Top 5 exercises you definitely need to know!
When it comes to training, whether you're trying to exercise to lose weight or to build muscle, there are 5 main exercises you must add to your repertoire.
Squats - Some may say that this is the ultimate exercise to build muscle and burn calories. It recruits more muscles than no other exericse. When you are training legs, this has got to be your staple. It targets your hamstrings, glutes, quads and calves all at the same time! You can do this exercise with bands, weights or even bodyweight, so it's very versatile.
Deadlifts - This is a great exercise for lower back, a muscle group which is often hard to target properly. But this isn't all it can do, similar to the squats, it is a lower body exercise which recruits glutes, abs, hamstrings, lats, forearms at the same time. Twin this with squats and you won't need any other exercises for your lower body training.
Bench Press - Now moving onto upper body exercises, this is the most basic and useful movement to build your chest (pectoral muscles). This is a upper body push movement, which uses both parts of your chest (pectoral major and minor), shoulders (front deltoids), as well as your triceps
Barbell Rows - For every push there is a pull. So to work on a balanced upper body, you need to work on your antagonist muscle groups. The Row will build you that wide back, but also giving you that thickness that it needs. On top of that if you complete the barbell row enough times, I'm sure you won't need any exericse for arms. The barbell row will work on your back, shoulders (rear deltoids and traps) as well as your biceps.
Shoulder press - To complete all planes of movement, the shoulder press is the final exercise - if trained with enough heavy volume will give your body that wide but full look. On the other hand if you're going purely for a fat burning perspective, it will no doubt burn high calories if you go for a lighter weight.
The common theme with these exercises is that they all recruit more than one muscle fibres, therefore increasing the output and efficiency of your workouts, to help you burn fat or build muscle! These are known as compound exercises.
