Breaking Down Your Lifting Routine & Structure: Compound Lifts vs. Accessory Movements
Understanding your lifting routine and structure can be helpful in your confidence of its efficacy - and helpful if you’re learning to put together your own training program. Not only does the exercise selection matter (compound vs. accessory), but so does the order in which these exercises are placed in the workout.
Most functional training programs will have a combination of compound and accessory movements within them. This includes programs designed for powerlifting, general strength training, bodybuilding, metabolic conditioning, and general fitness programs. While the program design may look completely different on paper, many programs consider these two types of movements when programming. We’ll walk you through it today!
Compound Lifts
Your compound movements are the exercises that are scheduled at the beginning of each lifting session for a majority of strength-focused programs. You may also see them structured as the first exercise in a superset for hypertrophy-focused programs. These are the more complex movements that demand higher levels of energy and mental focus, because they utilize multiple joints and muscle groups within the body. This is typically why these movements are placed first in your workout- for injury prevention and better performance.
For example, on your leg days you can spot these movements as some variation of a squat, deadlift, or lunge. For upper body day, it may be a variation of the bench press, bent over row, or overhead press. You shouldn’t find a heavy bench press programmed at the end of your workouts; instead, you should find it placed at the beginning!
Whether your goal is general health, strength, or hypertrophy — you’ll notice that you’re able to work with heavier weight and make faster progress in these types of movements in comparison to the accessory lifts. The amount of compound movements depends on many other factors, but most programs will have 2-3 compound movements in a training session per day (or 2-3 compounds per muscle group).
Despite your fitness goal or level, its important to train all of your major muscle groups weekly for longevity and health — and the best and often most functional to go about that is through the compound lifts.
Accessory Lifts
Your accessory lifts are isolation movements that are simpler to perform because they focus on just one muscle group at a time. The purpose of accessories are to target weaker muscle groups or joints (ie: glute work to work on imbalances from sitting all day), to support your compound lifts (ie: glute work to support your squat), and/or to grow certain muscles that we want to target for preference (ie: glutes for the girlies).
In our strength programs, these are scheduled after our main compound lifts, but you can also find them programmed as the second movement in a superset as well.
Scheduling these types of movements at the end of a workout is beneficial because they typically have less energy demand than your compound lifts and this helps to prioritize more balanced energy and focus for your cuing, breathing, and performance throughout the session as a whole. Some examples for lower body accessories might be hamstring curls, calf raises, or seated hip abductions. For upper body you might find bicep curls, lateral raises, or face pulls programmed in. When it comes to isolation movements like bicep curls, you shouldn’t really find them at the beginning of the workout, but towards the end.
You’ll also work with lighter weight with these in comparison to your compound lifts. Overall, accessories tend to be easier to learn due to their lack of complexity in technique. If accessories are chosen properly, this can really help to build balance and longevity longterm for posture and joint health.
Ways to apply this to your own weight lifting program
Common structure for strength programs:
Compound movements for the first 2-3 exercises
Accessory lifts for the final 2-3 exercises
Common structure for hypertrophy programs:
Compound movement for the first exercise in a superset
Accessory movement for the second exercise in a superset (that compliments the compound)
Common structure for fat loss programs:
You can play around with which style you enjoy; both styles of training can be powerful for fat loss
Final Notes
If you’ve realized maybe your workout structure could use some adjustments for more balance in movements, that’s okay! Hopefully now you’ll have a better understanding of the purpose of these types of movements and be able to better pinpoint whether a program will be powerful for you and your needs, and if not, you'll better understand how to make any adjustments as needed.
The purpose of this structure for compound lifts and accessory lifts allows your body to get stronger and healthier in a more functional way, for joint and bone health, along for improved muscle and strength. We hope that you better understand your workout program’s structure and/or that you feel a little more educated in the process of learning to design your own!
