🏋️‍♂️ 10 compound lifts to enhance your workouts

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Here’s what we have going on today:

• Compound exercises to anchor your workouts

• Improving your stimulus-to-fatigue ratio

• Safety concerns within CrossFit

Training Tips

Compound Interest

Compound lifts are the backbone of every classic strength and muscle-building program. The world (well, the internet) is full of routines requiring endless pieces of isolation equipment and a genius-level mind-muscle connection, but for throwing big slabs of beef over a skeleton, going hard on these 10 compound lifts will never go out of style.

The term “compound lift” is a fancy way of saying a “big movement,” or, slightly more accurately, a movement requiring the use of more than one joint. A biceps curl requires one joint, the elbow. A bent-over-row, on the other hand, requires the movement of the elbow and the shoulder joint (and some lower-body bracing). Using more joints activates more muscles, allowing you to move heavier weight and perform more total work.

Since your body adapts to strain being put on it, it just makes sense that deadlifts and dips cause greater changes to its muscular structure. Seriously, drop what you’re doing, perform these 10 compound movements, eat some food, and take some mirror selfies one year apart. If you have that kind of patience, your mind will absolutely be blown.

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Exercise Science

The Goldilocks Zone

There are many truisms in the iron game that seemingly contradict each other. The two most basic sayings, seemingly at odds with each other, are “slow and steady wins the race” and “the average person doesn’t train hard enough.”

Dialing in hard workouts without blowing yourself up with overtraining can be one of the hardest parts of a lifetime spent searching for significant PRs. Dr. Mike Isreatel breaks down the proper way to diagnose and implement a regimen of appropriate stimulus-to-fatigue ratio to keep you on the right track toward achieving your weight-room goals.

Dr. Israetel notes there is a very real physical, as well as psychological, limit to the body’s ability to recover from training. Every year, when the alarm clock goes off at 5 a.m., the zeal of the convert is regularly reduced to the apathy of the cynic between January 1 and February 1. More alarmingly, the lifetime devotee will find diminished improvement straying too far outside the “sweet spot” of training load management.

Keep your body both stimulated and recovered by learning to moderate your intensity on both cardio and weight training for long-term perseverance.

CrossFit

Athletes Voice Concern

According to CrossFit athletes (you know, the ones actually competing every year), the tragic death of Serbian athlete Lazar Ðukic at the 2024 Games was the untimely culmination of a problem the organization has had for years.

Experienced competitor Brent Fikowski was among the many to direct criticism at CrossFit HQ for maintaining unsafe conditions for years and refusing to change or even acknowledge the need to listen to the athletes' voices. 

Leveling the singular criticism that “when they say ‘safety is our number one priority,’ I simply have not believed this to be true for a long time,” Fikowski hopes he and others can create positive change to avoid ever placing the life of a Games competitor in undue danger again. Find out what the anger is all about and what changes need to be made to keep competitive CrossFit moving in the right direction.

Everything Else

Overhead, but Always in Our Heart

• The overhead squat can be a serious test, not necessarily of your overall leg power, but of your mobility and core strength. Master the basics and improve on those lagging attributes.

• Istanbul, Türkiye, hosted the EPF’s European bench press championships for over 600 raw and equipped lifters. Full results are available here.

• Old-school WSM viewers may remember when Hafthór Björnssons’s homeland was referred to as the “Icelandic Strongman Factory,” and the results from its recent national championships showed the reputation is still well deserved.