of your workouts. This article aims to explain why accessory exercises still have their place in your training, but also why they shouldn’t be the primary exercises you do in your workouts.

TYPES OF ACCESSORY EXERCISES

ACTIVATIONS

Activation accessory exercises are done pre-workout to fire up muscle groups before they are worked in your training session.

Activation exercises are also particularly important to activate your intrinsic core and stabilisers like your glutes, core and back. These are exercises such as deadbugs, glute bridges, side walks, breathing activations.

BALANCE

Sometimes due to an injury or an imbalance, you will need to incorporate accessory exercises to strengthen up a lagging area. These may be given to you from a physio, or if you have an imbalance between the left and right side of your body.

Unilateral (Single Sided) Exercises

Rehab Exercises - prescribed by a Physio (P.S Do your physio exercises!)

HYPERTROPHY/BALANCE ACCESSORY

These exercises are done after your compound movement to increase the muscle damage in an isolated muscle group. When you begin training, most of your exercises you perform should be compound and you may want to focus on Full Body splits. Once you have developed the big compound movement patterns, you may want to move your training from Full Body, to and Upper/Lower Split or another split and include isolated exercises at the end.

Isolated exercises - Bicep curls, Tricep Kickbacks, Hamstring Curls, Leg Extensions, Glute Kickbacks, Lateral raises