Here, I’m telling you exactly what it depends on so you know exactly how to determine the best exercises in order to maximize your results.

Use these 6 questions to identify the best exercises for your strength training program:

Optimal exercises should deliver high value with little risk of injury.

So, when comparing exercises of equal benefits for a certain goal, the best exercises are the ones that have the least amount of risk.

Most often, high box jumps are used to train lower-body power, which involves an explosive hip extension action, instead of a hip flexion action, which means you actually want to limit the amount of hip flexion involved in landing on top of the box. However, many people end up using a ton of hip flexion to reach the top of box and they land on top of the box in that super-low crouched position we see during high box jumps. Instead, you want to find the highest box height that you’re able to land on, but with your knees and hips only bent around 30 degrees to ensure you’re focusing on your jump height instead of how high you can simply flex at your hips.

With this method, you’ll get all the good stuff from the exercise (i.e., an explosive triple extension action of your lower-body) and you’ll be far less likely to become the star of the next high-box fail video.

There’s the range of motion (ROM) you move through in a given exercise, and there’s the effective range of motion so that your involved muscles are dealing with enough load to create sufficient training adaptations. The effective ROM is what matters when it comes to building strength and muscle.

The best exercises are the ones that provide the greatest amount of effective range of motion, especially the exercises that load a muscle group when it’s stretched. In that, strength training at longer (stretched) muscle lengths (that includes an eccentric component) not only causes muscles to be stronger at long lengths, and potentially create hypertrophy more effectively, but also promotes flexibility by causing muscle fibers to produce new sarcomeres in series within a muscle, which allows the muscle to lengthen more.

For example, a cable side shoulder raise is a better exercise than a dumbbell side shoulder raise because it loads your medial deltoids through a greater range of motion. In that, when doing the dumbbell version, there’s little to no mechanical tension on the involved muscles at the bottom when holding a dumbbell by your side. However, when performing the cable side raise with the handle anchored low (around ankle level) while holding it with outside hand and standing at distance the creates roughly a 45-degree angle of the cable, it provides a lot mechanical tension on the involved muscles at bottom portion of the exercise when your arm is at your side.

Choose exercises that are easiest to teach while producing the goal outcome.

In other words, if there are multiple ways to accomplish the same training goal, the one with the shorter learning curve is the best because it gets the job done more efficiently.

As a practical example: instead of spending time working on skills specific to Olympic lifting that non-Olympic lifters don’t need, other methods of improving power (such as jumping, medicine ball throwing and kettlebell swings) are better options because they work just as effectively while also allowing for more time to be devoted to training other important things they do need.

Time is valuable in a session. Don’t pick overly complicated exercises because they look cool. In other words, if you have a bunch of exercises that accomplish the same goal, the best exercises are the ones that accomplish roughly the same goal but don’t require a lot of extra equipment and setup time.

The best exercises are the ones that place sufficient enough load, relative to the client’s current strength level, in the target muscle group or movement pattern to stimulate continued strength adaptions.

A good example of a poor exercise choice for improving lower-body strength is a dumbbell lunge to biceps curl. This because, if you're able to curl the weight you're holding, it's not enough to sufficiently overload the legs. And, you're limiting the amount of reps you do to what your arms can handle.

The best exercises are the ones that have the least limiting factors that can interfere with your ability to benefit from an exercise.

Instability is a glaring example of a limiting factor because the less stable you are during an exercise, the less force you’re able to control and produce. Thus, exercises that involve instability are a poor choice for the goal of improving strength because you’re not able to create enough loading on a muscle group or movement pattern to create a sufficient stimulus for strength gains.

Exercises are general, but exercisers are individual. So, although we’ve just covered the factors for evaluating and comparing exercises to find which exercises are best in general, we need to also consider which exercises are the most appropriate for each individual client.

Best practices come from best principles. The most appropriate exercises for each training situation are the ones that not only excel in all of the criteria outlined above, but also utilize the principle of specificity and the principle of individuality.

The principle of specificity: The principle of specificity dictates that the adaptations to training will be specific to the demands the training puts on the body.

So, the best exercises are the ones that most directly elicit adaptions specific to on one’s training goal.

The principle of individuality: The best exercises and methods will best fit the individual’s ability and training environment.

Since we are all built differently with different medical history and lifting experience, not every exercise is right for every body. This is why it’s important to fit exercises to you instead of trying to fit yourself to exercises by finding exercise variations you can do pain-free and with good technique.

This is why I like to tell my clients, “Train based on your ability, not your age,” since there are lots of variations in the capability and training level among people of the same age group.

In regards to training environment; once it's established what exercises best fit the client or athlete’s ability, skeletal framework, etc. we as trainers must then determine which of these exercises best fit within the training environment the individual will be exercising in. This is because certain training environments, such as a crowded gym or home gym, are not conducive to performing certain exercises due to equipment and space limitations.