Training science

The exercises that cost you most are the ones that give you least

I scored all 272 movements in the Forta database on two things almost nobody compares: what each exercise charges your nervous system, and what it gives back in stimulus. The numbers are not intuitive.

Alfredo Silva · Sports Scientist MSc Physical Education · MSc High Performance Training 272 movements analysed

There are two questions you should ask an exercise before it goes into your plan. The first one everybody asks: does this work? The second almost nobody asks: what is this going to cost me?

Cost is not the weight on the bar. It is what the movement takes out of your central nervous system — and that bill arrives at the end of the week, not the end of the set. In the Forta database every movement carries two values: neural demand (1–10, what it charges) and stimulus-to-fatigue ratio (1–10, what it returns per unit of fatigue).

Divide the second by the first and you get something simple: the efficiency of the exercise. What you receive for every unit you pay.

What charges you most

These are the ten least efficient movements in the entire database. They are not bad exercises — they are expensive ones.

You recognise that list. It is more or less the menu of a CrossFit week — and it is also, almost in full, Olympic weightlifting. That does not mean avoid them. It means these are exercises you have to pay for, and they only make sense on days when there is money in the account.

What pays you best

Now the other side of the ledger. Ten movements with a neural demand of 2 and a stimulus of 9.0 — ten times more efficient than the deadlift.

The deadlift returns 0.45 for every unit of fatigue it charges. A leg curl returns 4.50. That is a ten-fold difference — and almost nobody builds a week around it.

The menu you have is not the menu you use

Look at the distribution across the whole database:

A hundred and twenty-two cheap movements. Thirty-four expensive ones. And still, most plans build the entire week out of the expensive side — and then wonder why there are no legs left by Thursday.

What to do with this on Monday

This is not "do less deadlifting." It is do the expensive exercise on the day you can afford it. If you slept five hours and your legs are still sore from Tuesday, a Clean & Jerk will charge you 10 and return 4.5 — on a day when you do not have 10 to give.

On that day, the ten movements in the second table give you almost the same hypertrophy stimulus for a fraction of the cost. That is not training less. It is paying what you can.