Weight training - do certain movements counter others?

Factual Questions
1

Do certain exercises, when done in combination, actually counter the effect of each other?

Whether it be one right after the other or later the same session.

2

Well, not exactly ‘counter’, per se, but I wouldn’t go destroying my triceps and then do a shoulder or chest routine. Tired triceps will adversely affect your ability to do maximum shoulder or chest presses.

I can’t think of anything that ‘counters’ the other exercise. For example, doing legs after doing your back won’t counter the back exercise… but I don’t think I’d be doing heavy squat exercises if I’ve already tired out my lower back and other stabilizing muscles during a full back routine…

3

What do you mean by “counter”? If you’re asking whether certain exercises can “cancel out” the positive benefits of another exercise, the answer is no.

A lot of muscles do function in pairs however. One muscle is called the “agonist” which lifts the weight in a certain direction, while the other muscle in the pair is the “antagonist” which controls it. For instance when you’re doing bench press, your pectoral muscles act as the agonists, pushing the weight up away from your body. Your upper back muscles act as the antagonists, slowing and controlling the motion. The same goes for triceps and biceps, hamstrings and quadriceps, and so on. That’s why you should always work both of these muscle groups in your gym sessions: otherwise you get imbalances between them, which can cause problems. If you strengthen your quads but never strengthen your hamstrings, for instance, it makes it more likely that you’ll pick up hamstring injuries, or any host of other problems such as knee, hip or ankle injuries as well.

4

To emphasize -

  1. No, exercises do not counteract each other.

  2. Order of exercise does impact the effect of the work out. There are many thoughts about variations of supersets based on how order and rest periods impact the work out.

  3. IMHO the sanest superset approach is that alluded to by isiahrobinson above, the agonist-antagonist paired superset. This helps keep muscle groups in balance while also limiting downtime in the gym. Another sane approach (again IMHO) is to do circuit sets from large compound to smaller isolation moves, then short cardio and repeat in multiple sets. But I’m not a bodybuider.