Which weight lifting exercise is the best

Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. The following exercises provide a nice full-body experience for anyone new to weight training —or for more experienced exercisers wanting a simple yet thorough program on which to build further.

A full-body session means training all or most parts of the main large muscle systems of the body: the shoulders, arms, back, chest, legs, buttocks, and abdominals.

Before you start lifting weights, there are some basic terms, tips, and basic practices that you should know.

Lastly, you should rest between sets so that your body replenishes its energy system for the next round. Time taken between sets can be as short as 60 seconds or as long as five minutes depending on the intensity and weight. One to two minutes is usually adequate rest time for a ten rep set of moderate to low intensity. These common weight training exercises will work all of the major muscle groups. You can do them in this order or change things up to suit your needs.

You would be wise to get a personal trainer or gym instructor to show you how to do these exercises first. One way to do this, should you not have decided to join a gym , is to ask for a single gym session with instructor guidance.

This may be a little tedious for a month or two but will help you achieve greater lifts without nagging injuries years down the line. I am sure you have seen the guys roaming around the gym with huge arms and a puffy chest and skinny little frog legs. Get your squats done. They are the single most effective strength-building move that you can do.

And like squats, the deadlift also pumps testosterone throughout your entire body. They should be just inside your arms when you go down to reach for the bar. Keep your back straight through the entire movement. Check out the video demonstration below for a look at the perfect deadlift. Watch carefully and then ill break it down below.

Okay, pretty good deadlifts right? The main things to point out from this video are:. Never arch your back during deadlifts. Some good ways to achieve this is to keep your head up the entire time, as if you are looking at the ceiling, and to keep your abs tight throughout the whole movement.

Arching your back can cause a whole mess of problems so really focus on that before you get to the heavyweights. As the bar passes his knees he does not pull up with his back, but instead, he thrusts his hips forward completing the movement. When he lowers the bar he does so by simply pulling his hips back until the bar reaches knee height where he proceeds to bend his knees back to starting position.

So with deadlifts and squats alone, you are already on your way to building an incredible body. These are the two most core exercises that will give your explosive increases in strength and mass. The bench press is probably the favorite exercise of most men out there.

When it comes to how strong you are, a lot of guys go right to their bench stats to display their superiority. Even though they are not as powerful as squats or deadlifts for a true reading of strength, they are a powerful upper body movement that will produce great results. Your hips should be firmly placed on the bench with a slight arch on your lower back. Your feet should be planted flat on the ground.

Your shoulders should be locked downwards with your shoulder blades squeezed together. These guys have a lot of great videos on Youtube so I highly recommend checking out Buff Dudes Youtube page if you are really into hitting the gym. Pull-ups are an incredible exercise for overall strength and endurance. This exercise is a great full-body exercise for beginners who are not used to the gym yet.

It is an excellent indicator of your level of fitness as it works your anaerobic system as well. For a good idea of how many to do just keep going until you can no longer get your chin over the bar. The military press, or overhead press, is my personal favorite exercise. But regardless of what I think, the military press is one of the most powerful full-body exercises you can do. It not only works your whole upper body, but it gives your stabilizer muscles one of the greatest workouts they can have, building incredible overall strength.

How to: Hold a barbell at your collar bones, hands just outside shoulder width and feet directly under hips a. Engaging your abs, press the bar straight up, passing it close to your face b. Once the bar passes your forehead, press it back slightly so it ends up over the base of your neck at the top of the movement c. Slowly and with control, bring the bar back down to just above your collar bone d. This leads to an unstable overhead position, so aim to push it up and just slightly back. How to: Lie on your back on a bench with feet planted firmly on the floor.

Your eyes should be directly under the bar a. Grab the bar, with hands just outside shoulder width. Then unrack it and hold it over your chest b. Drive the bar straight up again d. Repeat before re-racking.

Form focus: While a slight arch in your lower back is OK, try to keep your back against the bench as much as you can through this move. Also, pull your elbows in toward your ribcage as you lower the bar to keep them from flaring out to the sides. How to: Start with your hands on a stable bar, about shoulder-width apart, palms facing you and elbows straight a. Ideally, when performing the squat, you want to go down until your thighs are parallel to the ground; however, some individuals cannot do this i.

If the squat is the king, then the deadlift is the queen—although both exercises can be used interchangeably with the royalty titles. The deadlift hits not just the back, but the entire core, recruiting and strengthening the large lower body muscles, from the shoulder girdle down to your hips and legs, with emphasis on the gluteus maximus, quadriceps, hamstrings, hips, and abdominals, strengthening and stabilizing the erector spinae and lower back.

This exercise is very important, as the lower back is usually a very weak area on most, which in turn creates instability, injuries, and other issues. Depending on your forearm and grip strength, you can use straps to hold your grip to the barbell when you start moving heavier weights. Otherwise, there are several hand positions you can use—both hands pronated i. Similar to the deadlift in the muscles recruited—but without the ability to lift as heavy loads—the power clean is a compound power exercise that works the lower legs, quadriceps, gluteals, upper back, and deltoids.

Not surprisingly, it is the power exercises that are the most effective exercises to use, and although the power clean is a difficult exercise, if done correctly, can be a real asset in your assault on fat loss.

Another power exercise, the bench press is the primary exercise used to work the pectorals and to some extent, the anterior deltoids and triceps. As with the squat, the bench press can be performed with many variations to target areas of the chest. More specifically, using the flat bench will hit the middle of the chest, using an incline bench press will work the upper pectorals and serratus anterior , whilst a decline bench press will hit the lower pectorals.

Again, either dumbbells or a barbell can be used with this exercise, with the barbell preferable, even though using dumbbells requires more stability. Changes in grip width can also affect which muscles are hit more—a wider grip will focus more on the chest itself, whereas a narrow grip will target the triceps more making that variation an excellent exercise to do when focusing on the triceps.

Next to the lower body, the back is the biggest upper body muscle group, encompassing the entire area from the top of the trapezius down to the hips. Counterbalancing the bench press, the bent over row works the back. Even better than the traditional bent over row is the reverse bent over row, as it recruits more muscles than the former. A pronated grip should be used, and depending on the width of your grip, you can target the rhomboids or latissimus dorsi. A wider grip is going to hit the latissimus dorsi more, whereas a narrower grip will target the rhomboids.

Feet can remain on the ground, or elevated on a bench to increase the intensity of the exercise. After reverse bent over rows, pull-ups are the most complete exercise for back development—especially for the latissimus dorsi—and you hit every part of your back, from the wide part of your trapezius and latissimus dorsi, tapering down to your waist and lower back, just by using a combination of pull-up variations.

There are so many variations of pull-ups that can be done, from using full body weight to the assisted machine, to even adding weight in the form of extra plates from a chain on a weight belt. You have close or wide-grip options, with your hands in a neutral, pronated, or supinated position.