5 Favorite Exercises

I've decided to share with you the 5 exercises I believe to be the most crucial in developing overall fitness. Every person entering the gym should know the very basic form and technique of each of these movements before building more complex routines. We too often jump ahead of ourselves and try to build a house before we poured the foundation. Each exercises includes an accompanying link with a video of various progressions you can use to perform on each exercise. Always begin with the easiest variation and move to the hardest. Push Ups: Those who train with me know I love the push-up. This is one of the most complete upper body exercises. The reason I prefer push-ups to most other pushing movements is that they develop shoulder, core and hip stabilization while building strength in the pecs, triceps, shoulders and lats. Unlike a bench press, you are forced to engage your stomach and shoulder blades which will help prevent many of the common injuries at the shoulder joint and lower back. Dead Lifts: The name alone sounds frightening, however a dead lift is one of the best exercises for developing your core back. This lift emulates one of the tasks our body was built to perform, which is lifting an object from the ground to waist level. When practiced correctly, the dead lift choreographs your hamstrings, glutes and low back muscles to fire in the proper order so that you do not strain your lumbar (lower) spine when picking stuff up. Overhead Squats: While the Dead Lift is a more functional sequence of muscle activation, the Overhead Squat is great exercise to uncover muscle tightness throughout the entire body. On your first repetition you will quickly see how tight your shoulders, low back, hamstrings and glutes really are! Each of these tight areas can then be improved through active stretching, strengthening and soft tissue work (massage, foam roller, stick). Recline Pulls: This is the opposite exercise of the push-up. Just like the push-up, reclined pulls address shoulder, core and hip stability, but also works on strength of the upper body pulling muscles (biceps, traps, lats). Most novice workouts include more pushing than pulling movements when in fact our bodies really need more pulling. Pulls help improve our back support, posture and help combat the dysfunction we acquire from seated work. Bridging: We've all heard of the need to build a solid core, but what is the core doing for us? First of all, it serves to protect the lower spine from damaging amounts of flexing and bending. Secondly, a strong core allows us to transfer the strength and power from the muscles of our arms and legs into other objects (lifting and locomotion). When our core is weak we lose functional strength. Bridging is the first step in building stability and activating the core. While crunching and leg raises work to build up abdominal muscle, these movements teach our trunk to flex and extend which is not what we want during structural and overhead lifts. As you've probably noticed, all of these lifts are performed with body weight. My belief is that if you cannot effectively move your own body around, you have no business working with weights. If you have any questions on how to perform these exercises or would like an evaluation of your form, please email Cheston.bogue@gmail.com