Today I’m sharing my top 10 exercises list with ya!
I’m also going to recommend progressions of each exercise, so for example if there is a version of an exercise that you may not be able to do just yet, I’m going to outline where to start in order to build up the strength to do the specific version that I mention.
I also provided links to the exercises or at least a variation of the exercises performed by me and by the end of this article, you’re going to know how to structure a foundational exercise program for yourself as well!
As a quick caveat, I just want to say that these are the 10 that I would choose today based on my current fitness and lifestyle priorities, it doesn’t mean that this is ‘THE LIST’ for the rest of my life, it doesn’t mean that all other exercises are terrible and I’d never do them or you should never do them because…
Our priorities shift and change over time and also, I do more than 10 exercises over the course of a typical week, having said that…these are the ones that I would select in an alternate universe if for some reason 10 was the arbitrary limit.
1. Walking
If you’ve been following me for a while you’re not surprised in the slightest by #1. This is without a doubt my favourite form of exercise and to be honest in the context of my own life, I don’t really think about walking as exercise…
I think about it like eating and sleeping in the sense that for me it’s a must, a non-negotiable. I’ve been hitting anywhere from 12-30,000+ steps on a daily basis for 15 years and I’ve been talking about how underrated walking is as a fat loss modality for ages…not to mention how great it is for things like mood stability, stress reduction, sleep quality, appetite regulation and injury prevention!
Walking is the GOAT (greatest of all time) in my opinion and folks overlook it’s value all the time because it’s not sexy…however, it is wildly effective!
2. Push-Ups
I love push-ups, they hit the chest, front delts and triceps really nicely. They also work your quote unquote ‘core’ because when you’re doing them properly, you should have a straight line from your heel, to your hip and to your shoulder throughout the whole set meaning, your abs and low back are engaged the entire time.
If I was to pick a specific type, my go-to right now is the neutral grip deficit push-up on low parallette bars with my feet elevated because I like to get a fairly exaggerated range of motion. If you want to see an example of this movement I linked it below or you can check out one of my recent reels on Instagram titled ‘injury-proof your shoulders.’
If you’d like to implement push-ups into your routine, I’d recommend starting on your knees and perfecting your form via full range of motion first and foremost meaning, your chest is touching the floor on every single rep, don’t shortchange yourself!
Once you can do say 15-20 perfect reps from your knees under control, then you can move to your toes and again, emphasize full range of motion where you touch your chest to the floor every time. As you transition, if you can only do say 1, 2 or 3 full reps from your toes at first, no problem, complete those reps and then quickly move to your knees and complete a full set.
Over time you’ll get stronger and stronger and eventually you’ll be doing full sets of 10, 15, 20 on your toes, once that becomes rather easy, you can make things more challenging by elevating your hands and feet and getting additional range of motion and on and on and on…there are tons of progressions to experiment with.
3. Bodyweight Row
This is the perfect complement to the push-up in the sense that it’s the exact opposite movement being that the push-up is a pressing movement on the horizontal plane, which is just a fancy way of saying pushing out in front of you and the bodyweight row is a rowing movement on the horizontal plane, which is just a fancy way of saying pulling out in front of you.
So the push-up mimics pushing a door open and the bodyweight row mimics pulling a door open. The bodyweight row can be done using a TRX, which are the independently moving black and yellow cloth ropes with handles on the ends. You can also do this movement on gymnastics rings or by setting up a barbell in a rack or on something like a smith machine…there are lots of options.
I mix in all of the variations, but if I had to choose I would go with the neutral grip bodyweight row on the TRX because it just feels the best for me and I like that my hands, elbows and shoulders have a little bit more room to move around into different positions throughout the repetition…whereas with something like a barbell everything is fairly fixed in the same place.
No specific type is necessarily better or worse than the other, I just prefer the less fixed or rigid type of range of motion that the TRX offers and/or rings offer.
If you want to start doing bodyweight rows, you can start with the bar or TRX set up quite high because the closer your head or torso is the ground, the harder it’s going to be because you are resisting more of your own weight.
As you get stronger and stronger, you can begin to lower the bar or whatever you’re holding onto and eventually you’ll be almost horizontal or parallel to the ground, which is essentially the exact opposite of a push-up position.
Once that’s becomes easy, you can even elevate your feet to increase the difficulty and so on.
4. Handstands
I love all things handstands…balancing, handstand walking, handstand push-ups, it’s all so much fun and I find it really rewarding to work on bodyweight skills like this and see progress. Handstands obviously work the shoulders and triceps, however they strengthen your grip and forearms a ton as well because of the constant rebalancing and ‘grabbing’ of the ground.
They also work the lats quite a bit which are the muscles running along the side/back of your torso underneath your arms when they’re relaxed at yours sides. Full-on handstand push-ups are really hard, even against a wall…I can do a small set at the moment, but these are still a work in progress for me.
Variations like the pike push-up are a great way to strengthen your shoulders in that overhead pushing position and also kicking up on a wall to get comfortable being upside down and just holding yourself there is an awesome way to build up to this movement too.
You can also improve your overhead pushing strength via things like overhead barbell and dumbbell presses, they’re great movements!
5. Pull-Ups
The pull-up is the perfect complement to the handstand or handstand push-up because it’s essentially the exact opposite motion. Instead of pushing overhead, the pull-up is an overhead pulling pattern.
There are tons of different variations that you can do for the pull-up with a whole bunch of different grips, as well as things like butterfly and chest to bar pull-ups, which you’ll often see CrossFitters doing…personally I like mixing in all the different types, however if I had to choose I’d go with a plain and simple neutral grip pull-up on bars…they’re my fav.
If you’re working on your pull-up, the assisted pull-up machine if you have access to one in your gym is awesome because it’s pin loaded and so as you get stronger, you can use more and more of your own weight and essentially get less ‘help’ or assistance from the machine itself.
If you don’t have access to one of those…you can always use a band, you can have someone help you by grabbing your waist and giving you the assistance that you need or you can do negatives and that’s when you step on a box, jump up to the top of the bar and lower yourself as slowly as possible…this works because it’s a lot easier to lower yourself than it is to pull yourself up.
Things like lat pulldowns can be helpful accessory movements to improve your overhead pulling strength too and my #1 tip or suggestion in terms of the pull-up would be to start with full range of motion…
I remember seeing this video of the actor Mark Walberg on the Ellen show saying that he could do 40 consecutive pullups and he emphasized the fact that they were quote unquote ‘clean ones’…spoiler alert, they were not clean ones lol…he literally didn’t do one single full rep and I see this in the gym so often.
Pull-ups are super hard and so typically you’ll see folks (more often men) that don’t like the idea of not being able to do a bunch of them and so they just do tiny little quarter reps at the top of the range of motion where it’s the easiest. The thing is that they then get stronger and stronger in that tiny little range of motion, but if they had to do a single top to bottom rep, they couldn’t do one, point being…
Start with full range of motion and yes it will take longer for you to get your first pullup, however it will be an actual pull-up!
6. Lunges
I love the barbell back squat and the front squat however, barbell versions of the squat just don’t feel amazing for me and so if I had to choose a squatting-like pattern to strengthen my legs, I would choose the walking lunge.
I love lunges because they are unilateral meaning, you can work one leg at a time and so both limbs tend to get equally as independently strong. Also, there are a ton of lunging variations that you can do by taking a longer step, a shorter step, manipulating your torso in different ways that will emphasis different areas of your legs, you can lean super far forward, you can do reverse lunges, side lunges or Cossack style squats, you can hold dumbbells for added resistance…lunges are really versatile!
If you’re not a fan of lunges specifically, but you like the idea of a unilateral exercise for the legs, you can do something like a step-up onto a bench or box and get a ton of the same benefits as a lunge. I really like step-ups as well, however if I had to choose between the two I’d go with the lunge.
You can also just squat…squats are amazing and I do a fair bit of bodyweight squatting mostly for mobility purposes, it feels awesome!
7. Deadlift
I’ll be honest, I don’t love deadlifting however…it’s just such an amazing movement to strengthen the entire posterior chain, which is essentially everything from the base of your head all the way down to your heels.
It’s also great for grip and forearm strength, the core is heavily involved via the abs and low back of course and your feet are being trained especially if you deadlift without shoes or using a flat shoe like a converse chuck taylor for example.
If I had to choose one specific type, I’d likely go with the trap bar or hex bar deadlift and that’s the bar that you ‘step into’ and you’re able to hold the bar at your sides vs. out in front of you like you would with a traditional barbell.
I also mix in the traditional deadlift, I’ll use heavier kettlebells, I might use dumbbells from time to time, but again if I had to pick…I’d go with the trap bar. Also, a lot of folks don’t deadlift because they tweaked their back at some point in their lives and now they’ve told themselves a story about how they have a weak back…truth be told, everyone has tweaked a muscle or two in their back at one point or another and…
The deadlift is an amazing way to strengthen your back meaning, it’s essentially therapy for the back itself because avoiding something that is strength promoting for your back is actually just keeping it weak and ‘rehab’ or physio is essentially just another word for strength training…don’t fear the deadlift!
Get your from down, work up in weight slowly and you can build a strong and super resilient back. Side note, walking is also a miracle for back pain and avoiding back injuries…if you’re experiencing pain and want to get rid of it, hit 10,000 steps per day for the next 30 days and if you’re not in less pain next month, I would be very surprised.
8. Toes 2 Bar
This is a CrossFit movement and it’s where you hang from a bar and swing your legs up until your toes make contact with the bar, you then swing your legs down and behind you, back up again and repeat. There is a lot of momentum as well as a bit of skill involved in this movement, however it still works very effectively and I really enjoy it.
If you don’t want to do toes 2 bar, you can do something like a hanging leg raise, it’s very similar and involves a lot less momentum and a lot more control. Lying leg raises are another variation and none of these is necessarily better than the other, they’re just different…the cool thing about the hanging versions is that you also get the benefit of grip strengthenig via holding on to the bar itself.
9. Running
I used to absolutely despise running because when I was playing soccer, football and basketball as a youngin’, I developed a really poor association with running because a lot of my coaches used it as a tool for punishment. If someone was late to practice or we executed poorly in a game or you name it…running was often a consequence of something that didn’t go well.
As an adult, I’ve always really liked the idea of going for a run because it was super accessible, a great way to see a city as well as a way to get out in nature, however I had so much arthritic knee pain that it just wasn’t enjoyable.
Fortunately, I’ve figured out the culprit of the arthritic knee pain, which was actually just a consequence of consuming far too much oxalate in my diet and so now I follow a low-oxalate approach and voila, I’ve been getting more and more into running over the last couple of years!
I will say that there is nothing quite like a ‘runners high’…I’ve completed a million and one workouts in my life and how you feel after a gym workout vs. post-run is incomparable, it’s so different…the runners high is exponentially more euphoric, I absolutely love it!
10. Cycling
I fell in love with cycling in my mid to late 20’s and it’s just so fun! Cycling is super unique because you can cover such large distances in such a short period of time without a car…I find it super freeing and empowering.
I don’t cycle all that much simply because one, I’m a fair weather cyclist and two, I travel so often. Also, I’m just not that guy that’s going to pack up my bike and lug it on a plane with me, however it’s still a huge passion of mine.
Similar to the runners high, a cycling high is almost equally as awesome in my opinion…there’s just something about longer bouts of cardiovascular exercise that really get those feel good chemicals flowing.
I have a bonus movement or form of movement that I’m going to mention and I didn’t add it to my list just because similar to walking, I don’t really see it as exercise however, it’s still really important to me and it is…mobility work, so stretching and things like CARS (controlled articular rotations)…feel free to google CARS if you’d like, great stuff.
Mobility is something that I’ve grown to appreciate a lot more as I’ve gotten older and it’s not because my body is breaking down or I need to stretch now vs. I didn’t before, it’s just that I enjoy it now and I didn’t enjoy it before. I absolutely could have benefitted from it earlier in my life, I just straight up didn’t like doing it and so I didn’t.
As of the last yearish, I’ve started doing some mobility work first thing in the morning and it feels really good. I also sprinkle some in throughout the day in between bouts of work and again it just feels good to do. I’ve also noticed that I am getting more mobile and flexible, which is an added benefit.
Zooming out a little bit, if we look at just about any foundational workout program, we’re going to have 6ish key movement patterns which are…
A horizontal push and pull i.e. the push-up and the bodyweight row.
A vertical push and pull i.e. the handstand push-up and the pull-up.
And a squat and a hinge pattern i.e. the lunge and the deadlift.
Those are the meat and potatoes movement patterns and so using that framework, you can essentially just make your own workout program and plug in different variations of those movements that you want to do…it’s pretty simple stuff! For example…
For the horizontal push and pull…for the push you could do a push-up, a bench press, a dumbbell press, a machine press etc.
For the horizontal pull you could do a bodyweight row, a bent over barbell row, a bent over dumbbell row, a chest supported row, a seated cable row and the list goes on.
Plug and play a bunch of variations for each of those 6 movement patterns and you’ve got a resistance training program!
Also you may have noticed that I heavily favour bodyweight movements like a push-up as opposed to a bench press or a pull-up as opposed to a lat pull-down and I do so just because it feels better for me.
My joints and connective tissues tend to prefer bodyweight movements, also I just like moving my own body through space more so than doing external loads via dumbbells, barbells etc. It’s not necessarily better, it’s just my preference.
So that’s it, my current 10 favourite exercises list and here are the links as promised…
