7 Gym Moves You Need to Master

In order to get really good at getting stronger and building muscle, you have to develop a certain type of mastery. Take Arnold for example. He wanted to get so good at an exercise that he could feel the blood pull right into the muscle that he was working and envision it changing shape with each rep. The mind-muscle connection is a real thing and vital to anyone’s gains but won’t be mastered if you do not hammer down on the basics over and over again. And then some more.

The barbell squat, conventional deadlift and bench press are the three best strength and mass builders on the planet. No breaking news there. But do we jump to master these Big 3 too soon before we build a solid foundation?

The seven moves that follow here will not only help you gain some serious muscle but regardless of where you are, they will as help you take your training to the next level. Some moves will also be great assistance exercises down the road and be staples in your programs for years to come. It is all about mastering the pattern of movement, and then muscles will come.

The best squatting movements for building serious mass and strength are the barbell back squat and front squat – no shocker there. The problem with these two movements, contrary to popular belief, is that they are intricate and technically demanding. Many athletes simply grab a bar and squat without knowing how to do it well, which is a quick way to get hurt or at the very least, to ensure zero progress.

This is why the goblet squat, where you hold a dumbbell or kettlebell against your chest, is a great bridge to a better squat. You need to teach your body how to engage your core and upper back to help keep a good, upright, upper body posture. Far too many lifters lean too far forward at the waist, rounding their back, pulling their heels off the floor and driving the knees forward. The goblet also teaches you how to achieve great depth on the squat while driving your knees out and busting out of the hole. Those who partial squat their whole lives will only end up with partial gains. Once you can master this movement with good posture and depth, it’s time to move onward and upward.

The goblet squat is a great way to maintain and improve the pattern, but it can be a great muscle builder. A good approach for the goblet squat is to aim for 15-25 total reps with a moderate load at the beginning of a leg day to to prime the movement and the nervous system for the heavier loads to come. It can also be used at the end of a workout for higher reps as a leg finisher. The quads respond to the occasional high rep set, so try 1-2 sets of 30 reps to finish them off.

This is another great exercise that gets overlooked in favor of the conventional deadlift but the two have distinct goals and execution. And when people do come around to the RDL, they tend to go heavy right out of the gate, as they might with traditional deads. But they do this without even knowing how to perform a proper hip hinge with load. This leaves people with sore low backs and discourages them from trying them again. Try mastering the Romanian deadlift first and then move onto the conventional ones.

Perfect hinge practice will lead to greater poundages on traditional deads. Athletes need to be able to hinge forward at the hips while keeping the glutes in a mechanically strong position. This calls for a flat (or slightly arched) back and a relatively narrow foot spacing (hip width is ideal). And unlike the closely-related stiff-legged deadlift, the RDL requires you to keep the bar close to your body the whole time.

RDLs, which mainly target the glute-ham tie-in and back erectors, are a perfect compliment to a squat day. After some heavy quad work, balance out the lower-body with 3-5 sets of 5-10 reps of Romanians. The fast-twitch laden hamstrings respond remarkably well to heavy weight, low reps and perfect form, so you don't need a ton of reps per set.

Our allegiance to the bench press shall never be broken! But the main pushing exercise that gets overlooked for building upper body booyah is the overhead press. This exercises is burdened by the stigma that anyone with bad shoulders shouldn’t do it. This may be true, so why don’t we put a stop to this by learning it before the bench press? Because many of us hammer out a ton of chest exercises in any given week, our shoulders begin to get unbalanced – front delt favored – which can cause injury. So we need to maintain both mobility and balance in the shoulder area.

The overhead press is best done on a dedicated shoulder day when you are fresh. Putting it on a chest day or pairing it with another bodypart where it doesn’t come first will absolutely compromise your body’s ability to build the proper movement pattern. Focus on pressing the weight absolute vertical, in line with your body and ears, all the way to full extension overhead. The standing version requires greater contribution from your core musculature, as well as proper breathing – a deep inhale as you lower the weights and a steady exhale as you pass the midway point of the move. Dumbbells are an ideal refresher for overhead press deficient athletes because it allows you to move the weight through your body’s natural range of motion. The barbell requires you to clear your chin and nose and, if you haven’t built the requisite core strength, you can end up putting your shoulders and lower back into compromised positions.

Utilize it as the first exercise of the day with low reps to build strength. Try 3-5 sets of 4-8 reps hits the sweet spot but don’t go so heavy that you cannot perform each rep with picture perfect form under control.

When it comes to relative upper-body strength, the pullup is the “king” of upper-body exercises. In every training arena, from bodybuilding to powerlifting, Olympic lifting to CrossFit, everyone can agree that pullups should be somewhere in the program. The reason for this is that is can be utilized in a variety of ways to build both muscle and strength in a lot of areas of the body. Simply learning how to pull yourself up onto something is essential for human movement and survival.

A variety of grips can be used to build maximum strength but two to master would include the underhand grip, or chinup, which requires more biceps strength and the overhand version, which focuses on your upper, outer lats. Reps should be performed with an aggressive, positive pull followed by a slow, controlled descent.

Pullups can be added almost anywhere in a program but including them near the beginning of a workout works best because of the high strength demand. To target a variety of muscle fibers, you should try alternating your rep ranges either in a single workout or from week to week. Perform 3-4 sets of 8-15 reps one day of the week and 4-5 heavy sets of three on another day of the week for best results.

If you asked me 8-10 years ago when I was an avid, competitive bodybuilder that carrying a bunch of weight around for distance and time would help me build muscle, I would have called you crazy. I thought that was just for guys on the World Strongest Man shows late night on ESPN. Just like every meathead, I loved watching those events but I failed to see the value for other training goals.

Fast-forward to present day and loaded carries of all kinds are fitness gospel – not fading fad. That’s because they increase functional strength that transfers to real life and sport and build a ton of brute strength and rugged muscle. Don’t believe me? Try picking up a set of 100-pound dumbbells and walking around the gym for 60 seconds. This is one of those cases where if it hurts, it works.

Farmer’s walks are best done as a finisher on any training day, or as a stand-alone workout for high volume. As a finisher, I suggest two sets of 40-60 meters with a ton of weight. For a stand-alone workout, perform as many sets as you can in 20-minutes with a load you can carry for 75-meters but instead only carry it 50-meters each set.

The walking lunge is a fantastic exercise with amazing benefits for a wide range of athletes. Yes, there are so many people using too much weight with horrible range of motion that its effectiveness has been watered down. If you perform a walking lunge and your knee does not hit the ground, it is not a walking lunge. In order for it to translate to athletic performance, reduce the risk of injury and build muscle, you have to perform it with a full range of motion. If performed correctly, the walking lunge can be the perfect compliment to any athlete’s lower-body training arsenal. They are also a basic form of human movement and athletic performance.

If you are a newbie, perform these with no load as a warm-up exercise. On each rep take a long enough stride that your front knee and back knee both hit 90-degree angles and yes, that back knee should kiss the ground. Step to short and you strain the front knee. Step too long and you overstretch your rear hip flexor and the glute of your lead foot. Focus on “exploding” through the front foot to properly engage the glutes as you come up and forward. Once you grasp these basic tenets, you can start performing them with heavier weight and greater volume. And they’re not just for quads. One study showed that lunges are actually better for improving hamstring strength, provided of course that you achieve a good, glute-ham stretching range of motion on each rep.

Once you get the hang of proper stride length and depth, perform three sets of 8-10 reps each leg at the end of a leg routine.

When you look at most track athletes what do you see? The sprinters are shredded to the bone and have a respectable amount of muscle. Same goes for the throwers and the jumpers. The repeated bouts of jumping and sprinting have caused the fast-twitch muscle fibers to adapt and grow. That’s because jumping is an essential human movement. It helps improve performance, explosive power, builds muscle and reduces the risk of injury.

Jumping for distance will not only ignite your fast-twitch muscle fibers and prime your central nervous system for explosive movement but it will train your muscles and CNS to fire better when you’re under the barbell at the squat rack, too.

To do it right, stand behind a mark on the ground with your feet slightly apart in an athletic stance. Use a two-foot take off, swinging the arms back and bending the knees to provide a forward drive. Make sure to hinge forward with good posture to activate the posterior chain (hamstrings and glutes) as well as the quadriceps. To get the most out of this exercise, make sure to explode into triple extension at the ankles, knees, and hips, with an aggressive forward arm swing. At the end of the jump quickly flex the hips, knees, and ankle joints while trying to land as softly as possible in a balanced and athletic position.

Perform 2-4 sets of 2-4 reps of broad jumps before any workout.