As You Like It

As we've seen before, body recomposition — however vain as it seems on the surface — when done naturally, appears to be the key to longevity and general well-being.

One half of recomposition is hypertrophy or muscle-building. We have an entire series about that in our archive. Building muscle: - strengthens your immune system - reverses the effects of aging - steels your mind - and when done correctly, provides a great baseline level of cardiovascular fitness and mobility

So, how does one build muscle?

Muscle growth is your body's adaptation to a certain kind of stimulus. Your target muscles need to move load, accumulate work done (volume) and be somewhat in the realm of 'close to failure' while doing so. This basic template of hypertrophic stimulus can be implemented in multiple ways. While there are rough guidelines to help, the specific choice of exercises is totally customizable and can be tailored to your interests and circumstances.

Choice 1: Weighted

Of course, moving weights is the obvious, and arguably the most sustainable, method. Because once adaptation occurs, today's stimulus becomes tomorrow's warm-up. It's time to up the load, and no family of exercises is as built for progressive overload as the good old weighted exercises. Dumbbells, barbells, cables, machines — you name it.

Choice 2: Freehand

Freehand exercises can be a decent starting point. Your body moves its own weight; with the specific joints under focus depending on the choice of exercise, of course. Push-ups move the shoulder and elbow joints and hence train the muscles around them — chest, shoulders, triceps (back of the upper arms). Lunges train the muscles around the hip and knee joint — glutes, quadriceps (front of the thighs).¹ The problem here is that changing the load can be real tricky. It's not always obvious how to make an exercise easier or harder (than default) safely and effectively. Training for reps is usually the most practical option.

Choice 3: Hybrid

Other exercises like pull-ups, full body dips and squats can be done freehand and also weighted, in which case, you can incrementally load beyond just bodyweight. These hybrid exercises are great because they have the functional aspects of calisthenics juiced up by the intuitive progressive overload provided by weighted exercises.

In general, if you want body recomposition results, these three categories are great. Because they all build muscle.²

Other Exercises

In addition to body recomposition, one may have secondary goals: like improving general cardiovascular fitness for a sport you play seriously, countering stiffness from a desk job via stretching or yoga, or addressing specific weaknesses as prescribed by a physiotherapist (note: this is highly specific). These exercises, depending on the individual, may be as important to schedule as the other three categories despite not having any direct impact on body recomposition. They serve their own purpose.

Your Coach Doesn't Judge

Jackked treats all four — Weighted, Freehand, Hybrid and Generic — as first-class citizens within the same workout program. You can schedule barbell squats, a set of push-ups, weighted pull-ups and a refreshing jog — all in the same day, side by side. The engine handles each type differently under the hood:

• Weighted exercises get full rep scheme support — the engine prescribes weight, sets and reps based on your estimated 1RM, with fatigue-aware adjustments across sets.
• Freehand exercises use a dedicated scheme purely based on max reps (no 'added load').
• Hybrid — counted as both weighted and freehand. When weighted, the load appears as a delta on top of your bodyweight with all the programming nuances just like any weighted exercise. Or perform them without external load with a relatively simple freehand scheme.
• Generic exercises are logged freely — add personal notes to keep a historical record. They live in your schedule without interfering with the programmed aspects of your workout.

Infinite mix and match

You're also not locked into a built-in set of exercises. Your library can be expanded with any set of custom exercises that you want, independently tagged to any of the four types. The engine seamlessly accepts whatever you choose to add — your workout, your rules.