If you’ve ever watched a powerlifting competition, you know that the athletes compete in three events: deadlift, squat, and bench press. But even if you’ve never witnessed those stro...

Compared to isolation exercises such as the biceps curl, dumbbell fly, and calf raise, which target a single muscle group and move a single joint, compound (multi-muscle, multi-joint) movements provide significantly more bang for your strength-training buck. Indeed, by recruiting and engaging mor...

These exercises require several muscle groups spanning at least two joints to work together to get the job done. If even one of them isn’t up to the task (e.g., because it's fatigued or not yet strong enough to pull its own weight), the rest of the team (read: your body) suffers, leading to sub-p...

Skew the balance of the exercises in your training plan toward compound exercises, performing the most heavily loaded ones and those that place a premium on relative strength (e.g., pullup, chinup) at the beginning of your workouts. That will ensure that every muscle involved is able to exert its...