80 percent of muscle growth comes from increasing your strength on key compound exercises. You can be in the gym all the time lifting weights, but if you are not getting stronger, you are not building muscle. In this article, we are going to discuss the best gym exercises you can perform to build relative strength and muscle. These movements can be incorporated into a 3-day a week training split, which is the training frequency we promote at DKS Lifestyle.
1. The Incline Bench Press
The incline bench press is an incredible exercise. It does a great job at developing your upper chest, shoulders, and triceps as a man. The incline bench press also has tremendous carry over to other essential lifts such as the overhead press and the flat bench press.
Why Incline Bench Press is Better than Flat Bench Press
The flat bench press has a lot of benefits, but the Incline bench press is far superior for building strength. In most situations in life where we must use our arms to perform a pushing movement, the arms are moving in front of the body but at a slight upward angle. This is also the case for athletic movements such as punching. You rarely push or punch downwards, you are most likely pushing or punching upwards. If you can add 10-15 pounds per month to your incline bench press and increase your 5-rep max, you will have a well-developed chest.
2. The Overhead Press
The overhead press or also known as the Military Press, challenges your entire body. It’s commonly believed to be a shoulder building exercise, but it builds so much more muscle than that. The overhead press can contribute to your shoulders, triceps, upper back, and trap development. It has great carryover to other pushing exercises such as bench press, dips, and triceps push-downs.
How to Increase Overhead Press Strength
The overhead press can be a very unforgiving lift. The main reason a lot of people struggle to hit personal records with this exercise is because it is poorly integrated with physically demanding chest movements. For example, a lot of people will train shoulder press right after their pushing muscles are already fatigued from heavy bench press, pushups, and chest flys. They focus a lot on their chest and their shoulders are essentially an after-thought.
The best way to increase your strength on overhead press is to train your shoulders on a separate day than your chest training. For example, if you are doing 2 upper body workouts per week, you would have 1 day be more chest-focus and another day be more shoulder-focus. On your Chest-focused upper body day, the bench press would be the first exercise you perform. On your shoulder-focused upper body day, the overhead press would be your first lift.
This style of training will systematically get you stronger on the overhead press over a period of several months.
3. The Weighted Dip
The dip works the same muscle groups as the standard bench press including chest, shoulders, triceps, and front delts. This can be a powerful exercise for building upper body strength and muscle. The problem with dips is once you can do 20 or 30 repetitions with your body weight, the exercise is no longer effective for building muscle. For you to keep challenging yourself with dips, you want to start adding external weight to them.
Dips Are the Upper Body Squat
You might have heard the saying that “dips are the upper body squat”. This is true. The dip is the easiest upper body movement in which you can consistently overload the exercise. The same way squats are the easiest lower body movement in which you can consistently overload the exercise. A lot of people may hit strength plateaus when performing flat bench press. Weighted dips can help you breakthrough a bench press plateau.
The weighted dip is a closed-chain movement, meaning your body is moving through space. As humans, we can activate more muscle fibers through closed-chain exercises. The bench press is an open-chain movement, meaning the weight is moving through space. Therefore, there is not that much muscle activation.
If you want to significantly improve your pushing strength, then weight dips should be a staple in your training.
4. The Weighted Chin-up
Chin-ups do the best job at building your back and bicep muscles. It is considered an essential calisthenics exercise for good reasons. It has tremendous carry-over to other pulling movements such as pull-ups, deadlifts, rows, bicep curls, and lat-pull down. Body weight only chin-ups start to become ineffective for building strength and muscle when you can do 15+ repetitions. Therefore, you want to start adding external resistance to your chin-ups so that you can keep overloading the movement.
Why Weighted Chin-ups Are Better than Bicep Curls
The weighted chin-up is a closed-chain exercise. Your hands are fixed to the bar and your body is moving through space. Therefore, you are going to activate more muscle. Whereas bicep curls are an open-chain movement, and the weight is moving through space. Therefore, there is not that much muscle activation. This does not mean that dumbbell bicep curls should not be in your training regimen. Bicep curls are a great bicep isolation exercise. However, weighted chin-ups give you the best bang for your buck as far as building both your back and bicep muscles.
5. The Bulgarian Split Squat
The Bulgarian split squat is not a leg exercise you will see people doing often in the gym. If you incorporate this movement into your leg training, you will see incredible benefits. The Bulgarian split squat primarily develops the quads, but it also builds the glutes and hamstrings. You can perform this exercise with your body weight only or you can add external weights if body weight Bulgarian split squats are too easy for you.
Bulgarian Split Squats are Better than Traditional Squats and Deadlifts
Traditional squats and deadlifts are great for building leg muscle if you are a beginner lifter that needs to put on size. The problem occurs once you become very advanced and strong at squats and deadlifts. You become more at risk for lower back injuries, because of all the stress heavy squats and deadlifts place on the spine. With Bulgarian split squats there is significantly less stress placed on the lower back. If you do weighted-Bulgarian split squats, you are holding a pair of dumbbells in your hands, which is not as stressful as holding a barbell on your back.
Another advantage you have with the Bulgarian split squat is building a muscle known as the Vastus Medialis or VMO. It is a muscle located near the knee. Unfortunately, traditional squats and deadlifts don’t really build this muscle. Developing the VMO will really improve your leg aesthetics and make your leg muscles pop. This is why you want to build strength with your Bulgarian split squat or any single leg exercise in general.
Conclusion
You can build so much strength and muscle with the incline bench press, the overhead press, the weighted dip, the weighted chin-up, and the Bulgarian Split squat. Of course, these are not going to be the only exercises you are doing, but they should set the foundation for your strength training program. In a later article, we will talk about how these exercises can be utilized for a 3-day training split.
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