My news feed is full of clips of fit guys and girls demonstrating all manner of creative activities involving some form of resistance, designed to be, in some way, the best method for targeting a specific area, muscle group, body part—whatever. For women, it’s 98% aimed at their legs and glutes. Guys, on the other hand, have made skipping leg day a cliché. Instead, they employ all kinds of varied movements, with or without resistance, for some arbitrary number of reps that fit into yet another arbitrary upper-body program. It all seems way too contrived and needlessly complicated.
Weightlifting is pretty easy in concept—you lift something heavy and put it back down, under control, and do it repetitively. The difficulty lies in the endless commitment to live, eat, and train like an athlete, with very little to no instant gratification to be had for your effort. And, really, unless you’ve built a conditioned, muscular physique, no one can truly imagine how difficult it is. Look around you. How many fit, lean, muscular people do you see? Even in a gym, the answer could be none!
Why Are Basic Compound Exercises Better Than Exercise Variations for Muscle Growth?
The fitness influencers of today, by default, have to create a point of difference and a dependency—they need you to think they are the coolest and most sensible trainer out there and that you depend on them. You need them. Like, without them and their content, you could never achieve your fitness goal. It’s amazing how many weak people you see in a gym these days. But it’s true: these guys have disciples who will follow their Messiah to the ends of the earth.
And while I suppose the tribal element of it is appealing to that generation, the purpose of these little demonstrations is not to help you build any muscle. The exercise/workout is being demonstrated for clicks. Not a single person has built a 21-inch arm following Joey Matteratz on Instagram. It takes years to build such an appendage; Joey needs clicks today. So he posts another video sporting an arm he already built.
After a week, he’s going to run out of rudimentary (but effective) basic movements. Then what?
The variations.
What Is the Most Effective 5-Day Workout Split for Building Lean Mass?
And this is where the whole thing falls apart, injuries rack up, arguments ensue, people start taking sides—and no one grows any muscle. It’s all nuts.
The reality is this: your body doesn’t know from curls with an EZ-curl bar, something with a Bosu ball, or a rubber-band scheme you got from some guy on YouTube. All it knows is tension and resistance. However you get to your desired point of exhaustion is irrelevant. The point is that you get there. Mother Nature will take care of the rest while you sleep.
So, for the beginner, you have to clean your slate of all the online nonsense. In reality, your exercise options are rather limited, because what you need in the beginning is a foundation. You build a foundation with foundational exercises—heavy, controlled, strict compound movements for five or six sets per exercise, hitting your whole body once a week:
- Squats/leg press
- Bench press at varying angles
- Pull-ups/chin-ups
- Deadlifts
- Rows
- Seated overhead press
- Side lateral raises
- Dips/close-grip bench press
- Barbell curls
That’s all you need. Spread over five days, a sample workout looks like this:
Monday — Chest
- Flat bench press
- Incline bench press
- Decline bench press
Tuesday — Back
- Pull-ups
- Chin-ups
- Seated rows
Wednesday — Legs
- Squats or leg press
- Deadlifts
Thursday — Shoulders
- Seated overhead press
- Side lateral raises
Friday — Arms
Take the weekend off and hit it again Monday. Do that every week for three years…
Yeah, that’s why no one is jacked. Man or woman. Not too many people want to do that. But a few do. And you can easily spot them.
Keep it simple.