The 5 Most Important Exercises

For each of these exercises, proper technique is absolutely vital! If you do them right, you’ll build an extraordinary amount of functional strength. If you do them wrong, your chances of injuring yourself go through the roof! I’ll even go so far to say that if you’re not 100% committed to proper technique, don’t even do these exercises….just stick to the machines, with everyone else who doesn’t know what they’re doing!

So here they are:

1) Squat (body weight)
Stand with your feet facing forward, shoulder with apart, and your knees slightly bent. Slowly squat, bending your knees and keeping your feet straight. Keep chest up, squeeze your butt muscles, press through your heels and fully extend your legs.
Key point – You want to feel like your glutes are doing 90% of the work.

2) Dead lift (body weight)
With your feet shoulder width apart and a slight bend in your knees, bend over so your back is flat and parallel to the ground. Stick your butt out so that you feel a stretch in your hamstrings. If you’re doing this right you should feel almost all of the tension in your hamstrings and almost no tension in your back. Stand up, using your hamstrings and glutes.

3) Push up
Start in push up position with your hands slightly more than shoulder width apart. Make sure that your head, shoulders, hips, knees, and ankles are all in a straight line. Slowly lower your chest to the ground, pinching your shoulder blades together, maintaining perfect alignment. Press your body back up into push up position.

4) Bent over row
Stand on top of your resistance band with your feet pointed straight ahead and draw in your navel. Bend at your waist until your chest is at a 45 degree angle to the ground. Extend your arms and let them hang in front of your body, grabbing an end of the exercise band with each hand. In a rowing motion, bring your thumbs up toward your armpits. Contract your shoulder blades together and be careful not to arch your back. Return your arms to the starting position and repeat.

5) Shoulder press
Stand on top of your resistance band with your feet pointed straight ahead and your hands holding the resistance band at shoulder level. Make sure that your shoulders are not hunched forward and that your head, shoulders, hips, knees, and ankles are all in a straight line. Press your hands over your head, lower, and repeat.
Each of these exercises can be modified to meet your training goals. If your goal is to develop stability, you could do 1-arm or 1-leg variations of these exercises. To build strength, you could increase the resistance. That being said, don’t make any progressions until you’ve developed flawless technique.