Whether you’re looking to improve your body composition or just get stronger, strength training is a must. The goal of working your muscles against resistance is to build strength and increase muscle size. But strength training has other health and fitness benefits too. It helps build and preserve bone density, enhances functionality, improves balance, and can even improve brain health. All things you need in your life, right?
But if you have limited time to strength train, choose your exercises carefully. Focus on compound exercises that involve movement around more than one joint at a time to improve training efficiency. If you could only pick three exercises to include in your routine, what would they be?
Let’s look at three exercises every strength-training routine should include. If you’re pressed for time and need a time-efficient workout, these are the exercises you want to do. Don’t neglect these super strength builders!
Deadlifts
Deadlifts tops the list of exercises for building total body strength. Whether you do them with a barbell, dumbbells, or kettlebells, deadlifts work more muscle groups than any other strength-training exercise. This compound movement strengthens your lower back, glutes, hamstrings, and quadriceps - all of which help with daily activities like walking upstairs or rising from a chair.
Deadlifts also make it easier to move heavy loads from the floor to above your head. Plus, this movement will improve your posture, balance, and coordination. So, the benefits of deadlifts go beyond building strength.
The deadlift is a posterior chain exercise. It targets muscles in the back of your body including muscles in your lower back, glutes (buttocks), hamstrings (back of the thighs), and trapezius (upper back). The posterior chain doesn’t always get enough emphasis, which is why deadlifts are such a requisite exercise.
You also strengthen your core with this movement because you must keep your torso upright while lifting the weight off the ground and returning it to its starting position at the end of each repetition. There are various types of deadlifts, and you may discover one type works better for you than another.
For example, a study found that if you have a long torso, a sumo deadlift gives you a mechanical advantage and may allow you to work with more weight while if you have a shorter torso, a conventional deadlift works to your advantage.
Squats
What would a strength-training workout be without squats, one of most recognizable strength-building exercises? Squats work your entire body, including your core and lower back by requiring you to maintain an upright torso while keeping your knees from buckling during the exercise. They also improve balance and coordination.
While squats work all the muscles in your lower body, they target the quads more than the hamstrings and glutes. That’s why you need deadlifts to show your hamstrings and glutes some love. According to studies, widening the stance of squats, lowering your body more, and doing single-leg squats isolate the glute muscles to a greater degree. Plie squats are an effective squat variation for targeting the glutes too.
Squats also boost increase bone density in both men and women. This helps prevent osteoporosis - a concern for all women after menopause. Squats are a functional movement too as they mimic everyday activities such as picking up heavy objects, climbing stairs, and sitting in and getting out of a chair. Squats also require core stability and balance which helps prevent injuries in everyday life.
Bench Press
Your upper body needs strengthening too, right? One of the best exercises for building upper body strength is the bench press. This push exercise works most of the muscles in your upper body. The pectoralis major, or pecs, are the primary mover in this exercise, but other muscle groups are involved as well. The bench press also works your chest, triceps, and front shoulders (anterior deltoids). Your back and core muscles, being stabilizers, must fire too to keep you from falling off the bench when you lift heavy weights.
The bench press is one of the best exercises for building your chest, shoulders, and triceps. It’s also a basic movement that helps you develop upper-body strength. The pushing movement also works your stabilizer muscles and core muscles, which help support your spine during heavy lifting.
Here are some tips for doing a bench press safely:
- Squeeze a barbell or dumbbell firmly with both hands in an overhand grip. Don’t let go until you’ve completed the rep.
- Keep your feet flat on the floor, not crossed or elevated off the floor as so many bodybuilders do in photo shoots.
- Don’t arch your back excessively as you lower the weight - always keep it straight and flat on the bench.
- Keep your elbows tucked into your sides so they don’t flare out away from your body when lowering or raising weight - this puts stress on joints that shouldn’t be stressed by such movements!
Conclusion
Now you know the “big three.” Ensure you’re using progressive overload for all of these exercises. If you want your muscles to grow and become stronger, you need to place them under greater loads than they’re used to handling.
Progressive overload is simple: Gradually increase the amount of weight you lift over time so that your muscles are constantly challenged. This forces your body to adapt by becoming stronger - leading to increased muscle mass and strength gains. Your muscles will respond by becoming thicker and your muscles will become stronger and more efficient so they can handle heavier weights in future workouts.
Now you know what the “big three” strength training exercises are and why you need them in your workout. Don’t forget to use good form!
References:
- Cholewa JM, Atalag O, Zinchenko A, Johnson K, Henselmans M. Anthropometrical Determinants of Deadlift Variant Performance. J Sports Sci Med. 2019 Aug 1;18(3):448–453. PMID: 31427866; PMCID: PMC6683626.
- Lorenzetti S, Ostermann M, Zeidler F, Zimmer P, Jentsch L, List R, Taylor WR, Schellenberg F. How to squat? Effects of various stance widths, foot placement angles and level of experience on knee, hip and trunk motion and loading. BMC Sports Sci Med Rehabil. 2018 Jul 17;10:14. doi: 10.1186/s13102–018–0103–7. Erratum in: BMC Sports Sci Med Rehabil. 2020 Jan 29;12:7. PMID: 30026952; PMCID: PMC6050697.
- “Progressive Overload Explained: Grow Muscle & Strength Today - NASM.” https://blog.nasm.org/progressive-overload-explained.
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High-Intensity Interval Training: How Intense Does It Have to Be?
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