Dirty Dozen Exercises

[Michael]

    There are a plethora of great exercises and variations no matter what style of training You do. If You had to narrow it down to 12 exercises what would they be? I'm not saying any one or twelve exercises are better than any other. And of course You could even narrow it down more. Here's my list:


1) Push ups
2) Chin ups
3) Dips
4) Inverted Row
5) Bodyweight Tricep Extensions
6) Incline cable curls
7) Bulgarian Split Squat
8)Get Ups
9) KB Press
10) Goblet Squat
11) Renegade Row
12) Cable Side Laterals

[stormshadow]

I like many of those and really like the first four. I really enjoy the front cable/strand pulls across the chest in front of the body and the cable extension behind the back. I find that many exercises work the anterior delts and I like to balance out that with working the posterior delts and rhomboids.

I also like self resistance neck exercises now I(used to like neck harness, bridging, Nautilus and so on). It has protected me from some bad things in the past. I also think it helps prevent stress and tension headaches when your neck is strong. Standing calf raise without weights, both feet and one foot at at time. I used to use tons of weight on those on a machine, but I do not believe that spinal compression as one ages is a a good thing so I do without the weight and perform extreme range of motion up and down and real slow.

I like to do grip and forearm exercises too. Any of them and there are many variations.

Some kind of lower back exercise. Hyper-extensions. deadlifts, good mornings with resistance bands and trap bar.

I like to do the Bullworker compression exercise for the abs and also use a long curtain rod made of wood to push against the floor at various positions for the abs too.

Then I do a Peary Rader exercise where I rest both of the hands flat on a dresser and push down and hold for a minute or two.

[Michael]

Yeah stormshadow, there just some of the exercises I like. I agree about the shoulders and neck. For shoulders I'll sometimes use weights, cables or self resistance and do stuff for the side and rear delta. Shoulders feel so much better and stay injury free when I do.


I like to use self resistance or isometrics for neck. The same as yourself, this has saved my neck many of pains. I know this may sound weird to some but I need to have( don't know what's the correct verbage here) muscle endurance in my neck. When you have to look up into trees all day you would definitely understand.

For myself it seems when I stay with a minimumalist routine I get little tweeks here and there. So I do tend to either add rehab stuff or just add to my training routine.

[Dave Reslo]

I like the idea of choosing a dozen exercises and training them in sequence, but in practice I've not done anything like that since I was a teenager. I pick a few exercises I really like and focus on them and everything else is just dressing really. I suppose the main ones for me would be:

Sandbag bearhug squats
Farmers walks
One arm side-press, either with a barbell or with strands is also very good


Then for balance I would add:

One-arm rows
bearhug lunges or just walks
Leg raises
swings (kettlebell or dumbell) to help with lower back recovery from the bearhug stuff


Then if I was actually going to do anything else I'd probably choose:

My bison forearm routine (you could count this as a few different exercises if you wanted)
two-hand throws
Iron rod neck work
calf raises
? ? ?


I'm trying to come up with a dozen here but there's no way I could put an earnest effort into all of these. There's probably benefits for instance to working a variety of pressing movements, but keeping track of weights and reps just seems such a hassle.

[Michael]

I honestly don't train with 12 exercises either. I like to mix things up sometimes. So I was thinking of some of the exercises I liked.