The Essential Lifts of Strength Training
While there are many components to strength training, 3 of the main essentials are “show”, “performance”, and “”strength”. The “show” is how you look and perform on stage, how your physique shows up on a particular day. The “performance” is would have to do with posing and athleticism. And finally “strength” which allows you to lift heavier, breaking down more muscle fibers and building more mass.
These three elements should allow you to show up prepared for any contest or just look immaculate for the summer. Our team at Generation Iron has put together 3 exercises that we consider the 3 essentials of bodybuilding.
The 3 Essential Exercises
When people hear “3 essential exercises”, they immediately resort to the barbell squat, the barbell bench, and the deadlift. However, this is not necessarily what we are referring to.
The “Show”: Snatch-Grip High Pull
Just about every athlete wants to look big and muscular. Not only do you want the strength and athletic performance, but you want the sculpted mass look to boot; you want to look the part.
The snatch-grip high pull is the perfect exercise for that intimidating larger than life look of someone who has been strength training for a long time. This exercise targets the shoulder pad area of the delts, traps, and mid-back that give you that thickness in the upper body that you need.
For the high pull, focus on exploding upwards with the lower body and hips to create upward momentum. Then pull the barbell violently toward your neck – anywhere between the nipple line and neck constitutes a high pull. Keep the bar close and the elbows high.
Athleticism: Power Snatch From Hang
This is good for explosive movements, coordination, and full shoulder mobility. The power produced is also very high for this exercise. You get higher acceleration and rate of force development and peak velocity in the power snatch – all elements that are key to ultimate performance in explosive sports.
Step by step instructions provided in the video below.
Power: Deadlift
Now, this is one of the big three compound lifts, and we know this isn’t exactly the newest exercise, but if someone said it best…This exercise is still the best hands down for pure, raw strength.
No movement transfers better to strength than picking things up from the floor and carrying stuff with your hands, the two most important tasks in strongman competitions. It’s primitive, yet so true, “I lift things up, I put them down.”
But at this stage, you know everything about the deadlift, as there’s countless articles written about the benefits of this compound movement. What we will suggest is the Jean-Francois Caron method (Max out on rack deadlifts then 6 sets of 3 reps of floor deadlifts). He’s known for deadlifting over 900 lbs for reps, so I’d take note.
Wrap Up
There you have it, these 3 exercises will help you develop three very important components to your strength training routine. If you haven’t already, be sure to try out these 3 exercises at let us know what you think. Be sure to follow Generation Iron on Facebook and Twitter.
