The Motor Unit

Here’s a tip on shortening your workout session - get creative and combine your exercises into a combination of movements. Obviously, it has to be practical - we can’t combine a bench press with a squat or a deadlift if we’re training a full-body session, but we can combine a squat pattern with an overhead push press and get the thruster movement. As with all exercises, this movement is scalable according to your strength levels and can also be done with barbells, dumbbells, or kettlebells. Here’s what the combined movement looks like.

This movement combines two foundational movement patterns - a squat and an upper body press into one single movement pattern. A few other ways to combine patterns are -

1. Combine a Romanian deadlift with a rowing pattern like this.

2. Perform walking deadlifts to combine a deadlift pattern with a loaded carry pattern.

3. Combine a row, a clean, a squat, and an overhead press like this if you’re feeling extra adventurous on a particular day. This is a great option to include during your HIIT-focused conditioning days or as a finisher to a particular strength session.

4. Perform dumbbell walking calf raises to combine loaded carries with calf raises.

This should give you some idea on ways to save up time on your strength/hypertrophy days and works well with isolation exercises for your smaller muscles like biceps and triceps as well.

Before I close off I’d like to talk about the limiting factors when combining patterns -

1. The amount of weight you can move in a thruster is going to be limited by how much you can press overhead and not by how much you can squat. Similar weight focused limiting factors are going come into play in other combinations as well.

2. These combinations are likely to be more demanding than performing the component movement patterns in isolation and would require more rest between sets. A good rule of thumb is to take 2 to 3 minutes in between sets that are of high intensity or until your heart rate comes back down to normal.

3. Each of the movement patterns in the combination should flow into subsequent movement as in the examples cited above.

4. Combinations may not work out if you’ve got goals to increase maximal strength in a particular lift. For example, if you’re goal is to squat heavier, then training the thruster alone for squatting is not going to help out.