The Big 5 for Physique

All of us want to look good. Today I am going to share with you my top five movements to never miss in the pursuit of improving your physique, but there are a few things to understand going into this list. First, I went with movements the skewed total body. After all, a bicep curl will get your biceps bigger but nothing else so it didn’t make the list. We all have limited time so I went with movements that target global hypertrophy, that is the effect of increasing lead body mass in multiple places.

Axial Loading Family
The first two fall into the category of “axial loading”, which is basically a movement where the weight is moved in a vertical fashion. The pro of axial loading is that it challenges the entire body through the core so they are incredibly effective. This is the positive stress. The downside of axial loading is they have the ability to beat you up if you always go super heavy all the time.

1. The Back Squat

2. The Deadlift

While the back squat and deadlift are categorized as lower body movements, that’s a bit of a misnomer since they each tax the total body substantially. The deadlift runs through the grip so we get a lot of arm and upper back work, while the squat with tax the core and arms isometrically since they are gripping and stabilizing the barbell across our back. Both of these are excellent movements for physique and should be performed regularly in the appropriate muscle building ranges.

Ballistic Movements

3. The Kettlebell Swing

The kettlebell swing is excellent at developing muscle because of it’s focus on the entire posterior chain, which happens to contain some of the biggest muscles in our our body (glutes, hams, lats). We categorize this as a ballistic movement because it involves maximum velocities of muscle contraction, by nature it provides a nice alternative stimulus to some of the slower, axial loaded lifts above.

The kettlebell swing could single-handedly keep one strong and fit indefinitely.

Unilateral Movements

4. The DB Row

I opted to include the DB row over the pull-up because frankly, it’s way better at developing the physique. The pull-up is outstanding but it needs to be performed with very, very strict adherence to the lats, otherwise it becomes a bicep focused movement and it’s really easy for people to mess up in that regard. It’s also much harder to progressively overload over time. I chose the DB row over the barbell row because it’s much friendlier on the spine, and also has the unilateral component of creating balance.

Performed properly and the DB row will develop physique in the arms and back as well as any movement in our library.

5. The DB Lunge

Nothing is going to light up your glutes like the lunge, and I like the DB lunge over the barbell lunge here because we must grip the dumbbells, so naturally, we’re going to get much more work on the upper body than we would with our barbell, and we sacrifice very little in the form of lower body overload. It’s no secret that most things being equal, I prefer dumbbells to barbells in nearly every instance when it comes to building the physique.

Lists like this are fun but also a bit silly because by nature, they tend to be exclusive. After all, to suggest that the bench press, push press, front squat, clean, push-up or pull-up don’t develop your physique extremely effectively would be foolish. However, this list of five represents my personal favorites for the amount of return you get on your investment and for the little nuances of each that I’ve outlined.

Enjoy ’em.

-Dave