What Are The Best Exercises You Can Do?

No matter how long I’ve been in the industry, no matter how many articles, videos or presentations I do, this is always the most common question I get asked, even when the subject was not specifically about training.

Often “What Are The Best Exercises You Can Do?” is followed by “For Fat Loss?” or “For Muscle Building?”.

What if I told you the best exercises you can do for muscle building are also the best exercise you can do for fat loss…….

Without further ado, here are the BEST exercises you can do:

The Squat - Probably the most famous or infamous exercise around, engaging more muscles than almost any other exercise on the list and “I Squat” has always been the reply to “How Did You Build Those Sick Quads?” or “How Did You Build Those Amazing Glutes?”. 

The Deadlift - The most alpha exercise on this list, it’s been a key exercise in anyone’s plan who’s looking to develop strength, optimise movement patterns and increase all around lean muscle mass. This exercise is quite advanced and is easy to get wrong, especially when ego lifting, I myself have pushed the weight up too far and compromised form, or shall I say my ego did, so the technique is key. When done correctly this can engage almost every muscle in the body, especially muscles in the posterior chain.

The Military Press - The is an incredible upper body exercise that specifically targets your shoulders whilst forcing your entire body the brace putting you in a strong position to perform the exercise correctly. Any exercise that engages numerous muscles at once is amazing at both increasing muscle and burning fat, due to the calories needed to fuel such a compound exercise. 

The Bent-Over Row - This exercise is one of those exercises that I almost feel I put in people’s programmes far too often, but you can never do too much Bent Over Rowing. This exercise focuses on developing the muscles in your upper back whilst bracing your core and activating muscle your legs (specifically your hamstrings) to help hold you in that strong position with a neutral spine.

As much as these are (in my humble opinion) the best exercise you can do, you also need to focus on variations, doing other exercises that hit the same muscles in different ways, mixing up the reps and sets along with progressively overloading your training (progressively increasing volume, intensity, frequency or time). 

If you're not currently doing these exercise then you must 100% start incorporating these into your plans to help fast track your strength and body composition goals.