The Eclectic Training Principle
It needs to be stated upfront that just like the muscle confusion principal and the holistic training principal, eclectic workouts are for people who have been training for more than 6 months. It is considered an advanced technique that has many similarities to muscle confusion and holistic workouts.
Eclectic workouts will always include a compound movement followed by an isolation movement. The large variety of rep ranges used, from the low heavy weighted reps to the drop sets, both engaging slow twitch and fast twitch muscle fibers, forcing your muscles to grow bigger.
It takes time to master eclectic training so that you can select your exercises on your mood like Jay Cutler does. For example, if you feel strong when you start your workout you should focus on power moves with low reps. If/when your energy starts to wane you should switch to supersets before the tank runs dry.
If you lack the "pump" at the end of your workout you should do high reps with a light weight with little or no rest. The Eclectic training principle allows you to adapt to your environment and how you might be feeling, so that you always get the best workout from any situation you find yourself in.
Similar to holistic training, eclectic training can be for the entire workout you are going to do or it can be done in a single movement. After a good warmup, it starts with a pyramid doing less and less reps with an increasing weight to reach an apex.
Eclectic training kicks in when you then do drop sets with very little rest between sets. If we use squats as an example the first 5 sets would be decreasing the rep count from 8 or 12 reps while increasing the weight lifted. The 6th and 5th set would be drop-sets of more than 12 reps.
The last 4 sets would be on a leg extension machine to ensure all the muscle fibers have been activated. It is an important point to note that because of the large selection of different movements available one needs to be very aware of the exercise order that you use eclectic training.
For example, if we do drop-sets using a movement like D/B flyes before we start building a pyramid of bench press, we will have sapped all our strength doing the D/B flyes. This is why your exercise selection when doing any type of eclectic training needs to selected wisely.
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