🏋️ 10 compound exercises you need to do

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Here’s what’s going on in the strength world today:

• The 10 compound exercises you need in your life

• Brian Shaw ends his career with a win at the 2023 Shaw Classic

• Get Arnold’s top bodybuilding tips

Exercise Tips

Interest Is Compounding

The nucleus of most muscle- and strength-building workouts is a compound lift. Squats, bench presses, deadlifts, and their ilk are the most popular compound moves, and they dominate over isolation exercises like hamstring curls and triceps pushdowns, even if you’re not a competitive powerlifter.

To lay it out plainly, compound lifts involve motion in more than one joint, allowing you to target multiple muscle groups at once. And it’s not that isolation movements aren’t great (especially for getting a pump), but without the foundation laid with these compound moves, you’d be left building a house on top of a wobbly, knobby-kneed foundation.

The systemic load placed on your body by these big, full-body motions helps pack on slabs of meat all over your body, immuring you in your own suit of muscled-up armor. Below, you’ll find a complete breakdown of the 10 best compound moves and how they can benefit your training.

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Strongman

Shaw Wins Shaw

Big news out of Colorado this week, as Brian Shaw won his eponymous event in an epic swan song to his illustrious career. Not content with merely being a four-time World’s Strongest Man winner, Shaw left the platform for final time with the title of The Strongest Man on Earth as he now heads into retirement.

The Shaw Classic (not to be confused with the George Bernard Shaw classic, Pygmalion) has become one of the premier Strongman contests on the calendar since its debut in 2020, rivaled only by World’s Strongest Man and the Arnold Strongman Classic.

Not ducking the competition, Shaw had to defeat red-hot Mitchell Hooper (who just won the 2023 World’s Strongest Man in April) and “King of Stones” Tom Stoltman in some of their best events to leave as a champion after a brutal two-day competition. See a full recap with all of the scoring below.

Bodybuilding

Tips From the Oak

Everyone has a Schwarzenegger impression they can pull out at parties, but very few people actually try hard enough to impersonate The Terminator in the weight room. Although time and technology have passed his era of bodybuilding by, many fans of quality physiques still believe his stands up as one of the best ever.

Arnold was famous for his focus, intensity, and sheer, maddening volume of his workouts, and he’s written endlessly on his training strategies over the years in various books, newsletters, and magazine articles.

To help you get some G.O.A.T.-certified wisdom, we’ve gathered nine of Arnold’s most useful bodybuilding tips from over the years and distilled them down into an internet-friendly listicle. That means even those of us with non-cybernetic brains can understand them.

Everything Else

Rise and Shine

• You might think of fitness supplements as any product designed to help you get huge biceps and an enviable pump. But if you’re an endurance athlete, there are plenty of products on the shelves designed to boost your performance. Here are some of our favorites.

• If you hate doing hard things in the gym, the good morning is not for you. That’s because useful things are hard, and nothing is better at strengthening the core, posterior chain, and increasing the weight you can pull off the ground than the good morning. Learn how to master the move here.

• Ever wonder why bodybuilders apply coat after coat of spray-on tan before a competition? Find out the backstory behind one of the sport’s more curious quirks.