The 7 Best Weightlifting Exercises
In the previous article we discussed how we can begin strength training literally just by using the weight of our own body. Performing exercises like pushups, pull-ups, and squats can help us hit almost every muscle. However, they can be sometimes tough to overload. That is one of the major advantages that we have when we have access to the gym. To continue building strength, we don’t need to constantly come up with variations for different exercises; we just need to continue adding weight, forcing our muscles to adapt.
But simply picking a few exercises and gradually adding weight is not enough and can even hurt us by building muscle imbalances. When we go to the weight room we typically aren’t there for more than an hour, so it’s important we know which exercises are going to get us the most bang for our buck. At the end of the day which workouts are “Best” is subjective so our criteria for evaluating exercises have to do with their effectiveness for building total body strength and functional movement. And these exercises are going to need to be exercises targeting multiple muscle groups so we can get a total body workout in without spending hours at the gym. When multiple muscle groups are engaged this also makes the exercise safer long term by not creating or worsening muscle imbalances. When we refer to the 7 “Best” exercises it certainly does not mean that they are the only ones you should do, but rather the ones you should utilize as a measuring point and foundation of your strength training routine. So without further ado let’s go through these 7 exercises one by one.
Exercise #1: The Deadlift
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Imagine how much easier life would be if you could correctly pickup and put down heavy objects without injuring your back? The deadlift trains us to do just that, pick up dead weight off of the ground with proper form. Many of us associate lifting heavy objects with injury when in reality, it is actually one of the safest physical activities out there, provided you use proper form. And what proper form involves is using your legs and glutes to lift rather than your lower back. The deadlift works our hamstrings, glutes, quads, back, and traps. Once you get the form down and begin adding on weight to the bar, there is practically no exercise that gets loaded heavier than the deadlift. This means adding on a lot more muscle mass, in a shorter period of time. On top of making us stronger, this gain in muscle mass turns us into metabolic fat burning machines. The deadlift is all around a fantastic exercise with its only minor setbacks being that it doesn’t work a large range of motion and is a posterior (hamstring and glute) dominant exercise. To maximize its effectiveness we need to combine it with some quad dominant exercises to balance out our leg strength.
Exercise #2: The Squat
Barbell Squats have been coveted as the king of lower body exercises and for good reason. This exercise works just about every muscle in our lower body. As long as you squat with your legs at least parallel to the ground you are not only building strength but mobility as well. Even the dead lift, as great of an exercise as it may be cannot make that claim, it doesn’t work the anywhere near the full range of motion of any joint. So why else is it so important for us to squat deeper? Although it is a compound movement, it is still a movement lead primarily by the quads. Only at those deeper stages do our glutes, inner thighs, and core engage to keep us stable. Learn to squat and dead lift even lighter weights with proper form, and everything you do on a daily basis becomes easier. Climbing several flights of stairs, lifting heavy things around your home, going for a hike, and anything else involving physical activity barely breaks a sweat.
Exercise #3: The Reverse Lunge
The Reverse Lunge gives us a taste of unilateral leg training and balance that we don’t get from just doing squats and deadlifts. While also, quad dominant it still hits just about every lower body muscle and puts even more emphasis on core strength by introducing a balance component. It can be done with dumbbells or a barbell once the increase in leg strength can no longer keep up with grip strength. These 3 lower body exercises alone are all you need to build strong, injury resistant legs.
Exercise #4: The Bench Press
Just like with lower body strength, building upper body strength quickly and efficiently means relying on compound lifts. The bench press is a fantastic place to start when it comes to building upper body strength. It works our Chest, Front Shoulder, Triceps and even our core. Like with any exercise, what is most important is proper form. This means having our forearms relatively perpendicular to the bar and moving the weight in a diagonal path down to our chest and bringing it back over our neck. This prevents unnecessary strain on our shoulders.
Exercise #5: The Overhead Press
The overhead press is another great push exercise. This time we are engaging our entire shoulder not just the front deltoid, which already gets plenty of work from our other push exercises. To perform it correctly, our grip will typically be narrower than the bench press. Once in a good starting position, lift the bar from your chest. Once you have pressed it overhead, bring your head under the bar and use your traps to stabilize the bar. Even though the main muscles worked are in the upper body, our glutes and core still must engage to keep ourselves stable. When our glutes and core are not engaged it causes a loss of balance and the back to arch excessively, which is one of the first signs you are performing the lift incorrectly. The shoulder is a commonly injured joint and from a functionality perspective the overhead press helps build strength in our shoulder which protects it from injury. The additional upper body strength and mobility helps us with moving and stacking heavy objects, or working on something overhead. By doing these compound push exercises, we can do those and other things with a much lower risk of pain and injury.
Exercise #6: The Row
Now we are transitioning from pushing to pulling, and to do so we need to engage our back muscles. The two main muscles we need to work in our back are our latissimus dorsi (or lats) and trapezius (traps). The Barbell Row will work both of those muscles. To perform the exercise, simply deadlift the weight off of the ground, drop into a quarter squat, and row. Adjust the back position as needed so long as it stays flat. The more we lean forward and flare out our elbows, the more emphasis we will put on working our upper back muscles more so than the lats. This exercise can be performed overhand or underhand. When done underhand, we engage our biceps more, when using the standard overhand grip it’s our traps that fire more. For both variations, our prime mover muscle will still be the lats. Adding this exercise into our routine will help us build functional strength throughout our entire upper body.
Exercise #7: The Farmers Carry
To wrap it all up, we should never overlook our grip strength and stability. If you are like most people the ability to more easily pick up and carry heavy objects would make our lives substantially easier. This is an exercise you can do as part of your upper body, lower body, or total body workout. It can literally be fit in almost anywhere. The forearms are small muscles that fatigue and recover fast and benefit from shorter and more frequent workouts. However, if you think the farmers carry works just the forearms, you are greatly misled. The farmers carry engages our glutes, core, traps, calves, and several other muscles, making it another total body compound movement. If you want to build stamina, endurance, balance, and total body strength adding some sets of farmers carries to the end of your workout will do you a lot of good.
Honorable Mentions: Pull/Chin Ups, Dips, Barbell Hip Thrusts
While these workouts didn’t make our top 7 we still wanted to give them their moment of fame. The pull/chin up and dip in particular can be grouped more into the bodyweight exercises category we discussed in previous articles. Once you can easily do 8 or more of those, you can try adding weight to them as well. Pull Ups can add a little more work to our traps. Chin ups will strengthen the Biceps more than even a curl would. Adding in dips into our routine helps us get a little bit more of a total upper body workout in by targeting the lower chest and triceps more than the Bench Press does. When it comes to lower body work, the barbell hip thrust does not train functional movement or engage as many muscle groups as some of these other exercises. However, it does a phenomenal job targeting our posterior chain leg muscles without putting as much strain on our backs as say a deadlift would. This makes it a fantastic exercise to include if you are someone who suffers from back pain. When it comes to direct glute training, barbell hip thrusts are pretty tough to beat.
To wrap it up, these are the workouts we build around in order to become more efficient lifters, gaining more strength and more mobility in a shorter amount of time. These exercises might seem intimidating on the surface but contrary to what you may have been told they are safer than even jogging, provided we perform them with proper form. Just because the guy or girl next to you is bench pressing 200 pounds does not mean you need to right away. With all of these workouts start light, even if it is just a training bar, and work your way up. That’s exactly how each and every one of the athletes you see at the gym got started. An expert at anything was once a beginner. Keep that in mind when you first attempt these exercises. Remember that you don’t need to start with a lot of weight; in fact you shouldn’t add a lot of weights until you have the mobility and form to do so. Once you master the form though, the sky is the limit and with good effort you will be surprised how much weight will be added to the bar just in your first few months of training. If you need help with building mobility or proper form, check out our Revivalize Total Health 1 program. We go through a step by step process of how to perform these exercises and so many others. We can help you get your strength training routine in order, and become the best version of yourself! Until next time, stay strong and stay healthy my friends.
Leo Gabriel, Revivalize Inc.
Go Back But simply picking a few exercises and gradually adding weight is not enough and can even hurt us by building muscle imbalances. When we go to the weight room we typically aren’t there for more than an hour, so it’s important we know which exercises are going to get us the most bang for our buck. At the end of the day which workouts are “Best” is subjective so our criteria for evaluating exercises have to do with their effectiveness for building total body strength and functional movement. And these exercises are going to need to be exercises targeting multiple muscle groups so we can get a total body workout in without spending hours at the gym. When multiple muscle groups are engaged this also makes the exercise safer long term by not creating or worsening muscle imbalances. When we refer to the 7 “Best” exercises it certainly does not mean that they are the only ones you should do, but rather the ones you should utilize as a measuring point and foundation of your strength training routine. So without further ado let’s go through these 7 exercises one by one.
Exercise #1: The Deadlift
Imagine how much easier life would be if you could correctly pickup and put down heavy objects without injuring your back? The deadlift trains us to do just that, pick up dead weight off of the ground with proper form. Many of us associate lifting heavy objects with injury when in reality, it is actually one of the safest physical activities out there, provided you use proper form. And what proper form involves is using your legs and glutes to lift rather than your lower back. The deadlift works our hamstrings, glutes, quads, back, and traps. Once you get the form down and begin adding on weight to the bar, there is practically no exercise that gets loaded heavier than the deadlift. This means adding on a lot more muscle mass, in a shorter period of time. On top of making us stronger, this gain in muscle mass turns us into metabolic fat burning machines. The deadlift is all around a fantastic exercise with its only minor setbacks being that it doesn’t work a large range of motion and is a posterior (hamstring and glute) dominant exercise. To maximize its effectiveness we need to combine it with some quad dominant exercises to balance out our leg strength.
Exercise #2: The Squat
Barbell Squats have been coveted as the king of lower body exercises and for good reason. This exercise works just about every muscle in our lower body. As long as you squat with your legs at least parallel to the ground you are not only building strength but mobility as well. Even the dead lift, as great of an exercise as it may be cannot make that claim, it doesn’t work the anywhere near the full range of motion of any joint. So why else is it so important for us to squat deeper? Although it is a compound movement, it is still a movement lead primarily by the quads. Only at those deeper stages do our glutes, inner thighs, and core engage to keep us stable. Learn to squat and dead lift even lighter weights with proper form, and everything you do on a daily basis becomes easier. Climbing several flights of stairs, lifting heavy things around your home, going for a hike, and anything else involving physical activity barely breaks a sweat.
Exercise #3: The Reverse Lunge
The Reverse Lunge gives us a taste of unilateral leg training and balance that we don’t get from just doing squats and deadlifts. While also, quad dominant it still hits just about every lower body muscle and puts even more emphasis on core strength by introducing a balance component. It can be done with dumbbells or a barbell once the increase in leg strength can no longer keep up with grip strength. These 3 lower body exercises alone are all you need to build strong, injury resistant legs.
Exercise #4: The Bench Press
Just like with lower body strength, building upper body strength quickly and efficiently means relying on compound lifts. The bench press is a fantastic place to start when it comes to building upper body strength. It works our Chest, Front Shoulder, Triceps and even our core. Like with any exercise, what is most important is proper form. This means having our forearms relatively perpendicular to the bar and moving the weight in a diagonal path down to our chest and bringing it back over our neck. This prevents unnecessary strain on our shoulders.
Exercise #5: The Overhead Press
The overhead press is another great push exercise. This time we are engaging our entire shoulder not just the front deltoid, which already gets plenty of work from our other push exercises. To perform it correctly, our grip will typically be narrower than the bench press. Once in a good starting position, lift the bar from your chest. Once you have pressed it overhead, bring your head under the bar and use your traps to stabilize the bar. Even though the main muscles worked are in the upper body, our glutes and core still must engage to keep ourselves stable. When our glutes and core are not engaged it causes a loss of balance and the back to arch excessively, which is one of the first signs you are performing the lift incorrectly. The shoulder is a commonly injured joint and from a functionality perspective the overhead press helps build strength in our shoulder which protects it from injury. The additional upper body strength and mobility helps us with moving and stacking heavy objects, or working on something overhead. By doing these compound push exercises, we can do those and other things with a much lower risk of pain and injury.
Exercise #6: The Row
Now we are transitioning from pushing to pulling, and to do so we need to engage our back muscles. The two main muscles we need to work in our back are our latissimus dorsi (or lats) and trapezius (traps). The Barbell Row will work both of those muscles. To perform the exercise, simply deadlift the weight off of the ground, drop into a quarter squat, and row. Adjust the back position as needed so long as it stays flat. The more we lean forward and flare out our elbows, the more emphasis we will put on working our upper back muscles more so than the lats. This exercise can be performed overhand or underhand. When done underhand, we engage our biceps more, when using the standard overhand grip it’s our traps that fire more. For both variations, our prime mover muscle will still be the lats. Adding this exercise into our routine will help us build functional strength throughout our entire upper body.
Exercise #7: The Farmers Carry
To wrap it all up, we should never overlook our grip strength and stability. If you are like most people the ability to more easily pick up and carry heavy objects would make our lives substantially easier. This is an exercise you can do as part of your upper body, lower body, or total body workout. It can literally be fit in almost anywhere. The forearms are small muscles that fatigue and recover fast and benefit from shorter and more frequent workouts. However, if you think the farmers carry works just the forearms, you are greatly misled. The farmers carry engages our glutes, core, traps, calves, and several other muscles, making it another total body compound movement. If you want to build stamina, endurance, balance, and total body strength adding some sets of farmers carries to the end of your workout will do you a lot of good.
Honorable Mentions: Pull/Chin Ups, Dips, Barbell Hip Thrusts
While these workouts didn’t make our top 7 we still wanted to give them their moment of fame. The pull/chin up and dip in particular can be grouped more into the bodyweight exercises category we discussed in previous articles. Once you can easily do 8 or more of those, you can try adding weight to them as well. Pull Ups can add a little more work to our traps. Chin ups will strengthen the Biceps more than even a curl would. Adding in dips into our routine helps us get a little bit more of a total upper body workout in by targeting the lower chest and triceps more than the Bench Press does. When it comes to lower body work, the barbell hip thrust does not train functional movement or engage as many muscle groups as some of these other exercises. However, it does a phenomenal job targeting our posterior chain leg muscles without putting as much strain on our backs as say a deadlift would. This makes it a fantastic exercise to include if you are someone who suffers from back pain. When it comes to direct glute training, barbell hip thrusts are pretty tough to beat.
To wrap it up, these are the workouts we build around in order to become more efficient lifters, gaining more strength and more mobility in a shorter amount of time. These exercises might seem intimidating on the surface but contrary to what you may have been told they are safer than even jogging, provided we perform them with proper form. Just because the guy or girl next to you is bench pressing 200 pounds does not mean you need to right away. With all of these workouts start light, even if it is just a training bar, and work your way up. That’s exactly how each and every one of the athletes you see at the gym got started. An expert at anything was once a beginner. Keep that in mind when you first attempt these exercises. Remember that you don’t need to start with a lot of weight; in fact you shouldn’t add a lot of weights until you have the mobility and form to do so. Once you master the form though, the sky is the limit and with good effort you will be surprised how much weight will be added to the bar just in your first few months of training. If you need help with building mobility or proper form, check out our Revivalize Total Health 1 program. We go through a step by step process of how to perform these exercises and so many others. We can help you get your strength training routine in order, and become the best version of yourself! Until next time, stay strong and stay healthy my friends.
Leo Gabriel, Revivalize Inc.