Having established how much training drives adaptation, the questions that follow are which exercises, in what order, and whether the load comes from a barbell, a cable, or a stack. The evidence is more nuanced than the culture wars around this topic suggest.

The exercise science literature has converged on surprisingly specific recommendations for resistance training volume, frequency, and intensity. Most people are doing too little, some are doing too much, and almost everyone is using the wrong metric to measure either.