If you take a look around any popular gym or fitness center, you’ll see tons of trainers putting their clients through ridiculous personal training exercises. They’ll be balancing with one leg a giant blue ball while curling a 5-pound weight, or doing nothing but bodyweight lunges for an hour on end.
What you rarely see is a trainer that puts their client through some truly hard work doing the most tried and true personal training exercises. These are the same effective movements that bodybuilders, competitive lifters, and even average fitness enthusiasts have long known to be the best for building muscle mass.
This article will take you through the top 5 muscle building personal training exercises. At the end, you can find a comprehensive guide to build muscle, one that contains essential, proven information on weight training programs, nutritional regimens, and other important aspects of bodybuilding.
1. Squat
The squat is often called the “king of all personal training exercises,” and for good reason. The squat works the quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes, and lower back, and abs to the limit, building these muscle groups to their full potential. Heavy squatting also causes your body to produce highly anabolic hormones that can actually contributing to making your upper body bigger!
2. Deadlift
Second only to the squat in muscle building effectiveness, the deadlift will allow you to handle more weight than any other movement in the gym. It uses nearly every muscle in your body, especially you lower back, upper back, and hamstrings. If you want to build the most muscle mass possible, you must deadlift heavy and often.
3. Bench Press
Though not as important as the squat and deadlift, the bench press is one of the most essential personal training exercises. Though it is just one of many upper body pressing movements, the basic, flat, barbell bench press will allow you to handle more weight and stimulate more muscle fibers in your pecs, delts, and triceps than any other.
4. Pull-Up
The pull-up, along with the dip, is often called Steroids For Sale the “upper body squat.” What this means is that it is as important to upper body muscular development as the squat is to the lower body. The pull-up, which stimulates the lats, traps, biceps, and forearms, is also one of the most challenging personal training exercises. Gain strength on this movement, and see your back development take off.
5. Barbell Row
The barbell row is probably the best personal training exercise for stimulating the back. Some people may disagree in favor of the pull-up, but I have found this movement to be the most beneficial for gaining overall size in my lats AND my traps. It also does a great job of balancing out the bench press, which is essentially the “push” to the barbell row’s “pull.”