Influence of exercise order on muscle damage during moderate-intensity resistance exercise and recovery

This study aimed to investigate the role of exercise order on total number of repetitions and to evaluate the possible importance on muscle damage and on rating perceived exertion (RPE). Ten trained participants completed two sequences: sequence A (SEQA) was leg press (LP), leg extension (LE), leg curl (LC), bench press (BP), shoulder press (SP), and triceps extension (TE) and in sequence B (SEQB), the order of execution of the exercises was reversed. Highest creatine kinase (CK) concentrations were observed 24 hours following both sessions, but no differences were found at any time between them, revealing that muscle damage has occurred. There were significant differences between SEQA and SEQB in the total number of repetitions for TE, LE, and LC. Our results suggest that differences in total strength production when exercise order is changed must be explained by some other mechanisms besides muscle damage and RPE.