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 into the last one
and keep that corrective exercise focus going. And see, I'm a big believer in the corrective
exercises and especially those that train external rotation of the shoulder. And it's
not just something that I say is a buzz word. It's something that we need to have in our programing
because guess what? The rotator cuff muscles are the only muscles that actually rotate the
shoulder. So if you're not making a concerted effort to work in some exercise that does this,
I don't care what the rest of your program looks like, this is one muscle imbalance
that you're creating that you're not going to be able to overcome, at least not at
the expense of the health of your shoulder. Something as simple as banded external rotation
here is going to get the job done. Again, it doesn't have to be sexy, it just has to be
effective. And if you don't have access to a band and you're training at home with a pair
of dumbbells, you can still get the job done. Just lay on your side and perform the sideline
dumbbell external rotation exercise. The key is that you need to focus at least one of your
exercises to the rotator cuff. How you do it, it's up to you, just make sure you do it.
So as we cross the halfway point of our list, it's time to head back to the lower body for the last
of our leg exercises that are going to appear in this list of 12. And for me, this is a no
brainer. It's got to be the lunge or at least some variation of the Lunge. And I talked about my love
from the reverse lunge because of its kindness to people that have anterior knee issues. That being
said, there are other ways we can do the exercise. You see, the Lunge is the perfect complement
to the sagittal plane-based exercises we already picked. We have the Squat, we have the Deadlift.
You can take a Lunge and direct it in any direction you want. I've shown before the
benefits of the Frontal Plane Side Lunge and also the Transverse Plane Drop Step Lunge.
All of these are going to give us a more multidimensional approach to our training.
And when we talk about a joint like the hip, which is a three dimensionally operating ball and socket
joint, we know that we have to train in more than just one plane of motion. The other nice thing
about the Lunge is that it gives us a chance to actually divert our efforts either towards
the quads more or towards the posterior chain and glutes and hamstrings more. And all we have to do
is alter the position of our body when we do it. So if we lean forward, when we do the exercise,
we light up the posterior chain more effectively because we put it more effectively on stretch.
If I stay nice and upright with a tall torso and go straight down in any of these planes, I'm going
to work more on my quads. Again, the choice is up to you, but the choice should not be whether
or not you're doing Lunges because I think they need to be part of this list every single time.
And so the inclusion of exercise number eight here was not meant to push anybody's buttons or ruffle
feathers. It's just simply to put an exercise in here that belongs on the list, and it's to Pushp
and see people might have a problem with this being on the list, especially coming from me
because I have a habit of reading video titles without actually watching the video. Pushups
are killing your gains, but not really, if you do the right kind. You see, what I'm talking about is
find the right difficulty level of the Pushup. You see, if you're looking for hypertrophy gains from
the exercise, which many are, then you need to be able to find an exercise variation that actually
challenges you. And if you're just doing Knee Pushups when you can handle much more or if you're
just doing regular Pushups, when you knock out 30, 40 or 50 of them in a set, it's time to up the
ante, raise the stakes, introduce a new challenge for yourself. And there's no easier opportunity to
do it than with a Pushup because the variability of this exercise is off the charts. That being
said, because of this versatility, I'm able to program it into every single program I do.
We can either do it as one of the harder variations of the Pushup, or we can use one
of the less typical variations on the back end of a drop set to keep the intensity going. The
context in the application, as always, matters, but it's important to not sleep on the exercise
because it has the ability to be a really powerful addition to every single workout that you do.
So whenever we put together an exercise list like this, it's important to not only look at
the exercise selections alone, but to look at how they complement each other. And when we're
talking about pressing exercises, we've hit our horizontal press option. But what about
our vertical plane? Because that's important, too. And for me, there's no other option than
the Overhead Press. Now I did it. The Overhead Press can not only be one of the most effective
strength building exercises in the vertical plane, but it could also introduce some pain
into a shoulder that's actually already having a hard time with any overhead pressing movement.
And that's because impingement or a lack of shoulder stability can come back to bite
you pretty quickly whenever you try to raise your arms up overhead and don't have the mobility to do
it. But an instance like this, I don't recommend abandoning the exercise entirely. I said there's
always a way, just like there was with the Bench Press. And here all you have to do is go
one dumbbell at a time. And the advantage here is that you have a better chance to stack your joints
more appropriately with your wrist, over your elbow, over your shoulder, which will oftentimes
introduce the stability that you're lacking. That makes this exercise once again a pain free option
and something that belongs in your program. But let's say you don't have any issues at all.
Again, you're not limited to just a strict overhead press. You can do something much more
explosive, like a push press where your lower body gets involved or simply had a preference
or a desire for change. You can easily swap out the barbell for a pair of dumbbells,
regardless of what you do choose. Just make sure you choose one of them when you're
putting together your list for the exercises that are going to appear in your program.
Which brings us to exercise number 10, which is now the dedicated arm exercise portion
of our list. And who knew an arm exercise on Jeff Cavaliere s list? Well, guess what,
guys a lot of us are in the same boat. We want to see some additional gains on our arms that
comes independent of the accessory role that they play in all these bigger compound lifts.
So for that, I'm going right for the triceps now, the bigger part of our arm, and we're
talking about the Line Tricep Extension. And the thing that I love about this exercise
is it puts that all important long head the meatiest portion of our triceps,
basically two thirds of the two thirds of the size of our arm on a great amount of stretch on every
single repetition. If you do this appropriately, the arms will be held back overhead and never
really positioned back in full vertical position, because that's just going to take some of the
stress off of the triceps. When we're trying to build them that's not what we want to do.
Now, of course, we have some variations here as well. If you can't handle the maximal overhead
stretch that comes from the first variation of the exercise, you can simply shorten that
a little bit and take it down to a Skull Crusher once again, even in the finished position. Here,
you want to make sure you have a slightly less than vertical position on the arms at the top to
make sure you keep the stress on the triceps. And of course, you can decrease that intense stretch
a little bit more by opting for something more like a JM Press, no less difficult, you're going
to be able to actually handle more load here, but we're not getting that overhead stretch as much,
but we're still capable of hitting the medial lateral heads to a high degree.
Remember, if bigger arm size is something that you desire, then you're going to have to find a
way to program a direct exercise for your arms in your list. This is my selection for triceps.
So when you look at round out that arm development and I mean literally round it out, now we're going
to talk about bicep exercises because one of them should be in your program somewhere. And for me,
it doesn't have to be complicated as a matter of fact when it comes to bicep training there really
is nothing complicated because we're talking about a simple hinge joint up and down. For me,
the Barbell Curl is going to be my choice. Now, I like the exercise with a barbell because
I can load the exercise up a little bit heavier than usual, and I get the benefits of the cheat
rep option where I can load up the weight and take advantage of that heavy, eccentric overload,
which I believe is the number one stimulus that has led to the biceps growth that I have.
That being said, you don't always have to use a barbell. You can simply switch it out
for some dumbbells or maybe even introduce a different piece of equipment like a band.
And the benefit of the band is that it's going to change the strength curve up for you. So
instead of always having the peak tension in the middle portion of the exercise, the band
is going to max out as tension at the top part of the exercise when the band is most stretched.
If you want to get the benefits of all of it guys, maybe try introducing the combination of a band
and a dumbbell together, we're going to get a more consistent tension experience in the middle and at
the end of the exercise. Regardless of which variation you choose, guys remember to choose
one of them because when his bicep size you're after, the compound lifts alone are not going
to get it done. You're going to need to select a dedicated bicep exercise for best results.
And last but certainly not least when it comes to the exercise selection guys are going to have to
have some variation of a Barbell Row in your plan. And the reason for that is we're going back to
the planes of motion here, and the pull up was addressing our vertical pulling needs that Barbell
Row is going to take us to the Promised Land when we're looking to address our horizontal pulling
needs. And once again, the variation here matters less than the movement pattern itself. The row
demands that we actually have a good control of that hinge movement again, that we talked about
earlier in the video because you need to be able to set your hips backwards to prevent yourself
from just simply leaning forward, which is going to place excessive stress on your back.
And exercise variations are possible here, too, is something I call the Dead Row,
where I get to load up more weight on the bar and get the hinge benefits of the deadlift in
the early portion of the exercise and continue it with an explosive variation of the row. However,
again, you perform the row, make sure you have at least one of them in your program here if
you want to have a well-rounded program with the right exercises in place.
And so there you have it, guys 12 exercises that everyone should have in their programs if they're
physically capable of doing them. And again, even in the cases where you have some limitations,
it doesn't mean that you get to skip the exercise entirely. Hopefully, in this video, I provided
you with some alternatives that are going to make these exercises possible once again.
If you're looking for programs guys, where we include all of these exercises in everything we
do, including in our brand new All American Muscle Program, you can find it over at Althenex.com. If
you found the video helpful, make sure you leave your comments and thumbs up below. Let me know
what else I can cover, I'll do my best to do that for you in the days and weeks ahead. And finally,
if you haven't done so, make sure you click, subscribe and turn on your notifications
so you never miss a new video when we put one out. All right guys, see you soon.