Are Compound Movements The Best Muscle Building Exercises?

If you want access to the latest fitness information, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

If your goal is to select the best muscle building exercises from the hundreds of different weight training exercises that are popular, it can be a difficult task to narrow the list down to a reasonable number of only the best exercises. What you find with most of the exercises that are making the rounds in the gyms these days, is that each exercise is either a derivative of one of the basic bodybuilding exercises or a unique movement designed to target a individual body part. If your goal is to build muscle mass fast, then it's important that you put together a short and manageable list of the free weights exercises that have been proven to work.

Sure it's true that almost any body building exercise will stimulate muscle growth up to a certain point; there is one type of weight training that has managed to stick around for a long time, compound exercises. While certainly not too exciting compound exercises are the most basic free weight exercises around and are very effective at helping you gain muscle mass and increase your strength levels simultaneously.

The beauty of free weight compound exercises lies in the fact that they allow you to train with heavy weights through a complete range of motion that typically includes multiple body parts and multiple joints.  This allows you to stimulate muscle growth in more than one muscle by performing only one exercise. If you stick with these types of free weights exercises you're all but guaranteed to get the most out of your time in the gym.

That said, there are a ton of free weight compound exercises and variations of those exercises, so which ones are the best for inducing muscle growth?  As with anything in the bodybuilding and fitness realm, the specific exercises that you decide to incorporate into your workouts will be based completely upon your preferences and goals.  What works well for you may not work at all for me, so take the time to select the best muscle building exercises for you!

Listed below is my go-to list of the most effective body building exercises. These are the exercises that make up about 98% of all of my bodybuilding workouts. While basic, focusing on these muscle building exercises most of the time allows me to continue to enjoy increases in my strength and muscle growth in a very reasonable amount of time.

The Best Bodybuilding Exercises

• Barbell Squat
• Lunges (Barbell or Dumbbell)
• Weighted Step Ups
• Dead lift
• Stiff Legged Dead lift
• Barbell Rows
• Dumbbell Rows
• Pull-ups
• Lying Triceps Press
• Overhead Triceps Extensions
• Barbell Curls
• Alternating Dumbbell Curls
• Bench Press (Barbell or Dumbbell)
• Incline Press (Barbell or Dumbbell)
• Standing Barbell Shoulder Press
• Seated DB Shoulder Press
• Barbell Shrugs

You probably noticed that a few of these exercises are not really compound movements.  In order to target certain muscle groups (like your biceps and triceps), you will need to mix in some isolation movements.  Whenever I need to work any isolation exercises into my workouts, I always try to choose the ones that allow me to train with the heaviest possible weight. Any exercise that restricts my range of motion too much will not allow me to train heavy enough.

Stop overloading your workouts with less effective isolation exercises and start getting the most out of your time in the gym. If you mix in these basic yet effective muscle building exercises into your training sessions and put a lot of effort into training as intensely as possible, you'll begin to build muscle mass and increase your strength quicker than you ever thought possible.