Top 10 mass building exercises (from t-nation.com)

BossArky

Just had a read of this and posted here for those that do not frequent t-nation.

According to the author, the top ten mass building exercises are:

#1 Deadlift

#2 Squat

#3 Bench Press

#4 Clean

#5 Chin-Up

#6 Shoulder Press

#7 Bent Over Row

#8 Dip

#9 Biceps Curl

#10 Calf Press

tribulus

Looks good, I'm sure people could argue about x being lower than y or whatever but it seems fine. Score 1 for basic free weight exercises.

Frank Bullitt

Id agree with that definitely, the simpler its kept the better.

walt0r

Do you lads reckon deads are better mass builders than squat? I'd probably go with deads alright....

davyjose

BossArky wrote:

Just had a read of this and posted here for those that do not frequent t-nation.

According to the author, the top ten mass building exercises are:

#1 Deadlift

#2 Squat

#3 Bench Press

#4 Clean

#5 Chin-Up

#6 Shoulder Press

#7 Bent Over Row

#8 Dip

#9 Biceps Curl

#10 Calf Press

I would have expected to see shrugs in there. Traps are surely a bigger muscle than biceps?

tribulus

Perhaps he was picking the best exercise for each muscle group, although they're several that overlap each other.

I think shrugs are good but people often forget how big the trapezius muscles are and that it's really just the top portion of the them that are hit from shrugs.

Cravez

davyjose wrote:

I would have expected to see shrugs in there. Traps are surely a bigger muscle than biceps?

Cleans would hit the traps very well. Iv been doing alot of cleans at the moment and noticed alot more size in my traps and my upper back.

arybvtcw0eolkf

davyjose wrote:

I would have expected to see shrugs in there. Traps are surely a bigger muscle than biceps?

DL's & rows hit your traps exceptionally well.

Boston

I notice when reading through that link he mentioned muscle balance and that the deadlift should be used with the bench press to achieve this. Has another anybody any more info on muscle balance. I've been doing bench presses for the last 3 months without any deadlifting.

EileenG

I think I'd add stiff leg deadlift in there.

Hanley

EileenG wrote:

I think I'd add stiff leg deadlift in there.

I think regular deads and squats have that covered tho....

Vegeta

Boston wrote:

I notice when reading through that link he mentioned muscle balance and that the deadlift should be used with the bench press to achieve this. Has another anybody any more info on muscle balance. I've been doing bench presses for the last 3 months without any deadlifting.

well have you been doing any other upper back exercises

from my very very basic understanding of it, if you work on your chest only it can pull your shoulders forward, can be very obvious on sme guys in the gym, so to balance it out a good back regime is needed

rubadub

I was surprised to see bicep curls in there, and pullups not in there. Maybe he is trying to list all muscles in there. The meaning of top 10 needs to be defined more. Say you were to do 3 set of 8 reps of each exercise mentioned, 2 days a week, with the intention of adding maximum muscle. If that muscle did not have to be evenly spread then the top 10 would probably be different. I imagine pullups would add more than calves, i.e. calves are small and hard to add mass to, so even if they grow 30% it is a relatively small amount of muscle.

BossArky

rubadub wrote:

I was surprised to see bicep curls in there, and pullups

I guess he was thinking that chin ups and bent over rows cover the back and biceps.

rubadub

BossArky wrote:

I guess he was thinking that chin ups and bent over rows cover the back and biceps.

Yes, the biceps would be worked on several of the exercises listed. Thats why I was surprised he included bicep curls. The bicep curl and calf presses are really isolation exercises, surely time would be better spent on other compound exercises.

davyjose

Mairt wrote:

DL's & rows hit your traps exceptionally well.

That's not my point - my point is that Traps, being a bigger muscle than biceps, implies that shrugs are a better muscle builder than bicep curls. Although I now take the point that this was meant more as a full body work-out

Boston

Vegeta wrote:

well have you been doing any other upper back exercises

from my very very basic understanding of it, if you work on your chest only it can pull your shoulders forward, can be very obvious on sme guys in the gym, so to balance it out a good back regime is needed

a few light weight presses ( basically a rigid leg deadlift then a bicep curl ) recently but nothing else.
mainly I do
Dips
chin ups
Squats
Bench press
inclined push press.

tribulus

Yeah you should throw in some stuff for your shoulder health like rows of some sort, face pulls, even some pushups and scap push ups could help.

Google them or look on on eiltefts.com or t-nation if you're not sure about an of the exercises.

Boston

Started on deadlifts today. I know the word intense is thrown around but jebus that was intense.