Introduction

Today one of my fellow gym buddies asked me if i did powerlifting i responded by saying no, but after thinking about it when i was younger and just starting out i did do alot of basic compound movements.

I remember like it was just yesterday (haha) when my older sister brought home her boyfriend at the time, now husband of many years with 3 children and at the time I thought he was The Terminator. To cut a long story short he had a very basic old school weight bench and olympic size bar with a couple of 20KG plates, some 10s, 5s and 2.5kgs and dumbell bars which you would then add the plate weights to and use as you please.

Now back then I thought it was AWESOME! and was very interested and keen to learn more which until now I haven’t realised how good it actually was. So I started doing basic bench press, barbell curls, military press, clean and jerk, barbell shoulder raises, shrugs and to me was just raw power movements and each week I would just keep going up and up until I couldn’t do anymore.

To me as I said to my gym buddy when i look back now that honestly was the building blocks for what I have today, a good solid frame with something I can build on top of.

SO! below are a list of exercises I think are good for beginners to do as building blocks for their future body. Please keep in mind this is just something I think is good to do to build muscle, strength and core and may not be the best routine for you, so keep an open mind.

Clean and Jerk

This honestly was my absolute favourite as it does so many muscles it’s not funny. Mum wasn’t to impressed cause I almost put some holes in the walls when I couldn’t hold the weight and when it slammed down it would wake her up haha she loved it!

This exercise uses the following muscles traps, lats, deltoids, biceps, triceps, spinal erectors, inner core muscles, hamstrings.

Barbell Upright Row

Over and over again, thats all i’m going to say. This obviously targets the Deltoid – Lateral but what alot of people don’t know is that it also does alot of assisted muscles like biceps, traps, Infraspinatus, Supraspinatus and a few stabilizing muscles aswell. This is a massive muscle builder.

Bench Press

I think we would all have to say we have done this at one time or another. If done correctly it can be a massive chest builder and if done wrong can cause some major issues. I loved and still love doing bench press and when I was young I did them all the time. This obviously does the Pectoralis Major and helps with your core stabilizing muscles.

Barbell Bicep Curl

I used to do these using the olympic size barbell and boy did it smash my biceps. Even though this is classed as an Isolation move, it is a great muscle builder and would highly recommend it for teaching yourself correct form and control of not only your biceps but core muscles.

Squats

Even though i didn’t do much of these when i was younger i do recommend these when starting out starting with something simple like your body weight with an exercise ball against a wall and then progressing up to something harder as you feel the need. This builds good solid core at the same time as being a awesome leg muscle builder.

Lunges

These were done on occasion with the dumbells that i had and would start with one leg down then back up to starting then next leg down continued in the one spot. I would then progressively move onto walking lunges and at the begin no weight just body weight then move onto the weights for increased resistence.

Conclusion

Overall I would like to finish by saying that your goals of being massive, fit, toned or skinny does not happen over night… It takes Passion, Determination, Time and lots of Patience. So please don’t give up, don’t whinge, don’t complain… KEEP GOING! PUSH YOURSELF! and enjoy it at the same time… we are lucky to live in a country where we can go to a place where we can hang out with mates and like minded poeple and do what we truely love doing.

If anyone has any questions or suggestions feel free to get in contact with us and/or post below.

I do hope you have enjoyed this article and that if you are only new to weight lifting you have learnt something valuable. I’m sure there is plenty more that people feel should be in this article and thats great, so add your comments below and let others continue to read on and learn more.

Please Note: All images used in this article have been sourced using Google Images and the exercise names were used to do this. You to can search for these images and find where they came from.