8 Essential muscle-building exercises you should make a habit of doing. (Part 2)

If you haven’t checked out the first 4 of the essential 8 muscle building exercises, I suggest you give it a quick look HERE .

Continuing on from yesterday, we have another superior power producing lower body exercise:

5 – Trap Bar Deadlift

Trap Bar deadlifts just. Look. Cool.

They’re so much easier to do than on a straight bar, and about a zillion times easier to coach. For clients (or Joes just starting out) who can’t for the life of them understand how to hinge properly, this tool can help.

You can sit inside the bar and essentially squat up the weight (if need be), instead of struggling with the straight bar to maintain that seemingly impossible ‘neutral spine’.

Since you can deadlift/squat with this piece of equipment, it allows you to get away with slightly heavier weight. Which is always cool.

I doubt I could pull 510lbs for 10 on a straight bar…

Sets & Reps recommended – Anywhere from 2-4 sets for 1-15 repetitions

6 – Front plank row

Think of a front plank, but with a cherry on top.

Everything is easy when you have 4 solid pillars of support, but what happens when we take a way one of those pillars of stability? – Were forced to counteract the new instability with stability generated from within. No, seriously.

Now if you add a dynamic component while you’re trying to stabilize from the newly generated instability, you’ve just added a whole new level of difficulty.

Coaching Cues?

Stay on the tips of your toes, legs straight, glutes in full firing-mode, and the supported elbow should be under the shoulder.

I like the cue ‘turn the palm up’ on the hand on the ground because it reinforces the ideal posture thing (upper back flat and shoulder blades down/back).

Try not to twist ANYTHING when you’re rowing.

Sets & Reps recommended – Anywhere from 2-4 sets for 8-15 repetitions

7 – TRX tricep extension

Here we have another amazing TRX exercise. Man, this thing is great for everything!

You get a little gun-training while working the core a bit. Got to love that core, eh!?

TRX is a pretty versatile tool. So much so that I use it for nearly every workout I do! Especially when training the essentials.

In case you haven’t realized, training your arms ARE essential. Everyone needs to have at least 2 guns on them at ALL TIMES…for safety.

Sets & Reps recommended – Anywhere from 2-4 sets for 8-12 repetitions

8 – Incline bench bicep curl

Who doesn’t love bicep exercises?

I call this exercise the-humbler. Why? – If you can do standing curls with 50lbs for 8 reps, you’ll probably-maybe be able to use 30lbs for 8 with this exercise. Don’t believe me? Give it a shot big guy.

Why I love it?

The definition of isolation exercises is this bad boy right here. By pinning your shoulder blades down and back, and externally rotation your arms (turning your palms out), you get the shoulder out of the exercise and focus on the guns.

You may feel a secondary burn in your shoulder from bicep curls because of where the bicep muscles start. The bicep tendon(s) originate just behind the head of the humerus beneath the bone on top of your shoulder, called the supraglenoid tubercle, and just inside of the shoulder muscle on a bone called the coracoid process.

Sets & Reps recommended – Anywhere from 2-4 sets for 8-10 repetitions

P.S. – **If you’re looking for an arm specialization program, my friend Dan Trink, from Trink Fitness just released his new product called 2 Tickets to the Gun Show. It’s a 4-week program, dedicated to making the guns quite a bit bigger. I went through the program and it looks great! (I never doubted him since he’s kind of big-time, writing for Men’s Fitness, Muscle & Fitness, Livestrong.com and T-Nation among other well known sites).
This ebook explains the program and the methods behind the madness.
Instead of buying the 50$ bottle of creatine, grab a copy of this program for nearly half the price (28$). I guarantee you’ll get some REAL size and strength differences.