Strength training is not a modern invention. Egyptians and Greeks show pictures of lifting bags filled with sand and stones swinging and throwing exercises. However it is only in recent years that it has become really popular. 

But are there any real benefits of doing strength training? What is strength training and why do you need that? Let’s find out.

Strength training is form of resistance based physical exercise aimed to increase overall body capacity to move weight, generating powerful motions that also serves you in your daily life.

Think about picking boxes from the floor or curry your grocery from your car or moving a sofa up the stairs. I would like to know what exercise comes to your mind when we talk about strength. Leave a comment below. 

Strength training is also the key to flexibility, mobility, improved performance and lower injury risk. It is  great for lowering the risk of most common health problems we know nowadays. Diabetes, strokes, heart diseases and so on. 

A recent meta-analysis for Harward has confirmed that people who perform strength training are less likely to die prematurely than those who don’t.

Lean muscle mass naturally diminishes with age.

Your body fat percentage will increase over time if you don’t do anything to replace the lean muscle you lose over time. Strength training can help you preserve and enhance your muscle mass at any age.

But now the big question HOW CAN I DO STRENGTH TRAINING? And here I am to help you to answer this question.

When it comes to strength training you don’t need to go for an encyclopaedia of exercises, you need few, very focused, strength based exercises that will work your body all around. 

Here i am showing you a list of 10 strength exercises I believe to be the base of a strong body, let’s crack on with that: 

• Squat, one of the hardest strength exercises of all the time. The feeling of being crushed by the weight is scary. It works your quads, glutes and hamstrings but it does require a massive amount of core strength too if you don’t want to be folded in half by the weight. It doesn’t really matter if you go for a low bar, high bar, SSB and so on, this exercise strengthen muscles and bones from the waist down and prepares you for the later stages of your life.
• Bench Press, the strength exercise for the alpha male. From bodybuilders to powerlifters, the bench press is the exercise that is in every workout program. It works the chest, and triceps muscles but it involves your shoulders and upper back too for assistance. Apart from the traditional types of bench press exercises, there are some adaptations. These adaptations increase the difficulty level or work different muscles.
• Deadlift, the king of strength exercises. The one that gives you absolutely no feelings of the weight till you try to lift it. It involves hamstrings, glutes and lower back as prime movers but it requires a huge amount of assistance from calves, quads, core and upper back. It basically works your entire body and no other lift destroys your nervous system as the deadlift does. 
• Overhead press, the most unbalanced of them all. I have seen more people passing out on the overhead press than squat and deadlift combined. Getting a heavy weight above your head is not an easy task. The muscles involved are shoulders, triceps and upper chest. The muscles that assist are all the rotator cuff and core. If balance is an issue, you can have different seated options.
• Bent over row, from now on we are looking at exercises to assist and help you improve the main lift. The bent over row is particularly great for upper and mid back muscles but also improves the deadlift as the set up mimics the initial deadlift position. It is also a great exercise to assist the bench press as it help with overall upper body strength balance.

• Front squat, this is my go to assistance exercise for the deadlift. I know it sounds weird but the front squat is the one that has developed my back muscles the most, especially all the extensors around the spine, the muscles that keep you straight. It also works on your core at 360 degrees and massively improves quads strength. I always experience muscles soreness after heavy front squat on back (around the spine), obliques and quads. So a must have in your programme. 
• Farmer walks, the husband trainer. This is a great add up. This exercise induces more instability in your core training. It works on your grip, upper back and all the entire body has to assist to lift and move the weight. It is even better if done on one side only. Add this in to your routine mixing light days and heavy days for best results.
• Chin up or pull ups. This exercise is added to my list to create a more balanced all around upper body strength. It works on your lats, biceps and forearms but it does require some degree of assistance from your core too. In case you cannot do a chin up or a pull ups, you can replace them with the lat pulldown machine or use a resistance band for assistance. Jumping or/with negatives are a way to get more eccentric work done and they help to increase strength.
• Dips, a bodyweight assistance exercise for the chest and triceps. Extremely difficult to do that right as it requires a lot of shoulder stability. It is very easy to go too low and get injured. I usually replace that for clients with close grip bench press and band assisted dips as I find them safer. They also help to get a quicker lockout at the bench press.
• Lunges, another balance exercise.  It helps stabilise the lower body and strengthen quads, glutes and hamstrings. Walking, sides, forward, backward they are all great but the greatest of them all is the split squat. That is an advanced version of the lunges and everything gets much harder by taking away from the equation one of the legs. You can also make it more unstable by adding weight on one side only.

All those strength exercises will not make any sense if you are not having a well balanced programme, so as a free gift I have prepared one for you and I have left a link down here. Sets, reps, it is all there. 

Here you have guys all set up for you. If you are new into strength training or you are unsure or feel unsafe when lifting this playlist can help you out. 

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Keep crushing those weights. 

Click here to download the 8 weeks program