Highly effective exercises to help you build more mass
There’s always little tweaks or variations you can make to your current exercise library in order to keep things fresh, keep your body progressing and adding more lean mass. Instead of being stuck to your stereotypical fitness magazine exercises, here’s some alternatives that can challenge you in a new way for new gains.
- Reverse Grip Bench Press.
Not many people know this, but the reverse grip bench press is a great way to hit your chest and upper chest (no typo). This form of bench pressing also helps with people who may get shoulder niggles on a normal bench press as it reduces the involvement of the shoulders during the press. Palms will be facing backwards on this one and place them wider than shoulder width. This exercise is a great shaper for the chest! - Short Stride Lunges.
Normal lunges are a great exercise for your legs, especially your glutes when you stride quite far forward. By reducing the length of your stride significantly, all the tension is targeted towards your quads instead. This one burns and can be done with dumbbells, a barbell or bodyweight only. - Rolling Plank.
The rolling plank has you basically going from a basic plank on your forearms, into a side plank on both sides. The challenge in this exercise is that you only change position once you start fatiguing on the one you’re in. So start out holding the normal plank until failure, then roll into the side plank without touching the floor, hold again until failure, rinse and repeat. This is a great and challenging core exercise for your abs and obliques. - Negative Calf Raises.
A little bit like the Nordic exercise, this one requires you to have the sole of your feet propped under something while you slowly lower yourself forward then back again. This one massively targets your calf’s and keeps constant tension on them throughout as your feet press against the support to keep you grounded. Take this one slow! - Lying Cable Lateral Raises.
The problem with most lateral raises is that you’ll tend to use your traps more than your shoulders. Lateral raises are often done wrong, struggling to isolate the side delts. This lying variation not only allow you to target your side delts better than standing, but it keeps constant tension on throughout. This is a great alternative.
Give these a try in this workout next time you hit the gym and feel free to tag us with your videos #gymplanapp.
