What's up, guys? Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.COM.
today, it's time for the Barbell Exercises.
And, as I did then, I'll do it again today, we're going to put the science back in strength
and tell you why these are my favorite Barbell exercises one by one.
So, let's kick it off right now with one of the most popular of all time.
Alright, let's get this list started the right way with the king of all Barbell exercises,
the Squat.
And as you see here, I'm doing a back Squat, but there are clearly front Squat options.
There's even in the Back Squat, low bar and high bar positioning.
The fact of the matter is, if you want to build an athletic body, you'd better start
Squatting because it's the best closed-chain way to train your entire lumbopelvic hip complex.
And no list of 8 Barbell exercises, the best ever, would ever start or end without the
Barbell Squat in it.
Alright, next up, is there a better way to train your biceps than with a Barbell Curl?
I can tell you the answer right now. No.
The Barbell Curl is one of the best ways to overload your biceps and it allows you to
concentrate heavily on the eccentric portion of the lift
that creates most of the muscle damage that we need to spark that muscle growth. Guys,
I can tell you this from a very young age,
I loaded up that bar, provided what I call a bit of a cheat curl, but I made sure not
to lean too far back past the vertical here to involve the lower back,
or jeapordize my low back, but allow me to get that weight up and then slowly control
the eccentric.
The Barbell Curl, however you perform it, though, is still the king of all Bicep exercises.
Number 3 and the first maybe surprise on the list for some of you here, is the Barbell
Hip Thruster.
Yeah, why is it a surprise? Because a lot of guys forget entirely that posterior chain
of theirs.
If they can't see it, they don't train it.
And I can tell you this, one of the worst things you can do, especially if you want
an entirely strong, complete lower body, you cannot forget the posterior chain.
Your hips and glutes are critical, CRITICAL, to creating the power that you have from your
feet to your fingertips.
And the Barbell Hip Thruster is one of the absolute best ways to do this.
My best tip when you're doing this, take your hands and push them down on the bar into your
thighs. Don't let it ride up on your hip bones.
You might find the exercise to be uncomfortable, but if you actually push the bar away from
you by straightening your arms, you can push it right into your thighs,
feel no discomfort, and allow yourself to finally concentrate on overcoming that glut
amnesia and powering yourself up using nothing put your glutes.
Number 4, here's another one that might catch a few of you by surprise because it might
be brand new to you.
This is a great way to do a Barbell Row. This is basically, we call this the Barbell Dead
Row, and this is basically the equivalent of an upper body Push Press.
By allowing our lower body to participate just a little bit, we can load those weights
up a little bit more and drive ourselves up, continue that momentum,
and then let the prime movers take over. Just like, again, with the Push Press, if I start
it here, in a little bit of my leg movement,
I can allow my shoulders that little extra momentum and power to push through. The same
thing is happening here on the Barbell Dead Row.
Let those Lats do more of what they're capable of doing by allowing your lower body to give
them just that little bit of extra thrust to get that barbell up and then take over
from there.
Alright, next up, let's hit those shoulders and maybe not in the way you would think.
Again, not with a Behind the Neck Shoulder Press.
Not only would that not make our barbell exercises our top 8, it wouldn't make my top 88 of Shoulder
exercises.
I don't like that, I don't like the Barbell Upright Row because it simply fights your
own anatomy,
and most of us guys, impingement is impending if you continue to do those 2 versions of
the exercise.
However, we can fix it here with this Olympic Barbell Blitz Setup, when we take an Olympic
Barbell, we stick it in the corner,
we load up the weights on one end. Now anatomically, we just saved our shoulders.
By allowing ourselves to position our elbows in front of our body, we're now in what we
call the scapular plane.
Our shoulderblades face forward at about a 45 degree angle, so our natural position of
the arm is in front of us.
Now we're not fighting to try to press our arm up in an awkward angle inside of the glenohumeral
joint.
We're able to put it more naturally where it belongs which is in front of our body.
Here you can now rely on the strength of your shoulders as opposed to trying to fight your
own anatomy.
Not only will you see that your strength levels will go, but they'll do so without the pain
that might come with doing the other exercises we talked about.
Alright next up, Number 6, and it's time to hit the Chest. And if we had a choice between
the flat or inclined version of a Barbell Bench Press.
Which would it be? For me, it would be the Incline Bench Press.
Why? Because we don't only have the opportunity to hit our upper chest,
but we also have a chance to tie that in a little bit more with our front Delts because
the angle of the bench allows us to work a little higher and higher up on our chest.
If you thought about a completely vertical bench, that's going to work up here on your
shoulders.
The more you lean back, it's going to start to travel down the chest to where you're in
a decline position, you're all the way down in the lower part of your chest.
But, we get a lot of work on our decline. We get a lot of work on our flat beds through
a lot of other exercises.
Be it Push Ups, be it Dips, there's a lot of other things helping out, but not so much
helping the upper chest.
So, if you have one shot, you've got to make sure you're doing the incline version of this
like I'm showing you here.
Next up, you did not think I was going to finish this Best 8 exercise list without the
The Deadlift happens to be, for me as a Physical Therapist, what I think the most functional,
best strength training exercise you can possible do.
Now, is it the easiest exercise? No, it's pretty complex because a lot of guys don't
perform it correctly.
The key to the Deadlift is to make sure that you're getting your hip hinge and your knee
bend correct.
The easiest way to do this? You allow nothing but hip hinge during the first descent of
the lift when you get the bar to your knees, that's when you allow your knees to break.
It's that simple. You bring it back up in the reverse style. You push first through
your quads and through your legs, and then when you get to knee height,
then you drive your hips forward. Again, in reverse as the bar is lowering. Nothing but
hip hinge all the way back.
Once the bar hits the level of the knees, then you allow the knees to break and you
reverse the motion.
It's not all that complex especially if you just utilize those 2 tips. But I will tell
you this, you've got to make sure that you practice it and do it because it is, like
I said,
the best, most functional exercise you can do for your entire body.
Finally let's wrap this list up with another one you may never have expected to be on here.
The Barbell Rollout for what? Your core? That's right.
The Barbell Rollout is a great way to train your core. Now you guys know that the core
means not just your abs but your entire low back,
everything in here connecting your pelvis to your upper body and your shoulder girdle.
Well, the Barbell Rollout is great because you can load up the weights. you cause all;
this momentum generation out in the direction away from you
that you suddenly have to stop and freeze eccentrically control and then pull back and
generate enough force to overcome that momentum
to go back in the other direction. If you've never tried it, try it, guys. It is definitely
one of the hardest Ab exercises you can do.
And the more weight you put on out there, the more momentum you generate, the more you
have to slow down and then reverse that direction and come back.
Again, we're talking core and this is a great way to target it with just that same barbell
you use for those other 7 exercises.
So, there you have it guys. The 8 Best Barbell Exercises ever.
Some that never made the list, Barbell Snatch, Clean and Jerk, those are some of the lifts
that require so much technicality guys
that even the people that are doing them competitively will tell you they require hours and hours
and hours of practice just to be able to execute one perfectly.
I don't think It's responsible for me to be including some of those knowing that a lot
of you guys are going to go out and try these exercises never having even attempted one
of them.
Not a good idea. Plus, I think my 8 are really solid 8. If you guys want to add some, make
sure leave them to the comments below.
And here's the key. A lot of times, Barbell exercises are done in a gym. I understand
that not everybody's training in the gym.
In the ATHLEANX Training System, we allow you to train at home or the gym, it doesn't
matter what you have around you.
Matter of fact, we have a whole team of experts on call waiting to give you guys alternatives
if there's an exercise that you want to be able to do
and we can show you how to do it with what you've got.
If you're looking for a training system that accommodates to what i've got and helps you
to train wherever you are but allows you most of all to train like an athlete,
head to ATHLEANX.COM right now and get our ATHLEANX Trainng System.
In the meantime, if you found this video helpful, make sure you leave your comments and thumbs
up below.
And take a couple minutes and watch the 8 Best Dumbbell exercise ever that I made a
couple weeks ago.
I think you'll find that to be a great companions to this one.
Alright guys, I'll see you back here again soon.
In just actually a couple days.