What Are The Best Exercises to Build Muscle? (Science Explained)

[Music] let's break down with the best exercises for building muscle or according to the science welcome back Dr metal wolf here today with strong by science breaking down the research on what exercises are best for building muscle in your physique let me give you the bad news first and the bad news is that we don't have a ton of studies directly comparing different exercises if you're not super familiar with exercise science you might think we have studies comparing the dumbbell fly and the cable fly and the cable fly the cable crossover determining which one is

best and as much as I would love to say that's the case we just don't have those research studies are a ton of work and so we don't get research studies on every topic ever however through the findings of different studies we're often able to piece them together and create a puzzle that roughly approximates a bad analogy for scientific principles to base or excess sele off but before we come to those I will discuss the few studies we do actually have comparing individual exercises to see which one tends to be better and maybe that can

tell us something about which exercises more broadly tend to be best for hypertrophy throughout my PhD in my whole education and a recent search on the topic here are all the studies I was able to find comparing different exercises and seeing which one is better for blowing muscle first we have a couple of studies comparing the overhead extension exercise to the cable push down and that's a study by myoan colleagues and a study by stakin colleagues in the study by myoan colleagues they found better overall tricep hypertrophy in all three ads doing the overhead extension

over the cable push down conversely in the staki study they compared the overhead extension to the push down as well in a smaller soundful size measuring only tricep long at hypertrophy broadly finding similar hypertrophy whether participants were doing a cable push down or the overhead extension specifically at the more proximal side of measurement closer to the shoulder the push down a slight Edge meanwhile at the more distal measurement site closer to the Elbow the overhead extension has a slight Edge and so when you take these two studies together overhead extensions are likely the slightly better

choice for tricep hypertrophy and specifically when you consider the long head of the tricep it does make sense in the overhead extension you're lengthening or stretching that part of the triceps more which based on some other research seems beneficial for hypertrophy the second comparison we have is a comparison of the incline curl and the pre-ra curl and that's a study by zabita cording colleages they measured hypertrophy of all the elbow flexor musculature and generally at all sides measured found better hypertrophy in the pre-trial group compared to the incline curl group looking a bit more closely

at the results the differences were largest in favor of the preach curl at the more distal measurement sides closer to the elbow and that is another one of the findings from the long versus shorter muscle length training research in this case you're comparing an exercise that is most challenging in the lengthened position but that doesn't place a huge stretch on the target muscle that is the prri to an exercise that has a bit more of a stretch but has less tension in that lengthened position and that is the incline CW and based on this study

and a couple of other findings it might be the case that in any exercise that is produced for hypertrophy we generally want to prioritize both the stretch position and tension but more specifically tension in that lengthen position over just purely getting a deeper stretch in the muscle staying in the upper body now we have another comparison of the school Crusher and the bench press exercise by Bren and cies they looked at a variety of factors including exercise order but one of their comparisons in the study was a group that only did Skull Crushers to a

group that only did the bench press measuring pectoralis major hypertrophy and tricp hypertrophy when it came to pectoralis major or chest growth the skull crusher group didn't really grow any muscle however the bench press group it and when you look at the other conditions it seems like including the bench is the main thing and then as far as the triceps are concerned there are a few findings first with regards to the long head which is a biarticular muscle responsible for both shoulder extension and elbow extension sko Crushers were far more effective at growing that muscle

likewise when it came to the medial head of the triceps the Skool Crusher was a bit more effective than the bench press and finally with a lateral head of the triceps the bench press was slightly more effective than the Skool Crusher interestingly there are a few findings we should pay attention to hit number one in a biarticular muscle like the L head we generally want to isolate one of its functions or perform both of its functions at the same time if we're shortening the target muscle at one joint while lengthening it at the other joint

during a compound movement there's some research suggesting that's not ideal for growth for example another study by Kubo and colleagues in the rectus femoris and the hamstrings both of these muscles experienced this effect during the squat they also found very poor hypertrophy and so in biarticular muscles like the long head of the triceps a tricp isolation movement is probably a better choice but specifically the skull crusher was better than the bench press for the long head and the medial head whereas the bench press was better a lateral head and in fact in a group that

included both the school Crusher and the bench press they saw the best overall tricep hypertrophy so some variety in your excess selection is a wise thing to do isolation movements tend to work better for botri muscles and different movements might Target different areas of a muscle next up we have two studies one unpublished by our own Lab at Leman college with Brad shonfeld and one published by kosida and colleagues comparing the seated cafr to the standing cafres and measuring gastrus and Solus growth to make a long story short the results in both of these studies

are very similar that is to say standing calf raises lead to more gastrous growth than seated calf raises and Seed calf raises seem to lead to similar or maybe if you look very closely slightly greater growth than standing calf raises in the Solus but this effect is very marginal if there is one compared to the difference in hypertrophy and the gastr so for overall hypertrophy most if not all of your training should likely just be standing calres there are two potential interpretations for these two studies the first is that in the standing cafes we saw

more hypertrophy of the Gast tro because it is more stretched in that movement so in line with other research it would just be the case that lengthening a muscle more during training is beneficial for hopy the second interpretation is that during standing calf raises because the gastrus is a biarticular muscle and you're shortening it at the knee you're placing it into active insufficiency reducing its ability to produce tension and therefore its hypertrophic stimulus and personally I'm partial to the first interpretation but take it as you will next we have a couple of studies comparing the

Smith machine squat to the leg extension exercise broadly speaking hypertrophy is relatively similar it leans slightly in favor of the leg extension over the Smith machine squat importantly the results as far as the exact distribution of a hypertrophy like for example whether or not leg extensions are better for the reos femoris than the squat are relatively inconsistent between these two studies so maybe leg extensions are slightly better overall for Quad hypertrophy but it's by a small margin and importantly this is in the context of the squat depth being quite Limited in both of these studies

so if you're able to squat deeper than participants and did in this study with the stretch being an important factor for hypertrophy there's a good chance the squat would be more hypertrophic for the quads overall next we have a study comparing the hip thrust to the squat exercise which is better for lower body growth in the study by Plotkin and colleagues they looked at gluteus hypertrophy adapter hypertrophy hamstring hypertrophy and quadricep hypertrophy they found similar gluteus hypertrophy but they found substantially more quadricep hypertrophy and substantially more aductor hypertrophy from the squat compared to the hip

thrust meanwhile since the hamstrings are a biarticular muscle I wouldn't expect them to grow much from either of these exercises and indeed the growth in those was relatively small what this study seems to suggest is that muscle length isn't as important as we thought so a squad is relatively challenging Clos to the stretch position and allows more people to get deeper and get into a deeper stretch for their glutes whereas the hip thrust is essentially a par range of motion at sh muscle lengths and is hardest in that Peak squeeze position so what goes well

if you actually look at how deep the participants were squatting on average they were squatting a little bit above parallel so their depth might have been contributing to the results so what we can say from this study is that if you're not squatting particularly deep as far as just the glutes go the hip thrust and the squad are probably similarly effective for reducing hypertrophy in the glutes but when it comes to the quads and Alors the squats has an edge and neither of these two exercises is particularly effective hyperring the hamstrings next we have another

study by myen colleagues that compare the seed light curl to the lying light curl in the seed light curl the biarticular hamstrings are more lengthened whereas in the ly light curl the biarticular hamstrings are more shortened additionally they also measured gillus and sororus hypertrophy specifically the sororus is a baric muscle that is responsible for hip flexion the opposite of the hamstrings so in this case it was more lengthened during the lying leg curl than the seed leg curl and just as you'd expect based on the muscle length research I've been mentioning so far in the

seed leg curl they observe more hypertrophy in all three of the biarticular hamstrings than lying like curl and the lying leg curl they observe more hypertrophy of the sorious muscle than in the seed leg curl so essentially a crossy these two exercises when a muscle was being more stretched it experienced more growth and otherwise there were no differences because ultimately both of these things are LL variations importantly the range of motion was equated for here between Lea and line LL and so this study is also in support of the idea that if you're looking for

a good exercise for hypertrophy the stretch is a big thing you should be looking for to round off the direct comparisons we have two more studies both of these studies compare the bicep curl with dumbbells to different back exercises one of them compared to the pull down exercise when they measured bicep hypertrophy at only one site they found similar bicep hypertrophy from the pull down to the Domo curl and so the pull down seems like a decent option to grow the biceps conversely when another study compared the bicep curl to an underhand dumbbell row they

found around twice as much hypertrophy from the dumbbell curl compared to the underhand dumbbell row and so certain back movements may be a little bit better when it comes to stimulating hypertrophy of the biceps than others specifically it might be the case based on only these two studies so it is very preliminary but it might be the case that vertical pulling is better for your biceps compared to horizontal pulling and that about wraps it up for all of the direct studies we have comparing different excises So based on This research could you go and write

a program using only the most effective exercises from direct comparisons of different exercises in the studies no for instance if you wanted to grow your abs we don't have any research to my knowledge comparing the effectiveness of different ad exercises and actually measuring AB hypertrophy so instead you're going to have to rely to some extent on these generalized principles that seem to emerge if you look at these studies together in combination so what other principles can we arrive at from the research well for one we have a couple of met analyses comparing Machine versus freee

exercises finding that they're basically the same for hypertrophy so just because a movement is machine based or free rate based doesn't make it any better inherently similarly a met analysis of single versus multi-joint training found similar hypertrophy whether you're doing compound movements only or isolation movements only or a combination with that being said single joint movements do have a theoretical Edge and that they make it more likely that the target muscle group is the limiting factor if you're doing something like a deadlift for Quad hypertrophy there's a lot of other things that could give out

before your quads do resulting in your quads not being taken all the way to muscular failure however when it comes to S like a leg extension where the quads are the only muscles capable of extending your knee if you take this set to failure your quads will be at failure as well and so generally on principle more isolation movements are going to be preferable for individual muscle groups and importantly my whole pH was on the effects of range of motion during training on hypertrophy and strength and one of the findings I've kept coming back to

throughout this video in these comparisons of different exercises is that getting a deep stretch in the Target muscle group under tension is important when it comes to selecting the right exercise for hypertrophy without further Ado let me break down what I think the principles for exercise selection are based on all this research first like I just mentioned a really good hypertrophy exercise will have the target muscle group placed in a stretch position placed under plenty of tension in a stretch position and the exercise will allow allow you to safely do lengthen partials for example on

a freee squat you may not want to do partials in the stretch position however on something like a like press you might be able to do so more safely next whatever exercise you pick should Target one of the functions of the target muscle group to go back to the Brian study if all you did with Skull Crushers you would never actually grow your chest very much because the skull crusher doesn't Target one of the functions of the PC and ideally across your whole exercise selection you would make sure to cover a variety of functions of

each muscle to make sure you're getting as much overall hyper few as possible next as I mentioned earlier the fewer non-target muscle limiting factors there are or things that could essentially prevent the target muscle from being limiting factor the better what this means is that for example you want to pick the right exercise for the right rep range if you do squats for sets of 20 you might find you get out of breath before your quads reach anywhere close to failure and so the best exercise for hypertrophy is also rep range specific but more importantly

what this means is that if you really want to gr your triceps isolation movements are probably better than compound movements and this was evidenced in the brand study for example where the skore crusher did result in better overall tricep hypertrophy by some margin than the bench press and finally a good hypertrophy exercise will also be reasonably stable be reasonably loadable so that you can get somewhere in the 5 to 50 rep range you need to be able to add enough load to make it to within that rep range and that's about it to maximize muscle

building if you consider these four or five factors you'll make excellent choices let me give you a few more criteria if you're pressed for time as well first the squat the bench the that lift and even the over press as much as many people love them myself included they tend not to be very time efficient for most people it just takes a ton of time so if you're going for muscle growth consider exercises that are a bit more time efficient for example dumbbell based stack loaded machines those tend to just be the easiest and the

fastest because you don't need to set up the barbell you don't need to load the barbell they just tend to be a bit more time efficient all us being equal similarly body weight exercises are great next Super setable or drop setable exercises are phenomenal as well we have research on antagonistic paired super sets or essentially pairing two exercises with no overlap in terms of the musculature being involved generally not compromising performance which if you can superet two exercises and cut your training time in half and get the same stimulus that is good news likewise when

it comes to drop sets we have a metanalysis by Coleman and colleagues comparing traditional set training to drop set training finding similar atrophy with a caveat that in the drop set training groups they took about 50 to 70% less time to train and so exercises predominantly stack loaded machine exercises that easily allow you to drop set are great as well on the other hand if for example you're looking for an easy chest and back superet consider it the incline dumbbell press and the incline dumbbell rope and finally although it's a very minor component of making

an exercise more time efficient bilateral exercises where you're training both of your limbs at the same time for example doing a barbell squat versus a barbell split squat the barbell squat will be a tiny bit more time efficient on account of just needing to do one versus two sets if you want a whole video on how to make your training more time efficient it'll be published soon so stay tuned that's the video I broke down all of the research on what exercises are best for hypertrophy both from the direct research and from generalizable principles we're

able to get at from exercise science as a whole when you're selecting your exercise for apoy consider these principles or don't and instead get a qualified coach to do the work for you we have a qualified team of coaches ATB science.com coaching who would love to take care of your training nutrition or even just have a consultation with you to be able to answer your questions if you're looking for similar information delivered to you for free every couple of weeks in your email inbox check out the newsletter below if there's anything else you'd like to

see us cover over here at the straw by Science Channel leave a comment down below and we'll get to it that is the video have a fantastic day and we'll see you guys next time peace [Music]