What Are Accessories?

Training sessions are commonly broken down into Primary Work, Primary Accessory, and Accessory Work. But what does this mean?

I wrote the STRONG program, so I will speak in the context of my program.

STRONG has two goals: 

1. Get wicked strong in the squat, bench, and deadlift. 
2. Look jacked.

Primary work

Primary Work is your squat, bench, or deadlift. This is the meat of the program that drives the most results. We spend a lot of time warming up on these movements and doing our working sets. It is "primary" because it’s the focus of the day, where most of your mental and physical energy should be spent. This idea is pretty straightforward.

Primary accessory

Primary Accessory Work is generally a movement that closely mimics the primary lifts but would be considered a variation of them. Think pause deadlifts, box squats, pin bench press, close grip bench press, etc. Sometimes we train these as the main lift of the day, but most of the time their role is to support the Primary Work. 

Variations are used to train a specific part of a lift and/or an individual weakness. For example, if someone struggles to get the bar off their chest in a bench press, pin presses or paused bench presses might be used to increase their strength off the chest. Primary Accessory Work is usually a compound movement and can be found in the same part or block of the strength work on a given day. Like Primary Work, Primary Accessory deserves near-max attention and focus.

Accessory work 

Finally, we have accessory work, which has a few categories of its own:

• Specific Accessory
• Bodybuilding
• Prehab / Preventive / Balance

No one category is inherently more important than another. It depends on your goal.

Knowing your goal and understanding your intention (read this as: intention) shapes your decisions for all training, including accessory work. If you're trying to get bigger, your accessory work should focus on bodybuilding. Trying to bring up a specific lift? Accessory targets the weak points. Peaking for a competition? Accessory work maintains movement quality but doesn't drive progress.

The term "accessory" can sometimes have the connotation that it's an afterthought, and there are times that it is. But accessory work can also be a powerful tool in your training arsenal.

Let’s break it down

Specific Accessory - This can get a little muddy. "Specific" refers to the idea that you are doing a particular movement to enhance a weak point found in one of your primary lifts. If your quads are holding your squat back, then we’d do exercises like leg extensions or heels-elevated squats to bring them up, to help increase your squat. 

Sometimes the issue is that you are weak in the given pattern (knee flexion, in this case). Other times, it's that you don’t have enough muscle in that area to continue making progress with the movement. Often, both are true, which is why I said this is muddy. You could consider this specific accessory to help with squatting and bodybuilding. But for our purposes, increasing the squat is the goal, so it's exact.

When choosing what movements to do for specific work, the first principle is specificity. How closely does the accessory movement mimic the demands and/or specific weak point of the movement you are trying to enhance?

Bodybuilding Accessory - With specific accessory work, we’re often trying to build bigger muscles, but that’s a side effect of improving a main lift. With bodybuilding, we are simply trying to get more jacked. Nothing more, nothing less.

The goal here isn’t to fix a weak point in your squat or deadlift – it’s to build as much quality muscle as possible across the whole body. It’s less about carryover to a particular lift and more about creating the raw material you can later turn into strength. A bigger muscle has a higher potential for strength. And it looks great. 

In the STRONG program, you'll often see bodybuilding work assigned toward the end of a session. It’s your chance to accumulate quality volume, chase a pump, and focus purely on hypertrophy without worrying about technique breakdown on heavy compound lifts. Push it, have fun with it, but remember, intent still matters. A full range of motion, control, and effort will always beat mindless repetitions.

Prehab/Preventive - In this category, the goal is to correct imbalances and refine movement patterns to enable consistent training. Prehab work is normally not very heavy or overly intense, though still challenging in its own way. This is where you’ll find movements like single-leg RDLs, shoulder CARs, or knees-over-toes squats. No pump chasing or grunting, maybe some fighting for your balance, but mostly easy positional stuff.

During a peak or competition phase, accessory work should shift toward maintaining movement quality and minimizing fatigue, not chasing new progress. Prehab becomes the priority here.

Selection criteria: What to ask when selecting accessories

• Do you have any specific movement limitations with this movement?
• Can you learn how to do it well?
• Can it be scaled up or down to meet your current abilities?
• Can it be loaded so you can progress incrementally over 4 to 6 weeks?

Do you like and connect with it?

Learning what you connect with is also important. It sounds a little woo-woo, but it’s simple: you're looking for movements where you feel the target muscle working hard, not just moving weight. If you're doing bent-over barbell rows with good technique but only feel it in your rear delts, it's not going to grow your mid-back and lats much. The right movement for you is the one you can load and feel comfortable with.

Do you have access to it?

Instagram will have you on a wild goose chase for the whackiest, super-secret, pseudoscience-backed half-man, half-horse magical accessory work that is going to fix all of your problems - no such thing. There is no magic. That one accessory movement that grows your biceps exists, but it works because you’ve learned how to do it well, you connect with it, and you can progress it over time.

The basics do work. Most of us don’t spend enough time on them to see results, especially if they “work” right away.

I recently joined a bodybuilding gym where I have access to all the equipment - cable machines, plate-loaded machines, multiple variations of the same machines, and all the speciality bars my little heart could ever desire. Then I looked around and saw the biggest folks doing skull crushers, barbell curls, straight bench press, leg press, etc. I considered them boring old movements. What did stand out, though, was that they were using weights I hadn’t even considered using on those movements. They have been doing them for so long, increasing the load over time, and are still seeing results. And they do these movements perfectly: full range of motion, controlled eccentrics, and explosive concentrics.

Consistency, mastery, and progressive overload, not novelty, are what actually build strength and muscle.

Making Adjustments

Once you understand the principles, you have the green light to experiment with your accessory work. If a movement written in the program doesn’t suit you, whether it’s because of equipment, movement quality, or simply a better connection elsewhere, swap it out using the selection criteria we talked about. 

The goal is to make the training work better for you, not to follow it blindly.

Accessory work is where you get a little more freedom to adjust based on feel, recovery, and progress. Be thoughtful, stay consistent, and track what helps you move closer to your goals.

So when you see Primary Work, Primary Accessory, and Accessory Work in STRONG, you'll know exactly how to approach each one to match your goals.

As always, remember: there is no magic. Only principles and intensity.