How to skip your accessories.

To accessorise: to add something to something else to improve usefulness, versatility, or attractiveness.

Chances are if you’re part of the strength training community you’ve heard the term “accessory exercise”.  As the above definition states accessory exercises add something to your main lifts. There are several outcomes that accessory exercises may achieve but I like to categorise them simply as follows:

1.     High stimulus to low (systematic) fatigue ratio exercises. These exercises are typically used to promote muscle growth. A bigger muscle has more potential to be stronger muscle. I like to refer to these exercises as “true accessories”. They are most often lower complexity (and specificity) exercises that require less concentration and energy from the whole system. Machine-based exercises and most isolation movements would fall into this category. EG, a machine lat pull down or a dumbbell lateral raise.

2.     Exercises that strengthen certain movements and technical elements of the main lifts. I differentiate these into their own category, calling them “secondary” or “supplementary” exercises. Commonly these are performed with a barbell or a speciality bar and they supplement variation or focus on certain weak points to help the main lifts. They’re higher specificity compared to true accessories.

The above categorisation system is not so black and white. Of course, some exercises can be argued to fall in to both categories. But categories are useful, and in this case, can help give us insight into how we can get the most out of our training. If you want some more insight into accessory exercises check out Billie’s blog: Accessory exercises: what’s their purpose?

Before we go any further it might be a good idea to go over how a typical strength session is programmed. This will help give some context to key points I will make later.

A Typical Day 1 at TSF, volume block.

1 Competition-style squat – 3x8 (main lift)

2 Long pause bench press 3x5 (secondary exercise)

3 Romanian deadlift 3x8-12 (secondary exercise)

4 Cable row 3x10-15 (true accessory)

5 Ab rollout 2x8-12 (true accessory)

Note,

• The barbell movements go first— they are the biggest movements, that use the largest muscles, the most joints and the most load. (Unilateral squat, pullups or an overhead press are other common primary exercises)

• After that we have the secondary/supplementary movements: tempo bench press and Romanian deadlifts.

• The last two exercises are cable rows and ab roll outs, which have a relatively low skill and effort demand.

Realistically, it’s not in the best interest of your progress to skip exercises, but sometimes you just have to leave the gym earlier that anticipated, time gets away from you, you’re chatting too much or you’re just absolutely spent on energy so not all exercises are going to make the cut on that day. So now we understand how we can categorise exercises and how a typical strength session is prescribed we can get into some strategies on how to skip your accessories.

How to skip your accessories.

1.      Forget what we said about the categories of each exercise.

Don’t think about main lifts, secondary lifts or accessories. Just treat them all as exercises and they’re all as important as each other. This can take some time and re-conceptualising of your own training goals but I promise you if start the mantra “all exercises are as important as each other” you’ll see a shift.

2.     Adjust your overall program so you have time or energy for your last exercise(s).

This can come about from several changes.

You might assess your warm-up routine and realise you’re spending 30+ minutes completing warm up exercises and movement preparation before you even touch a barbell, perhaps try and cut that time down 10-15 minutes, and woolah, there is the extra time you need for your ‘accessory exercises’.

Perhaps you’re training your main lifts much to heavy/hard at this stage of your program, demanding a stack of energy and long rest periods that leave you with no energy in the tank and/or no time to get to the later work. Your main lifts shouldn’t be the priority year round—a conversation for another day.

3.     Train your accessories first.

Simply reorganise your session and put the exercises you skip (that are typically the last few exercises of a said day) up first. This can create some pre-fatiguing variables so perhaps slot in opposing movements/muscles into days where you won’t run into that issue. EG, that last tricep exercise you tend to skip on your main BP day can be slot in as your first exercise on your squat day.

But wait a second, am I contradicting what I said earlier about bigger muscles/movement first? Yes, I am. But you’re the one who keeps skipping exercises so I’m offering some strategies. What is always optimal isn’t always practical and vice versa, so if doing some arm or core exercises before squats or deadlifts gets them completed consistently, have at it.

4.     Use super sets or giant sets.

Perhaps the easiest tweak to the program (but the most effort required) is to complete more supersets or even giants sets. This is a surefire way to bring your session time down dramatically and give you enough overall time to complete all exercises. Put your headphones on, use a timer and go for it.

5.     Skip your secondary/supplementary exercises.

This one is very much for the time-poor lifter, or those busy days or weeks of training where life is waiting for you with everything it has to throw at you as soon as you walk out of the gym doors.

As stated above, optimally you won’t skip any exercises and can complete them in their prescribed order, but on the days of training where that just isn’t going to happen and you only have 30-40 minutes to complete the session, here is how that session can look:

1 Competition-style squat – 3x8 (main lift) complete

2 Long pause bench press 3x5 (secondary exercise) SKIP THIS

3 Romanian deadlift 3x8-12 (secondary exercise) AND/OR SKIP THIS

4 Cable Row 3x10-15 (true accessory) complete

5 Ab Rollout 2x8-12 (true accessory) complete

I don’t want to advocate for skipping exercises, but I do want to advocate for the true accessories. I’ve had hundreds of conversations on the gym floor with lifters about how we are going to reorganise their session or microcycle to fit in all the main and secondary lifts in and then it always finishes with I’ll just skip the other stuff.

Skip your secondary lifts!

There are two reasons that I advocate for this:

1.     Think about it, you’re a powerlifter or strength trainer. You complete so much volume and repetition with the barbell. And you have gone without those 1-2 accessory exercises across the week say, a few 100 times? The hypertrophic gains you’re leaving on the table are probably more detrimental compared to the slight skill/strength gains you gain from the secondary lifts, when you’re still hitting your main lifts.

2.     If you’re going to skip out on some exercises, you’re doing so for likely one of two reasons: you’re time-poor or energy-poor. Skipping true accessories doesn’t really save you much time or energy at all. That’s the easy stuff. It’s your secondary exercises are time and energy demanding. So if you really want to shake of some time or fatigue, take the more fruitful option and actually achieve the outcome you’re after.

I don’t think it’s a good idea to skip any exercise that has been prescribed to you. I’m not encouraging that. But it happens. And when it does, you’ve now got some tools in your tool belt.