Getting stronger requires more than just adding plates to the same three lifts. It requires some actual thought when it comes to exercise selection. Here are the seven most strategic lifts you’re probably not doing. We’ll go over what they target and how they’ll make you stronger on the big three. 1 – Belt Squat Targeted Muscles: Quads How It Helps: If your hips shoot up and your chest falls forward during the squat, this can help prevent that. Strength development occurs primarily as a result of neural adaptations (1). Heavy-load resistance training produces greater strength gains when compared to low-load resistance training (2). Unfortunately, training at high intensities generates significant fatigue which can become an obstacle and even lead to overreaching if left unchecked (3). When we look at primary exercises where the lower body plays a major role, like the deadlift and squat, a significant contributor to fatigue is axial loading (4). Axial loading is where your spine is under a compressive load such as a barbell squat. However, the belt squat allows you to bypass axial loading. This makes it an excellent exercise for developing strength because you can maintain high intensities without generating nearly as much fatigue when compared to a barbell squat. 2 – Floor Press Targeted Muscles: Chest, shoulders, triceps How It Helps: Ever get stuck at the midpoint of the bench press? This’ll help with that. The sticking point on the barbell bench press for most lifters occurs at the midway point (about 6-8 inches off the chest). It’s a common problem. During the typical powerlifting setup, your back is arched and you use leg drive, which generates an impulse force to rapidly develop momentum to initiate the lift. This is great in competition where you need to use every advantage, but in training we can eliminate these benefits strategically to improve bench press performance. The floor press forces you to remain flat and doesn’t allow for leg drive. And since the bottom end of the floor press and the sticking point of your competition bench press are generally the same, you can train your sticking point directly while simultaneously increasing your raw strength. 3 – Reverse Hyper Targeted Muscles: Low back, hamstrings, glutes How It Helps: Guilty of rounding the low back during deadlifts? These have your back. The reverse hyper was introduced by Louie Simmons. It’s gained popularity, but there are still a surprising number of people who are unaware of this exercise. Strength athletes generally train movements to build strength, not muscles. But this can become a limiting factor. For example, if an athlete’s quads can generate 600 pounds of force but his or her low back can only brace 400 pounds, the rate-limiting factor is the low back. This is where adopting more of a bodybuilding approach can be highly beneficial to specific athletes. The reverse hyper directly trains your glutes and hamstrings but primarily targets your low back (5). Training your low back can improve your ability to brace during heavy squats and deadlifts. An additional upside is that the exercise has a low fatigue cost and actually has restorative properties due to the decompression that occurs during the movement (5). 4 – Safety Squat Bar (SSB) Squat Targeted Muscles: Quads and core How It Helps: Hips shooting up during the squat? Chest falling forward? Here’s an exercise that’ll help prevent it. This is an effective variation of the low-bar squat. A common error many lifters make is the chest-fall pattern: their hips shoot up and their chests fall forward as they stand up with the weight. It almost looks like a good morning. This is most often associated with weak quads. But a SSB squat distributes load differently than a traditional low-bar squat which alters the torque requirements. Because of your upright position, the SSB squat requires more torque from the knees compared to a standard low-bar squat (6). So this exercise puts you into a more quad-dominant movement pattern to preferentially train your deficiency. Because you can’t grip the bar as you normally do, your upper back isn’t as tight, so this exercise also increases your upper back and core strength. 5 – Band Pressdown Targeted Muscles: Triceps How It Helps: This is another preventative exercise for those whose bench press gets stuck at the midpoint. Supplementary work for strength development is often written off because it’s not specific. Big mistake. Increasing your muscle fibers’ cross sectional area directly relates to increased force production (7). And since the triceps play an important role in the bench press, they often require additional work. To understand the benefits of the band pressdown over other triceps exercises, we need to understand torque. Torque is a twisting force that tends to cause rotation (8). This diagram shows the action of a triceps pressdown. The linear force (the external load of the cable
Origin: The 7 Best Strength Exercises You Don’t Do