Consider one of the most correct and effective training systems - the use of the best barbell exercises "of all times and peoples" in your training.
These exercises were performed in the early days of bodybuilding and strength training, as well as during the golden era. They give strength, power, muscle mass, functionality. They are suitable, or rather they are necessary for all athletes who are interested in the result.
They are technically complex (compared to isolated and some basic ones), brutal but very effective.
Here are ten of my favorite exercises:
1. Deadlift
Few exercises can claim to work as many muscle groups as the deadlift. The neck, trapezium, entire back region, glutes, hamstrings, quads, biceps and forearms, as well as the abdominal muscles as stabilizers, are what are involved in the deadlift. According to the topography of human strength distribution, the deadlift is the best measure of overall strength.
By the way, fans of the completely artificially invented so-called. “functional” training (as if there were “non-functional training!”), you need to understand that the deadlift simulates almost daily situations that develop in life when we bend over and pick up some kind of object. It is more functional than all the things that cloud the brains of naive visitors to today's fitness centers. Many of the champions of past years answered with confidence that if they had a chance to choose only one exercise for training, then it would be the deadlift.
Of course, all its advantages are manifested only with the most reliable mastering of the correct technique.
2. Barbell squat
In those days, he was called "the king of all muscle-building exercises," and with good reason. At the same time, it was about a full, below the parallel to the floor position of the hips, squats “on the floor”. This is a borrowing from weightlifting. If you can't squat below parallel, then it's not a squat, said serious athletes. Like the deadlift, the squat engages a huge percentage of muscle mass in the work and reliably stimulates the release of anabolic hormones such as testosterone and somatotropin.
For reliability and insurance, the champions of past years performed it in a power rack.
3. Pull-ups on the bar with weight
Few exercises for the upper half of the body can boast such a complex effect as this exercise. In those days, it was called the "upper body squat." From the trapezius to the abdominal muscles, it includes almost all the muscles of the torso. In this, pull-ups reliably win competitions with pull-ups on blocks or lever simulators.
The result is a more active stimulation of muscle mass growth
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4. Push-ups on bars with weight
A very important exercise, in terms of the degree of inclusion of the muscles of the upper half of the body is not inferior to the bench press, it also contributes to the growth of strength and muscle mass. Athletes have been known to build their triceps, anterior deltoids, and excellent “short-cut” lower pectoral attachments with only weighted bar push-ups. It was carried out with pleasure by the same Arnold. There were also serious records in this exercise.
There are opinions of sports scientists that exercises in which you work with your own body weight plus additional weights have more neuromuscular stimulation.
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5. Lifting the bar to the chest from the hang and press overhead
You will not find another exercise so close to classic weightlifting. It loads the calves, hamstrings, glutes, quadriceps, spinal erectors. Traps, deltoids, biceps, triceps and forearms, abdominal muscles as stabilizers. Did I miss anything? It is indispensable for the development of the so-called. "explosive power". All bodybuilders of the past who were fans of "powerful bodybuilding" performed it in one variation or another.
Just like the deadlift, it could be a worthy choice if you had to limit yourself to just one exercise.
6. Bench Press
There have never been questions and never will be. Building mass and strength in the upper body is unthinkable without this exercise. Large working weights and maximum inclusion of large muscle groups are the details of this wonderful exercise. Of course, later it became one of the exercises of power triathlon, and is a true test of the strength of the upper body.
7. Bench press from the chest while standing
Sometimes in the modern press this exercise is called the "military press". This is a literal interlinear translation from English. In fact, the translation “military standing bench press” would be more accurate, because the rules for this bench press prescribed strict execution without tilting the torso back.
The name "front press" is also occasionally encountered, and long before the invention of the bench press, it was once the "number one" measure of upper body strength. In even more distant times, almost all exercises with weights were performed only while standing. As soon as the bench press entered the arsenal of bodybuilding and powerlifting, the bench press took an honorable second place in the bench press exercises.
But this does not detract from its merits as an excellent builder of the mass of the deltoids, the strength of the triceps. Later, the bench press was removed from the competitive threesome of weightlifting, variations of the bench press from the chest and from behind the head appeared.
8. Bent over row
It is difficult to find a more adequate exercise for the development of the upper back and latissimus dorsi. It can be performed with a wide and narrow grip, a grip from below and from above, to the hip joint, to the cut of the pectoral muscles, with a straight or curved neck, and so on. In almost all variations, it is able to perfectly work out the upper back, develop strength and build muscle mass.
9. Forward bends with a barbell on the back
It is also called Good Moning. This exercise is rarely used in modern bodybuilding programs, but before it was quite popular in any strength and mass-gaining program. This is rough and tough work. But she gave excellent results.
10. Push-ups from the floor.
Strange as it may seem, before this was an exercise not for endurance and not for the number of times, but for strength, with the only difference being that it was performed with weights on the back. At the same time, its advantages were almost the same as those of the bench press that appeared later. There are countless variations of push-ups: narrow support, wide support, emphasis with fingers forward, emphasis with fingers inward, emphasis with legs raised to the dais.
You have just seen the most important exercises of the iron sport, its foundation. All of them are basic, of course, basic, remarkably developing large arrays of muscles and tendons.
These are the best exercises of the golden era of bodybuilding, they were the most effective and necessary then, they are necessary now ...
It has been proven for a long time by many athletes, years of training, there is nothing secret, here they are, the foundation of the iron sport in general. These are truly the best exercises for building strength and muscle mass!
Learn the correct technique, progress in these exercises and the result is guaranteed. You can perform them in the hall, garage, basement, at home.
They do not require a lot of space and cost, but they require perseverance and adherence to clear basic training principles.
