Top 10 Strength Training Exercises for Explosive Muscle Growth

Strength Training Exercises are a critical factor if you want to boost your muscle mass. Having muscles is something you will achieve by adding weight exercises to your training.

Let’s be honest, you’re here because you want to build muscle and optimize your fitness journey, right? You’re tired of workout programs that don’t deliver, and you’re ready for real results. Well, you’ve come to the right place.

I’ve spent over a decade helping people just like you transform their bodies and their lives through effective strength training. I’ve cracked the code, and I’m going to share it all with you, right here, right now.

Key Takeaways

• More Than Just Muscle: Strength training isn’t just about getting bigger; it’s about boosting your confidence, energy, and overall health.
• Science-backed training methods: Forget the outdated myths. We’re using proven methods to maximize muscle growth and minimize injury.
• Progressive Overload is Key: You need to challenge your muscles to grow. We’ll show you how to do it safely and effectively.
• Proper technique and form: It’s better to lift lighter with perfect form than to ego-lift and get injured. 
• Balance is Crucial: We’ll work all your muscle groups, not just your “mirror muscles,” for a balanced, functional physique.
• Consistency in training: Showing up consistently is more important than any single workout. I’ll share tips to help you build lasting habits.

Why Strength Training is Your Secret Weapon

Let’s get one thing straight: strength training is a game-changer. It’s not just about looking good in a T-shirt (although that’s a nice bonus). It’s about feeling powerful, energetic, and capable in your everyday life. As we age, we naturally experience a loss of muscle mass. Muscle strength and recovery decline, impacting our quality of life. Building and maintaining muscle through strength training exercises is a major key to combating this.

At GearUpToFit.com, we’ve seen firsthand how strength training transforms lives. People walk taller, feel more confident, and tackle daily challenges with ease. They have better metabolic rate and improved blood pressure. It’s like they’ve discovered a hidden superpower, and that superpower is strength. It is even proven that strength training could be the best medicine in order to prevent chronic diseases.

Understanding proper nutrition and rest for recovery are essential components of any successful strength training program. When combined with progressive overload techniques, you’ll see remarkable improvements in both strength and muscle mass.

Debunking the Myths: What Really Builds Muscle

You’ve probably heard all sorts of conflicting advice about building muscle. “Lift heavy every day!” “Do a million reps!” “Eat nothing but chicken and broccoli!” It’s enough to make your head spin.

The truth is, most of what you hear is garbage. Many so-called “gurus” are more interested in selling you supplements and workout programs than in giving you real, science-backed information.

Here’s what actually works:

Adequate Rest: Your muscles repair and grow during rest, not during your workout. Getting enough quality sleep is absolutely essential to help you increase muscle mass.

Stimulating Muscle Growth: Your muscles grow when you challenge them beyond their current capacity. This is called progressive overload.

Proper Nutrition: You need to fuel your body with the right nutrients to support muscle growth.

The GearUpToFit Approach: Smart Training for Maximum Results

At GearUpToFit.com, we don’t believe in one-size-fits-all solutions. We tailor our programs to your individual needs and goals. We help you determine your fitness levels and choose the appropriate routine for you. But the core principles remain the same:

1. Focus on Compound Exercises: These exercises work multiple muscle groups at once, giving you the most bang for your buck. Think squats, deadlifts, rows, and presses. They are the fundamental exercises in every routine.
2. Master Proper Form: This is non-negotiable. Using the proper form with strength training exercises prevents injuries and ensures you’re working the right muscles. We’ll teach you the correct way to perform each exercise, so you can lift safely and effectively.
3. Progressive Overload: We’ll gradually increase the weight, reps, or sets as you get stronger, ensuring continuous progress.
4. Listen to Your Body: We’ll teach you to recognize the difference between “good pain” (muscle soreness) and “bad pain” (potential injury).
5. Prioritize Recovery: We’ll emphasize the importance of sleep, nutrition, and rest days to optimize muscle growth.

Strengthen grip

Weight training arm exercises are super effective for something that is sometimes overlooked in most other exercises: grip.

Therefore, working with weights in your hands will help you have more strength, and that on days when you have to carry furniture up the stairs, the strength of your fingers does not fail. Remember, functional training should prepare you for daily life, which is when you notice the absence of exercise with external weights.

Gain muscle and lose fat

Left and Right Side Force Balance and Compensation

When doing push-ups, you feel that one arm is more tired than the other, and it is difficult for you to maintain the correct technique. This is normal because right-handers tend to be more active with their right limbs, and left-handers tend to be more active on the left side.

However, our ancestors could not afford to have a weaker arm when climbing a tree to escape a predator.

Upper body strength doesn’t just depend on your arms. Suppose you have read our article on exercises for pectorals. In that case, you already know that the upper body’s strength is given by several muscle groups’ joint work, the abdominal muscles, the pectorals, and that of the arms, working as a set.

Often, the body does not have the same strength on both sides of the abdomen or the pectorals, so the extra loads can compensate for our core’s strength, giving greater stability and balance, especially in the performed movements above the head.

Increased progressive power

When someone starts training after a long time without activity, they may not be able to reach ten repetitions of a classic push-up with the right technique.

However, you will do them without problems after some training or other.

Then twenty, thirty, forty, and fifty reps. During this period, your muscles become stronger, but it takes less effort for the body to perform each repetition. Therefore, the efficiency of this exercise to gain strength and muscle decreases.

At this point, you can choose to switch to another push-up with greater difficulty (see our article on push-ups to see the different variants of push-ups) or start with chin-ups (you can see our guide to perfect pull-ups). However, the same will happen to you with pull-ups after a while.

Do you know what the example of Milo of Croton is?

It can be useful to have better results:

The story of Milo of Croton begins with him training with a small calf on his shoulders. As Milo got stronger, the calf grew and gained weight, so even though Milo had gained muscle and strength, his extra load continued to pose a challenge for him.

In the end, among so many legends about him, he was indeed the absolute winner of the fight six times in the Olympic games.

In short, performing strength training exercises with weight allows us a progressive and controlled increase in difficulty that, without the extra weight, we may not be able to achieve at a certain point.

This progressive strength and hypertrophy training is also the one we use in our course to gain muscle mass and to which you can sign up with this button.

Gain muscle and lose fat

Risks when exercising with weights

The two main risks of weight training are increased risk of injury and increased likelihood of accidents.

Most common injuries

By adding extra load to the exercises, there is a greater risk of injury.

The load is not part of your body and requires greater motor coordination to maneuver the weights and move them from side to side with each repetition.

If we add to this a greater weight than we can bear to perform the correct technique, it can produce contractures or muscle overload.

For this reason, it is essential to know your level of physical strength, how much you can support, and what weights you will use.

The muscle and all the locomotor system tissues must adapt to the increased tension they will receive with this training. Start with self-loading exercises (with your weight) and gradually add weight.

Also, consider aspects such as the type of weight you will use. For example, the ease of grip that a kettlebell or kettlebell offers is different from what you’ll find on different types of dumbbells or a barbell.

A higher probability of an accident

If all this information has not convinced you that you must choose adequate weights and grips that facilitate the extra load’s maneuverability in your exercises with weights, this point will indeed.

If you don’t pay attention when doing an exercise technique or don’t realize that the load is too high for your current level of physical strength, I can promise you that bad things will happen.

Imagine that you do an exercise like Swing. If the centrifugal force is greater than the power of your hands, the weight could fly off, or you could lose your balance with the same weight and fall. In the worst case, when it fails, it could even impact the weight against yourself and hurt you, especially if it falls on susceptible areas.

Not sure that you can train with weight without injury or accident? I recommend you try out a mild weight program designed to gain muscle and strength but always minimize the risk of injuries and accidents.

Warm-up protocol to increase joint mobility.

A comprehensive description of how to do each exercise.

• Strength training exercises that minimize the risk of injury.
• Gain muscle and lose fat
• Recommendations for exercising with weights

Now that you know the risks, we do not want to leave you with fear and eliminate your life’s weights forever. Here are some recommendations to help you avoid injuries, optimize your training, and achieve the best results.

Be realistic and choose a suitable weight.

The best thing you can do is choose a weight with which you can do 12 or 13 repetitions without representing a superhuman effort but a challenge to finish the series.

Checking what level you are at and choosing the exercises may not be easy, but once you identify what physical level you are at, you can understand why there are no strength training exercises with weights that you should not or can do yet.

We suggest you start with light weights and compensate with a higher number of repetitions.

Over time you will have much more security with your technique and tolerance, so you will gradually increase the load as it happened in the story I told you about Milo of Crotona.

Avoid spending money on accessories.

Do you remember that before we talked about grip?

The grip you need for life is not always that of a dumbbell or a kettlebell.

Indeed, these two are designed to make training easier, but in real life, the things you carry, like the grocery bag or a suitcase, do not have the grip of a kettlebell.

So, if you don’t want an accessory, you can use a weighted backpack (with books, stones, etc.) or, if you train outside the home, you can take a rock or something similar with a suitable weight and balance between its sides.

If this is not enough, you can try a full laundry basket and water bottles. And start doing repetitions. There are no excuses!

If you want to use specialized training weights

In this case, you can opt for a kettlebell, an accessory that gives you significant variability of uses and movement. It also has an essential ergonomic factor to avoid injuries.

I recommend investing in a kettlebell like this or a pair of dumbbells that will serve you for several months, which will not damage the floor’s surface.

Stay consistent in your weight training.

One of the keys to seeing results with weight training is staying consistent.

In my experience analyzing half a million users of our APP, the key to generating the habit and constancy is the session’s pleasantness.

Maintain proper technique

Maintaining proper technique is the key! I will not tire of repeating this until the idea is captured in your brain, and you never forget it.

The technique is essential for any training you follow to avoid injuries and for the muscles to work as they should. It is more important to do 10 repetitions well done than 100 bad ones.

However, this takes on even greater relevance when it comes to strength training exercises with weights because it puts a greater strain on your joints. To avoid risks, you should do the following when exercising with weights:

Perform the first repetition without weight to verify that your body’s position is adequate for the exercise. We often focus only on the strength we have for some exercise with weights and forget that flexibility comes into play. I have seen many people squat with a potentially damaging back position, but not due to their lack of strength in the legs but in the hips’ lack of flexibility.

Measure your feelings. When lifting weights, use your joints and muscles’ full range of motion, and analyze how you feel. If you find that with your current strength, it is difficult to maintain your technique, change your strength training exercises, or reduce the weight or number of repetitions.

If you are unsure if you are doing an exercise correctly, watch the videos again, or record yourself with your mobile and compare the video of the correct technique with yours to know what changes you should make.

The importance of breathing in training

When you do strength training exercises with weights, you can find two cases, and it depends on the case, you will have to use your breath in one way or another.

First, when you weigh them, your technique and strength allow you to perform sets of between 10 and 12 repetitions.

If this is the case, the best way to breathe to optimize your performance and blood circulation is at the moment of effort, for example, when lifting a weight, exhale; and at the time of least effort, for example, when lowering a weight, inhale. This must be done on each rep.

However, it is essential to mention that if you do not do exercises with functional weights, use a weight that requires significant power to lift it (known as maximum lifts). It is best to use the Valsalva maneuver to hold your breath to increase intra-abdominal pressure and stabilize the lumbar region.

If you want more information about the proper way to breathe during training, you have it very detailed in this article.

Find balance in your weight training.

When many people start weight training, they prioritize muscle groups involving the arms and pectorals and neglect the legs.

This will create an aesthetic imbalance and increase your muscles’ strength and weight. If you have not worked your legs properly, you increase the weight they have to bear during the day without them becoming strong from training. In the long run, it can cause you to suffer from knee and ankle joint problems.

On the other hand, the balance is not only in the upper and lower body.

Some people are looking to have incredible biceps, and in the end, they have a very well-shaped front of the arms and a poorly defined rear.

If you do functional training, this will never happen to you since it works for the muscle groups together and not in isolation.

Not everything is exercising with a weight.

If your goal is hypertrophy, surely the exercises with weights can be great allies, but if you want to have a body that is not only strong but also functional, fast, flexible, and explosive, and that does not tire in the first sprint, consider adding other types of training sessions.

For example, you can do 2 or 3 strength sessions and include 2 HIIT training sessions to compensate for your weekly workouts.

If you want to know what HIIT training is about, I recommend you read these articles:

What HIIT Is And How To Maximize Its Benefits – Gear Up to Fit

HIIT Body Fat Burning Workout – Gear Up to Fit

HIIT for Fat Burning Workout Success – Gear Up to Fit

The science behind HIIT workouts – Gear Up to Fit

Get proper rest

Rest is part of the training. The body is not a production machine that must work 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

You may think that you are recovered from training because you have recovered your breath and you feel energized, but it takes longer for the body to rebuild on a chemical level.

It is essential to sleep well and rest the worked muscles to develop muscle. Giving your body adequate rest between each exercise routine is just as important as training.

One of the best advice I can give you is to review this article on how to sleep better, you will notice the difference in your energy, strength in training, and muscle growth in less than a week.

Don’t skip the warm-up.

Having cold muscles lowers your performance. This happens because the unheated muscle has difficulty starting all the way and is even more likely to be injured than heated muscles.

Before working out with weights, work the same muscle groups in lower-intensity exercises so that you start your workout with your muscles warm and ready to go all out.

Now you know everything about how to exercise with weights!

Below you will find the list of the top 10 strength training exercises with weights to create your plan.

Top 10 strength training exercises

These are the exercises that form the foundation of our programs at GearUpToFit.com. They’re effective, versatile, and can be done with minimal equipment. You do not need a gym membership to perform them.

1. One-hand Dumbbell Swing

A dynamic exercise that builds explosive power in your hips, glutes, and core.

 

2. Dumbbell Deadlift

A full-body exercise that strengthens your posterior chain (back, glutes, hamstrings).

 

3. Both Arms Row

Targets your back muscles, biceps, and forearms.

 

4. Renegade Row

A challenging exercise that works your back, core, and shoulders. Maintain a plank position throughout the whole move.

 

5. Dumbbell Windmill

Improves shoulder mobility, core strength, and hamstring flexibility. Requires core stabilization and balanced strength.

 

6. Dumbbell power clean

A powerful exercise that builds explosive strength in your legs, back, and shoulders.

 

7. Goblet squat

A great way to learn proper squat form while strengthening your legs and core.

 

8. Clean and Press

A full-body exercise that combines a power clean with an overhead press.

 

9. Bench press

A classic exercise for building chest, shoulder, and triceps strength. You can use a flat bench, incline bench or decline bench.

 

10. Step-ups

A simple but effective exercise for strengthening your legs and glutes. All you need is an exercise step.

 

Conclusions

The training with load allows us to obtain stimuli of muscular hypertrophy with much fewer repetitions.

In turn, it allows controlled and progressive stimulation and prevents us from stagnating in improvement.

It must be taken into account that the risk of injury increases, and we must pay the utmost attention to the technique.

Finally, to achieve a muscular body that is strong and capable, we must simulate efforts that simulate human movements so that we will reject analytical and/or artificial exercises.

References

Strength training: Get stronger, leaner, healthier – Mayo Clinic

Strength training can be done at home or in the gym. Common choices may include: Body weight. You can do many exercises with little or no equipment. Try pushups, pullups, …

5 Strength Training Workouts (for Beginners) | Nerd Fitness

The 9 best strength training exercises. How to know you’re doing an exercise properly (form checks) Strength training for weight loss. “Just TELL ME what strength program I should do.”

More good news: You don’t have to work out constantly to gain muscle. A 2016 research review in the journal Sports Medicine suggests that strength training twice per week is enough to significantly increase muscle mass.

Keeping our muscles strong can also help to lower the risk of heart and circulatory disease and improve mental wellbeing, including anxiety and depression.

The American College of Sports Medicine recommends that adults strength train 2-3 times weekly.

Muscle & Strength: Super Strength: 8-Week Strength Building Workout for Beginners

A study published in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise examined 28 research articles and compared the effectiveness of different resistance training styles.