top 10 muscle building exercise?
- Thread starter tafadar
- Start date
1. Deadlift
2. Back Squat
3. Overhead Press
Reason - hundreds of years of empirical and scientific evidence.
1. Full Squat
2. Deadlift
3. Bench Press
4. Overhead Press
5. Pull Ups/Chin Ups
6. Dips
7. Barbell Rows
8. Upright Rows
9. Calf Raise
10. Olympic Lifts (any and all of them)
The order of the above is debatable, but generally the list starts with kings of muscle building exercises, and ends with exercises that are useful for the job, but not exactly essential. Squats and deads you could debate which one deserves the number 1 spot. Deads do use more muscles and are the king of pulling exercises. Squats are a little more leg-based than pull-based. Bench vs overhead, again depends. Bench uses more of the chest, overhead uses more of the shoulders and traps. Both use the whole body for stability, and both will build up the arms and pushing muscles. Pull ups and dips are probably the best bodyweight exercises you can do, and they will - put together - go a long way towards building the entire upper body. Rows and upright rows both use pulling muscles. Rows use the lats, lower back and mid/lower traps, while upright rows use more of the upper traps and mid shoulder. Both exercises work the arms. Finally, at the end of the list, calf raises are great because not much else really works the calves very well, and Olympic lifts are great because of the high force production spread across the whole body in them. I was unsure of which to put last. Olympic lifts include a lot of complexity, and complexity doesn't do much to help muscles grow (even though, as I said, the high force production in the lifts does). Calf raises are an isolation exercise, which means that in the big picture they don't aid in much whole body muscular growth, but they do a lot for that one muscle group which is often neglected.
2. Deadlift
3. Bench Press
4. Overhead Press
5. Pull Ups/Chin Ups
6. Dips
7. Barbell Rows
8. Upright Rows
9. Calf Raise
10. Olympic Lifts (any and all of them)
The order of the above is debatable, but generally the list starts with kings of muscle building exercises, and ends with exercises that are useful for the job, but not exactly essential. Squats and deads you could debate which one deserves the number 1 spot. Deads do use more muscles and are the king of pulling exercises. Squats are a little more leg-based than pull-based. Bench vs overhead, again depends. Bench uses more of the chest, overhead uses more of the shoulders and traps. Both use the whole body for stability, and both will build up the arms and pushing muscles. Pull ups and dips are probably the best bodyweight exercises you can do, and they will - put together - go a long way towards building the entire upper body. Rows and upright rows both use pulling muscles. Rows use the lats, lower back and mid/lower traps, while upright rows use more of the upper traps and mid shoulder. Both exercises work the arms. Finally, at the end of the list, calf raises are great because not much else really works the calves very well, and Olympic lifts are great because of the high force production spread across the whole body in them. I was unsure of which to put last. Olympic lifts include a lot of complexity, and complexity doesn't do much to help muscles grow (even though, as I said, the high force production in the lifts does). Calf raises are an isolation exercise, which means that in the big picture they don't aid in much whole body muscular growth, but they do a lot for that one muscle group which is often neglected.