3 Ways to Modify an Exercise

Did you know that it can be very easy to modify an exercise to make it work for YOU and YOUR fitness level? That’s right – all of those cool exercises that you see your favourite fitness influencer doing online can be modified slightly so that you, no matter where you are in your fitness journey, can spice up your workout routine.

In this article, I’ll give you 3 basic ways to modify an exercise. The modifications can be used to either make it more appropriate for beginners or to make it more challenging for advanced gym girlies.

1. Modify the joints involved

I love to use this modification technique to really isolate the movement and make sure I am generating all of the power through the targeted muscle.

To do this, you’ll either fix (make immobile) your joint – as you would with a seated row vs. a standing cable row, or you can free up your joints, which would be like going from a push-up from the knees to a push-up from the toes.

What this does is introduce a new potential point of leverage. When we go from a standing position to a seated position, we fix the hips. This means that we eliminate the opportunity to swing at the hips, or generate power from the hips.

This is a great way to ensure that you’re only using either the upper half or the lower half of your body. Just remember to brace your core if you’re doing an upper body movement, and to try not to curve your lower back when you’re doing lower body movements, like a leg press. The moment your low back is curved, you risk generating power through the tiny muscles in your lower back, which is why some people experience back pain when they use the leg press machine.

The flip side of this is to free up a joint. So when you move from knee pushups to toe push-ups, you freed up the knees. If you aren’t perfectly tense and rigid from the base of your skull down to your heels, you risk feeling pressure in your low back. This makes push-ups more challenging as you need to have full-body awareness to be able to contract all of the muscles in your torso and lower body in order to make it (slightly) easier for your chest and arms.

You can also see this when you do a plank on an exercise ball. This actually frees up all of the joints because now your shoulders are not fixed in position. They have to react to the unstable surface (the exercise ball).

This leads me to tip number 2!

2. Switch up the equipment

This is a pretty common way to modify an exercise. However, it takes some playing around with each of the different types of equipment to be able to understand how to do a squat, overhead press, or row.

To help you decide the progression for equipment and how you can scale the exercise up or down for difficulty, here’s how I approach it:

• Bodyweight: learn how to do every exercise with your own body weight. With the exception of vertical push and pull exercises (think the overhead press and lay pull down), most exercises can be done easily with your own body weight.
• Bands: bands are a great next step because you can modify the intensity of the movement based on the band size. They also work with your body to achieve an exercise and are great for making exercises like the overhead press and pull-up more accessible.
• Cable machines: these are great because you get consistent tension throughout the movement. For example, when you do a dumbbell curl, the lift is harder (going against gravity) than the lowering portion (with gravity). If you just let the cable drop you’ll smash the weights and nobody wants that at the gym!
• EZ-bar: these are those bars that you see at the gym with fixed weights. These are a great next step because you can start small and work your way up as you get stronger. Additionally, you’re working muscles bilaterally, meaning both sides of the body are working to move the weight.
• Free weights/dumbbells: although the range of weights with these can be much lower than the EZ bars and cable machines, you are able to work unilaterally, so you’ll be able to develop each side of the body on its own. However, this also requires more balance and core stability, especially if you’re going from seated to standing.
• Barbell: these typically start at 45lbs. and require a lot of technique to be able to use properly and with minimum risk for injury. I recommend working with a coach or a very experienced friend before you get into barbell work.
• Unstable equipment: this includes exercise balls, balance boards, body balls, etc. Although all great for rehab, you want to make sure you only incorporate unstable surfaces when you’ve developed good core strength and musculature around your hips and shoulders. This will protect these joints from injury, which the risk is at an all-time high on unstable surfaces.

Recommended Read: Top 3 Tips to Improve Your Deadlift Technique

3. Tempo

The last way to modify an exercise is with tempo. Again, as you get stronger and your technique improves you can either speed up or slow down or completely stop exercises to make them more challenging.

The best tempo to start with is 2:1:2:1, which means 2 seconds up, 1 second hold, 2 seconds down, 1 second hold. This keeps it balanced and you won’t be rushing and risking doing the movement incorrectly.

If you’re a beginner, feel free to slow down any part of the movement to give yourself more time to focus on the technique and to really feel the muscles working. If you can’t do a movement slowly, then you’re probably using a weight that is too heavy.

Additionally, if you find a move to easy, you can mix up fast, slow, and holds. For example, a great way to train for a pull-up is to try and take as long as you can to lower yourself down. So you would pull yourself up to the bar quickly, hold for a moment, then slooooooooooooowwllyyy lower yourself down, then pop right back up and repeat.

By playing around with tempo you’ll develop the muscles in a more balanced way, making you stronger throughout the movement.

In summary, if your workouts are getting tired and boring, or you’re looking to take your workouts to the next level, you can do so by modifying the exercise. The 3 ways that I recommend are:

1. Modify the joints involved: try fixing a joint to a point to ensure the muscles and joints at work are the only ones moving. This include taking an exercise from seated to standing (freeing up more joints). Or, you can take a movement from standing to half-kneeling.
2. Switch up the equipment: Finding dumbbells too easy? Try the same exercise on a cable machine. The different weight distribution and the pulley system will add a new element of difficulty to the movement.
3. Tempo: Lastly, if you want to really build well-round, resilient muscles, change of the tempo of your exercise. Remember there is a start – move – stop – move count to keep in mind and going 1-2-1-2 is the most basic tempo for exercises.

I hope you found this helpful! If so, leave a comment below and let me know how you like to spice up your workouts.