Introduction

After over 10 years of training and lifting weights, I consistently return to this exercise. It’s a quick, full-body workout that targets every muscle, delivering the best results in the shortest amount of time. But the key is to choose the right exercises and modify them based on your body type, experience level, and your goals.

Now, let’s walk through six exercises step by step. There are six main exercises in total, and we’ll use a bonus exercise to target your specific weak spots. But let’s start with a unique exercise. This one has been shown to build your entire chest just like the flat press, but it comes with the bonus of building your upper chest and even strengthening your shoulders and triceps.

There are six main exercises in total

• Low Incline Dumbbell Press
• Lower Body Cheat Code
• Back Width
• Hamstrings/Glutes
• Back Thickening
• Shoulders

Exercise 2 (Chest/Shoulders/Tris)

Low Incline Dumbbell Press

But the key to this exercise is to adjust the incline based on your body type. And to find the perfect incline for you and your body, all you need is a wall and your phone. You’ll place your phone in the middle of your chest like this. If it’s pointing straight up, then your sternum is flat, like mine. And in this case, it’s very easy to influence your shoulder movement. So in this case, you want to use a low bend, not a notch up from the bottom. But if you do this test and your phone goes back like this, then that means your sternum is erect. In this case, you want to use a high bend, two notches up from the bottom. Once you’ve set your bend, you need to avoid the most common mistake that almost everyone makes. That’s pushing into a T-shape. That limits how deep you can go and also increases the risk of shoulder injury. Instead, I want you to pull your shoulders into an arrow shape. That gives you a deep chest stretch and is much safer for your shoulders.

Now, if you’re a beginner, it’s going to feel a little shaky at first. That’s okay. So I recommend using higher reps, 10 to 15 times per set, just to practice the skill of the movement. And if you’re a woman, you actually have a unique advantage over men. You can tolerate higher reps better than us, so I would recommend using higher reps of 10 to 15 per set. Now, as you get better, I would suggest looking at this as a way to build strength, go heavier, and reduce the reps to six to eight per set. Okay, now that we’ve completed the first upper-body exercise,

Exercise 2 (Legs)

Lower Body Cheat Code

Now it’s time to move on to the lower-body cheat code. An exercise that has been shown to build your glutes just as much as it does. Strengthens your lower back just as much. Strengthens your quads just as much. It even builds your inner thighs just as much. But it does everything together. It’s the barbell squat. But before you add weight to the bar, I think the goblet squat is a hugely underrated exercise that everyone should be doing. So by holding the weight on your chest, it forces you to brace your core, which allows you to go deeper and much safer. And you can go surprisingly heavy with it. In fact, I would recommend sticking with it until you can do 50% of your body weight for 10 reps. If you weigh 160 pounds, that means 80-pound dumbbells.

Then, it’s much more convenient to start adding weight using a barbell. But as you get more advanced, you can start to personalize it based on which muscles you want to target the most. One way is to elevate your heels. This allows you to keep your torso straight, and you can drive your knees forward, working your quads more than your glutes or your lower back. But if you’re someone who wants to build your glutes more than your quads, a very easy way to do this is to grab a bench or box and place it behind you while you squat. You’ll push your hips back, your buttocks touching the bench, your shins vertical. This arm will hit your glutes more than your quads. But the most important part of the squat is adjusting your foot position based on your hip structure.

I’ve found that about half of the people I train prefer a stance that’s slightly wider than shoulder width and their toes pointed slightly outward. Whereas a quarter of people prefer a stance that’s hip-width and their toes pointed straight ahead. And the rest do best with their toes wide out. So try all three and stick with the one that feels most natural. But now it’s time to move on to the three exercises.

Exercise 3 (Back Width)

If you get really strong, your back will completely change. And honestly, it looks really cool. This is the pull-up. Now, let’s set some quick goals. So, if you can

This is for men

• Infant 0-1
• Average 2-5
• Ft 6-12
• Advanced 13-20
• Elite 21+

And here’s the equivalent for women

• Infant 0
• Average 1-3
• Ft 4-6
• Advanced 7-12
• Elite 13+

I can currently do 24 in a row. And I want you to comment below on how many you can do. But if you can’t do any yet, that’s okay. Do this exercise instead.

• Level One
• This is the inverted row
• Back Strength
• Core Strength

This will help build your back strength as well as your core strength. Work up to 15 rep sets. Once you can do that, you’re ready for pull-ups, but not overhand grip.

• Level 2
• Neutral Grip Pull-Ups

Start with a neutral grip. Most people get stronger using this grip. You can use a band or assisted machine at first if necessary, but the goal is to work your way up to 10 reps without assistance.

• Level 3
• Overhand Grip Pull-Ups
• 5-8 Hard Rep Sets

Then you’re ready for overhand grip. Expect your reps to drop by about half initially. That’s perfectly fine. Aim for a hard set of five to eight reps. But once you can do more than eight reps, you’ll want to start loading it up with weight. And again, go back to eight reps. And each time you can do more than eight reps, add a little more weight and repeat the process. Now, it’s time to move on to lower-body exercises.

4th Exercise (Hamstrings/Glutes)

Lower Body Exercise

This strengthens your lower back, makes your hamstrings bigger, and even protects you from injury. This is the Romanian deadlift. Unlike the squat, almost everyone performs it best with their feet hip-width apart and their toes pointed forward. And a quick way to test this is to jump, and if you want to work your hamstrings even more, keep your knees slightly straight. But once you get stronger with this movement, it becomes more convenient to use a barbell to add weight. But in this case, you want to avoid the most common mistake. You are using a type of movement that your body is not built for. Some people, they can go all the way to the floor. Others, like me, have to stop just below the knee. As long as your back is flat and you feel a stretch in your hamstrings, both are correct form.

I also like to use relatively low reps here:

• Romanian Deadlift
• Dumbbell: 10-15 reps per set
• Heavy Barbell: 6-10 reps per set

6 to 10% sets, because I think extra reps and heavy loads are really tiring on the body. Okay, but now it’s time to finish the back.

Exercise 5 (Back Thickening)

We’ve already trained some of the back muscles with pull-ups, but to really build thickness in your mid and upper back, you need to target the muscles between your shoulder blades. Most people neglect these muscles, which makes their backs look fland cannott’t support good posture. To fix this, we need to grab a lat pull-down bar with a wide overhand grip. Raise your legs. Brace your core and think of your arms as hooks. Pull your elbows back behind you in an arrow shape, squeezing your midback muscles. And as you pull, I want you to aim for your lower chest level. I like to use relatively light weights here for the higher reps, 10 to 15%, because I find it easier for other muscles to grab onto. But if you’re still having trouble feeling your back muscles working, start with your arms straight and practice opening your shoulder blades by sliding them forward and then squeezing them together. Once you can feel the engagement in your midback, keep the same motion and add a full row. And as you progress, you’ll have a way to do that drill to your advantage.

Advanced

• Full reps to failure
• 3-5 reps of shoulder presses

You want to do a normal set with full reps until you can’t do any more full reps. Next, do three to five shoulder presses to make sure your back muscles are actually pushing to failure. Okay. So, the last major exercise is going to hit the shoulders.

Exercise 6 (Shoulders)

And when most people think of the shoulders, they think of only three heads. But research has shown that the shoulders can be divided into up to seven different heads, which means you want to target them from different angles. And my favorite way to do this is a lateral raise superset. So you grab a pair of dumbbells, set up an incline bench, and first you lie on your back on the bench and raise your shoulders slightly forward in a Y shape. This will help build shoulder width by targeting the side of your shoulders and some of the fibers in front. Keep doing this until you reach failure. And then immediately reverse,

• Lateral Raise Superset
• Sitting Lateral Raise
• Chest-Dependent Rear Delt Flyes

Keep your chest on the bench, and now raise the weight to your sides and behind you a little bit. This will target the back of your shoulders a little more to help create the roundness and that 3D look. But if you’re a woman, it can be uncomfortable for your chest against the bench, so I recommend putting a hoodie or pad in between to create some space between the bench and the bench. But perhaps the most important part of this exercise is the weight you use. Don’t let your ego get the better of you. I can only use 25 pounds here, and that’s enough. Okay, so here are the six core exercises.

Now, we’re going to customize your workout based on what your body needs the most. So, I want you to choose one or two of the accessory exercises below. If you’re a beginner, I highly recommend adding a core exercise.

For Kids

• Dead Bugs

You flatten your lower back on the floor and slowly extend your opposite arm and leg. Building core strength here will immediately help with all the exercises we discussed earlier. But if you want to focus more on the glutes,

Glute Focused

• Hip Abduction

Then you’ll want to use a type of hip abduction. This will build the muscles that create the upper glute shelf that most people want but rarely train directly. Now, this next option, if you choose it, I respect you. It’s the calves. And in this case, the thing you want to remember is that many studies have shown that exercises where your legs are straight instead of sitting will grow them more. So stick to standing or leg press variations instead of sitting. Next, if you want a little more arm growth, I would recommend an arm superset. My favorite thing here

Arm Superset

• Incline Dumbbell Curl (Biceps)
• Overhead Extension (Triceps)

Do incline dumbbell curls. Go to failure and then immediately put your arms up. And this will help grow some of the triceps muscles that we haven’t hit yet from our other exercises. Another option if you’re someone who lacks upper back growth is to do a Kelso Shrug on an incline bench. You lean forward, straighten your arms, and push your shoulder blades up and in. And the last option, this is going to grow a muscle that I really think almost every advanced lifter is weak in. It’s this little strip of the upper chest right here. And to do this, you can use a cable fly or a pec deck. But instead of straightening your back, I want you to lean forward. This will shift the tension to the fibers of the upper chest. Video