I know most of us here are strong, fit, alpha males, so I hope you can opine - if you could only do one upper-body exercise what would it be? Bench? Bent over rows? Overhead press? For lower body, sure it is the back squat, but for upper body, my vote goes to pullups. I think it is far and away the most practical upper body exercise.
It’s like asking if I only had 1 meal to eat in a day, which one would it be: breakfest, lunch or dinner?
The strong, fit, alpha male doesn’t only do 1 upper body exercise. Neither should you.
Push ups, pull ups, and dips get you 90% of what you need. All can be done with weight and there are a bunch of variations. Add barbell overhead press and you’re golden. Curls are a complete waste of time.
The man knows his stuff… great advice (I used to be a certified personal trainer)
Pull ups
And I disagree about the back squat. If you can only do one lift, I’d want to be doing hexbar squats instead.
If I had to pick, I would say pull-ups, followed extremely closely by push-ups.
Why I give pull-ups the edge–because during the normal course of a persons life, they will use their pull muscles more than they will use push muscles. (Then again, push-ups work a lot of core muscles that pull-ups don’t. Hmmmm…maybe it’s a tie.)
Heavy heavy deads
Think of it this way, if you were in a prison and could do only 1 move what would that be ?
My top priority:
- Deadlifts
- KB snatch
- Pullups
The original question was just upper body. If we’re talking one move not limited to upper body it would have to be DLs, maybe clean & jerk. Clean & jerk combines a dead lift, shrug, high pull, front squat and shoulder press. Tough to beat that. It also requires tremendous core/stabilizer strength to catch the weight in the rack position.
How do you squat with that monstrosity?
The clean requires superior skill.I have been lifting for a very long timr(sport specific) yet I never go for moves like that.
The clean isnt very good for building strength either.
Nope,also very likely to injure yourself. KB clean is a different animal though.
Beastly exercise and one that I love!!
Surely u mean hexbar dead or romanian?.. No way u can squat heavy with that bar…
atlas stone to shoulder, best exercise.
Fapping
you could if you’re on a podium. most people that say that they can squat heavy only actually move about 2-3 inches so i would take it with a grain of salt
best upper body exercise is without a doubt the wide-grip pullup. If you can do 10 of those from a dead hang, time to add some weight and watch the back grow!
as long as you remember to switch hands! can’t have an imbalance because of the dominant forearm…