12 Exercises That EVERYONE Should Have In Their Program!
There are optional exercises and then there are exercises that everyone should have in their program. In this video, I’m going to go over the 12 Exercises that EVERYONE Should Have in Their Program to build the most muscle and a strong body that is resilient to injury. You may find that you are doin
So to recap, the 12 exercises that everyone should be including in their programs, you’ve got this Face Pull, this Face Pull, this Face Pull here, this Face Pull and don t forget this Face Pull. I mean what do you think, I m that fucking nuts? I mean I love Face Pulls, but I promise it s only on the list once.
What’s up guys, Jeff Cavaliere, Athleanx. com. Today, I’m going to talk about the 12 exercises that everyone should be including in their programs. And before anybody jumps out and says, Well, wait a second, not everybody should be doing every exercise. Guys as a physical therapist, I understand that sometimes physical limitations actually preclude you from doing an exercise.
But I’m talking about if you are physically capable of doing the exercises in this list, then we all should be doing them and including them in our programs if we want to see the best benefits. That being said, the Face Pull, spoiler alert, is actually going to be one of the 12, so be prepared. Guys we re going to start breaking down all the rest of the 11 exercises, though, and it starts right here with a Squat. So it figures we start with the king of all lower body exercises, the Squat. And we know that this exercise is incredibly powerful for hitting the quads and the glutes and the adductors and even the hamstrings.
However, it’s also one of the most fundamental movement patterns that we all need to sort of learn how to get stronger at. I mean, hell, even getting up and down off the toilet every day is going to require that you know how to squat. Now I, for one, know firsthand exactly how orthopedic issues can limit your ability to do the exercise. However, it doesn’t mean that you skip the exercise altogether. There’s always something else you can do, there’s always another variation.
I’ve shown at great length the benefits of a Bulgarian Split Squat, allowing you to train one leg at a time and keep a flatter, more neutral, lower back. For those of us that have back issues. I also showed how squatting to a box can be a lifesaver for those that have patella tendinitis or knee issues. Or even for those that just aren’t capable of handling heavy loads on the exercise, you have the option of a single dumbbell versions like a Goblet Squat or a Drop Squat. The bottom line is you’re not just allowed not to skip leg day, but you’re not allowed to skip squats, provided you’re able to do at least one of those variations.
So now the Squat is referred to as the king of all lower body exercises. You have to also look at it, maybe in a different way. Even a great album has an A side and a B side. For me, the B side in this case is the posterior chain, and there’s no better exercise for hitting the posterior chain than the Deadlift. The Deadlift is going to train the all-important hinge pattern, which is one that you’re going to need to master if you not only want to excel at the lift, but actually in everyday life.
You see, the hinge is not simply bending over at the waist, but letting your hips sit back as you bend over at the waist. And that is a key difference because if you can learn how to master this, you not only will become much more efficient in all of your lower body exercises, but you ll be protecting your lower back at the same time. Now, once again, orthopedic limitations can rear their ugly head here, and people can say, I just can’t do the exercise without my back hurting. Well, it might be because you’re trying to bend over too far. You see, there’s nothing stopping you from performing a mat elevated version of the exercise to just take a couple of inches away from the bottom of the lift.
Those few inches can make all the difference in the world between you actually being able to perform the lift pain free and not performing it at all. Likewise, you can perform it with a trap bar. Again, the higher handles allow you to perform the lift from the shallower depth without having to abandon it altogether. Guys, there’s always a way if you’re willing to find it, and here I’m going to make sure you find it because the Deadlift needs to be in your program somewhere. And so now let’s shift our focus to the upper body here for exercise number three.
And while we’re at it, why not complement the big three? We’ve got the squats and the deadlifts already, so now it’s time for the Bench Press and we know that the Bench Press is one of the best ways to build the chest period. But we also get is a king of all pushing exercises because we’re getting ample shoulder and triceps training on the exercise too. Now I get it, you can have a preference for how you train the exercise. Maybe you don’t even have access to a barbell.
You want to do it with dumbbells. That’s fine with me. Again, orthopedic issues sometimes rear their ugly head here and they cause shoulder pain as you bring it down bicep tendinitis, rotator cuff issues. Remember, there’s one thing that’s always a great equalizer in those cases, and that is just simply slowing the reps down. If you perform these reps very, very slow oftentimes the pain that you feel goes away.
And that goes back to a thing I say all the time, is it the structure that’s the problem, or is it the stability? And oftentimes on the Bench Press is the stability. If you learn to lower the weights a lot slower and perform each rep within 10, oftentimes those pains go away and your ability to perform the exercise is restored, putting it back in its rightful place in this list of 12. And so, with the Dead Ringers out of the way, now we get to my personal preferences and you’re not going to find an Athlene-X program that doesn’t include this next exercise, and it’s the Pullup. And the reason why the pullup appears in every Athlean-X program is not because I think it’s the best body weight back exercise there is.
It’s because I think it’s one of the best back exercises that there is. It demands not only a great amount of strength to pull your entire body weight up to the bar, but it requires that you’re able to do so with a rigid torso. Meaning you have to be able to keep good core stability from your feet all the way up to your fingertips. That being said, if the exercise is too easy, it’s easily scalable. You can simply attach some weight around your waist to make the exercise more difficult and create the overload that you need.
Or you can simply add a band here to create an assisted option. The fact is there’s no escaping this exercise. It’s one of the best pull exercises you can do bodyweight or not. And so I won’t keep you in suspense any longer because obviously the Face Pull is going to make its way into this list. And so let’s just get it over with.
The Face Pull is one of my favorite exercises once again for the posterior chain, but this time for the upper body because it doesn’t just do one thing. It trains the upper back, rotator cuff and scapular retractors, three areas that we oftentimes just don’t do enough things for. And the nice thing about it is it’s pretty damn flexible. In other words, you can do it a lot of different ways. If you have access to a gym, you can certainly do it with a cable like this, or you could just do it with a band like this if you’re training at home.
Or even if you have nothing at home, you just have a towel and a weight, you could do it like this too. Now this version, well, I mean, I think that’s just something Jesse told me was functional or maybe just plain fun, I forget, but you can skip that one. And speaking of the rotator cuff, let’s keep exercise number six here tied