
As a personal trainer, I’ve spent years cycling through different exercises, training programs, sets and rep schemes, and recovery methods. It’s fun to switch things up, yet typically, the best results can be achieved by choosing a set of challenging exercises that work your target muscles and that you enjoy performing, and progressively overloading them over time. “Progressive overload” is the process of increasing the demand of a given exercise over time; meaning adding reps, increasing range of motion, reducing tempo, or increasing weight, or any combination of those.
I am ranking these exercises from personal preference as well as effectiveness of the exercise; there is no particular order. Obviously, we would want more variation than just 5 exercises in a workout program, so this is just my subjective ranking of the top 5 best exercises to perform. The way I see it, in order for a workout program to be complete, you need at least ONE exercise which challenges the following movement patterns; lower body push, lower body pull, upper body push, upper body pull, and trunk stabilization. All of these can come together and create a simple yet effective full body workout program.
Lower Body Push: Barbell Back Squat
To work the anterior (front) chain of leg muscles which focus more on the “pushing” motion, I have selected the barbell back squat. This movement is one of the kings of all exercises; when performed properly, it strengthens your core, mid back, quadriceps, adductors and glutes. It is unequivocally one of the best ways to develop your overall strength.
Lower Body Pull: Barbell Romanian Deadlift
Moving onto the posterior (back) chain, we have the barbell Romanian deadlift. This exercise, when performed properly, will absolutely hammer your glutes, hamstrings, upper and lower lats, rear delts and forearms. Another fantastic benefit from this exercise is that you can use it to lengthen your hamstrings while simultaneously strengthening them, thereby increasing your mobility. I can’t recommend this exercise enough.
Upper Body Push: Incline Dumbbell Press
Now for our upper body push movement, I have selected the incline dumbbell press. I choose this over any type of flat pressing variation as the incline press engages the middle pec very similarly to the flat press, while isolating and hammering the upper pec as well. This exercise also helps you to develop your anterior delt (front shoulder) and triceps, and gives your chest a “full” look to it.
Upper Body Pull: Wide Grip Pullup
The wide grip pullup is one of the best upper body exercises you can perform. This exercise works your upper lats, forearms, brachialis, core, and even your pec major and triceps. Any pulldown variation also works, like the wide grip lat pulldown or assisted pullup, but in my opinion you should always be working on achieving your first pullup so you can start enjoying the benefits of this fantastic exercise.
Trunk Stabilization: Unstable Plank
The core requires lots of direct work to stabilize your spine properly under load, and to adequately work on the core, I have selected the “unstable plank.” If you are able to perform a regular plank for over 2 minutes, you should be progressing the movement from stable to unstable, meaning you should be introducing ways to be off balance while performing the plank. Personally, I enjoy performing my planks on an upside down Bosu Ball (exercise ball side on the floor, and base side under your forearms), as this causes a great deal of instability and increases the stability demands of the intricate core muscles.
Taking these 5 exercises, and adding a couple more isolation movements for the same muscle groups to each, you can begin to build a really solid and comprehensive full body resistance training program. The most important thing to do is to start somewhere! You don’t need to get it all right in the beginning, just show up to the gym and try things out, see what you connect with and enjoy, and go from there!
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