All of the First Three movements for each day are going to be Compound Movements.
The Squat and Benchpress are both 4 sets of 5 reps, which is a solid workload that most should be able to hit for muscle growth and optimal recovery.
However, if you feel you can’t hit 4 sets of 5, you can do 3 sets of 5. Or, if you feel 4 sets of 5 isn’t enough and you could have done more, feel free to up it to 5 sets of 5 max.
SQUAT: OUR PRIMARY LEG MOVEMENT
The squat is going to be the base movement for your lower body. Aside from the deadlift, I’d go as far as saying the squat is going to give you best bang for your buck. Both in terms of efficiency and reaching your potential growth development. You’re going to be working your quads, hamstrings, glutes, back.
Click here for squat demonstration
If you for whatever reason you can’t or refuse to squat, you can replace it with a machine-based squat, or leg press. A quad dominant movement. ​
BENCHPRESS: PRIMARY HORIZONTAL PRESS MOVEMENT
The dumbbell press lays within the horizontal pressing area, which also includes: barbell bench press, push ups, and angular variations (decline, incline, etc).
Regardless of the variation, bench pressing can be used to enhance overall muscular strength and hypertrophy, but also to improve bench press and overall pressing performance.
BENT OVER ROW: PRIMARY VERTICAL PULL MOVEMENT​
​Building a strong and broad upper back is key for most power, strength, and fitness sports, not to mention filling out your shirts. A strong back is a huge indicator of overall strength, which quite often allows us to pull, squat, and even press greater loads. The bent over row allows a lifter to move significant amounts of loading using the back muscles and build strength and muscle mass.​
ISOLATION MOVEMENTS: Arm Focused
Technically speaking, for beginners, if you’re doing a sufficient amount of workload on your main compound movements, you’re probably not going to need much additional isolation exercises to grow. Meaning if you’re getting the proper amount of volume in on the dumbbell benchpress, there’s really no need to cable chest fly’s.
But with that being said, there are some benefit to adding in these isolation movements.
- Eventually once you’ve squeezed all of your beginner gains, you will need to throw in some isolation movements for continuous growth. So, it’s best to start learning how to do these movements now, work on proper form, technique and build a base to get strong on it.
- Even though you’ll be getting efficient growth from the basic compound movements, adding in these isolation exercises is still additional volume and won’t negatively affect your recovery to perform your compound movements for the next session.
- Isolation movements make the routine more fun by throwing in some variety to keep your sessions interesting.