The Best Lifts for Building Muscle

The Best Lifts for Building Muscle

One of the most common questions we get asked is, “What exercise is best to grow my small chest (or arms, shoulders, abs, etc)?” It’s a surprisingly large question, since there are so many things to consider. There are a ton of studies looking into the best exercises for activating certain muscle groups, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

So we’ve put together a guide showing you the best exercises for each muscle group. These exercises represent your best chance of safely building muscle as rapidly as possible for your experience level. We’ve selected these exercises based on a few factors: muscle activation, efficiency, learning curve, risk:reward ratio, etc.

Before we get to the infographic, we’ll break down how we went about selecting these exercises by explaining a few of the things we considered:

Experience level is a really important factor. Let’s say you’re trying to build up the beastliest shoulders possible. Just like an advanced lifter, you’d want to optimize the “three M’s of muscle” (mechanical tension, metabolic stress, muscle damage) in all of the muscle fibres in your shoulders (study). This makes a case for building a workout program around heavy compound lifts done through a large range of motion. The best study to date found that the dumbbell overhead press better stimulates your shoulder muscles than barbell overhead presses, military presses, seated dumbbell presses, etc (study). Bret Contreras even found that overhead pressing also better activated core and oblique muscles than squats and deadlifts. So it would make sense that this would be the best lift for you to choose, right?

Maybe not.

To reap the rewards of that advanced lift you need solid shoulder strength, stability and mobility. If you’re a lanky limbed and lanky torsoed beginner with iffy posture and shoulder mobility, you should use an easier, lighter and safer exercise to stimulate growth in your shoulders. Something like a lateral raise. Otherwise you’ll risk injuring your shoulders and lower back without even properly stimulating the muscles you’re trying to grow.

We hope that helps!

Note: We made the image for our new Pinterest page. If you have Pinterest, it’d be great if you followed us. We’ll be posting a ton of cool new ectomorph muscle-building graphics there over the next few months ��

Original article and pictures take bonytobeastly.com site