What Are The Best Exercises For Building Muscle
In this instructional YouTube video, fitness coach Eric Roberts explains that optimal muscle and strength gains come from consistently training five core movement patterns each week rather than relying on specific “magic” exercises. He breaks down each pattern—upper‑body vertical and horizontal push, upper‑body vertical and horizontal pull, hip‑dominant, knee‑dominant, and core work—detailing what qualifies as each, why they matter for hypertrophy, strength, posture, and injury prevention, and offering numerous exercise variations for each pattern. Roberts stresses a push‑to‑pull balance (at least 1:1, preferably more pulling) to protect shoulder health, and he highlights the importance of incorporating unilateral knee‑dominant work to avoid imbalances. Core training is split into flexion‑based (traditional crunches) and anti‑movement (Pallof presses, planks, farmer’s carries) exercises. He then walks through a concrete lower‑body workout example that combines a barbell back squat, dumbbell Romanian deadlift, a hip‑thrust/Bulgarian split‑squat superset, and a leg‑curl isolation set. The video concludes with calls to action for viewers to follow the channel, check related videos on weekly programming, and consider his group or one‑on‑one coaching services. The overall message is that mastering these movement patterns and applying the programming principles will drive consistent muscle growth without being tied to any single exercise.
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YouTube, what is going on? Welcome back to the channel. Welcome to the video. In this video, you and I are going to discuss the exercises that you must do. You have to, you have to, you have to do these exercises every single week. So I'm going to start with a little bit of a preliminary announcement, if you will. Then I'm going to talk about what the hell all of these letters mean. Don't worry, by the time we get to the end of this, or probably about halfway through, Once we get about halfway through, you'll know exactly what all of these letters and these arrows and what all these things mean. All right, so we're going to cover all 5 of these things right here, and then at the end we are going to talk about what to add in after we cover all of this. And then what I'm also going to do is give you an example lower body day with the exercises that I talk about right here In this video. Okay, so you're gonna want to stick around for that. And without further ado, let's hop into the preliminary announcement, so to speak. And that is going to be— spoiler alert— there are no exercises that you need to be doing every single week. And here's what I mean. There are, because I'm going to show you, otherwise I wouldn't make a 20-30 minute video, however long this is going to end up being. But I need you to be aware of something. A lot of people come to me and they ask me things like, Eric, do I have to do a barbell back squat? Eric, do I have to do a barbell deadlift from the floor? Eric, do I have to do a barbell bench press? And they ask me all these kinds of exercises. Listen, there is no one magic special exercise that you need to do every single time, no matter what. By the time you're done this video, you will know what exercises you should be choosing during your workouts. But please just know, if you're not doing a barbell back squat, that's going to be okay. Or if you're not doing a barbell deadlift from the floor, that's going to be okay. Because instead of just focusing on exact exercises, I want you to focus on movement patterns instead. There aren't specific exercises that you need to do every single week, but there are specific movement patterns that you should be doing every single week. And in this video, I'm going to show you exactly what those movement patterns are. And of course, because I love you, I'll give you some exercise examples of what those movement patterns are. And the reason that we're going to talk about specific movement patterns is because if you ever heard the phrase, there's a million ways to skin a cat, no clue how that phrase came up. And I think it's honestly pretty fucking weird if you ask me, but I guess it's true. There are a million ways to skin a cat. And there's also a million different exercises you could choose from, which I know can be overwhelming, which again, don't worry, I'm going to help you with here in this video. But as opposed to getting so dogmatic and saying, I can only do this, I can only do this, I can only do this. We are going to talk about what movement patterns should you be hitting throughout the week instead. And then number 2, on top of that, the reason there's going to be 5 main movement patterns that we're going to cover is these are the movement patterns that promote the most muscle gain, that promote the most strength gain, that help you stay injury-free, that help, you know, help your posture, help protect you from lower back pain, all of that like good stuff, all of the stuff that you want to make happen and you want to see results with. These movement patterns are going to bring to you. So let's first start with the movement pattern of the pushing movement pattern, specifically talking about upper body pushing movements. What is an upper body pushing movement? Well, just think of it as you are pushing the weight away from you. So think about something like a push-up. Or think about something like a chest press, or think about something like a shoulder press, or like a close grip bench press. All of those movements are pushing movements. Even things like tricep pushdowns, for example, a pushing movement. The pushing movement is something you should be doing throughout the course of your weekly workouts. You might not do it in every single workout, which we will talk about a little bit later here in this video, But throughout the course of the week, you should be incorporating upper body pushing movements. Now there's 2 kind of segues off of upper body push, which is going to be a vertical push and a horizontal push. And so, okay, we know that pushing movements are things that push, right? Chest press, shoulder press, all this good stuff. Now you're just kind of breaking it up into Vertical pushing, which is pushing the weight over your head, right? So think of all kinds of shoulder press variations. But this is where, again, we'll take the standard barbell shoulder press. You can do a barbell shoulder press, but you could do a half-kneeling one-arm shoulder press. You could do a seated dumbbell shoulder press. You could do a seated Arnold shoulder press. You could do a standing supported one-arm shoulder press. You could do a seated barbell shoulder. Like I hope you're understanding. There's a lot of ways that you can do a shoulder press, so it doesn't just have to be a standing or seated barbell shoulder press. There are different variations you can pick from for an upper body vertical pushing movement pattern. And then again, for example, the horizontal. Pushing movement pattern. Once again, this could be a barbell bench press. That's like the standard horizontal pushing pattern. Or it could be a dumbbell chest press. It could be an incline dumbbell chest press. It could be a barbell floor press. It could be a dumbbell floor press. It could be a push-up. It could be a one-arm chest press laying on the ground or laying on a bench. Once again, as you can see, if you're doing any of those variations—a dumbbell chest press, a barbell chest press, an incline chest press, a push-up—all of that is still going to be a horizontal pushing movement pattern. So this is once again why, even if you might not be doing a barbell bench press, you can if you'd like to. But there are other exercises where you can still get a horizontal pushing. Movement pattern. So that is the first one. The next one is going to be an upper body pulling movement pattern. This is going to be things like chin-ups, for example, some sort of bent-over row, for example, some sort of seated cable row, for example, some sort of one-arm dumbbell row, some sort of lat pulldown, for example. All of those are upper body pulling movements. And again, even to a degree, something like a bicep curl, you are pulling the weight closer to your body. In a chin-up, you are pulling yourself up. In a lat pulldown, you are pulling the bar down towards your body. In a bent-over row, you are pulling the weight up. That is an upper body pulling movement. And? This also gets divided up into vertical and horizontal pulling movements. So again, a vertical pull is where you are pulling from essentially above your head or just kind of like out in front of you. You are pulling the weight down. So again, this could be a chin-up, this could be any sort of— you could do a double arm lat pulldown, you could do an underhand lat pulldown, you could do a single arm lat pulldown. Seated lat pulldown, there are plenty of upper body pulling movements that you could potentially do. The same with an upper body horizontal pull. So again, these are things like a seated cable row. This could be a barbell bent-over row. If you're bent over with the barbell and pulling the barbell to, you know, your sternum or your belly button area, that's a horizontal pulling movement pattern. It could be a one-arm dumbbell row, a double-arm dumbbell row. It could be a seated one-arm cable row. Like, again, there are many variations of an upper body horizontal push, but as long as you are getting both pushing and pulling, and within the pushing and pulling you are getting vertical and horizontal pushing and pulling with your upper body, you are going to be pretty much set. Now there's some other things we'll talk about a little bit later you might want to add in, But that's really for your upper body. And here's a little quick programming tip I can give to you as well, because I've been a coach for literally over 7 years now, and I've programmed a lot of workouts in my day. If you want to stay injury-free, typically speaking, you will probably have at least the same, if not a little bit more pulling than pushing, because most people All day long, what are most people doing? We're never really pulling things toward us. We're like hunched over on a desk, we're hunched over on— you might be hunched over right now on your phone watching this, on your, you know, on your phone, laptop, iPad, whatever it is. Our shoulders are kind of in this rounded forward position. So if you do more pulling, you're going to be able to open your shoulders up and you're going to probably save your shoulder health in the long run. So when I say it should be at least Even or more. Let's just say you're doing an upper body workout. For example, you have a bench press and then you have a chin-up. Already that's a 1 to 1. You have 1 pushing and 1 pulling, right? Let's say you then add in an extra bent-over row. Now you have 1 pushing movement and 2 pulling movements for your upper body workout. Thus far, it is a 1 to 2 ratio. 1 push, to 2 pull. Now again, will it be perfect every single time? No, it might not. But overall, over the course of the workout and the course of the entire week's worth of workouts, try to have at least a 1 to 1 push to pull. I probably wouldn't do more pushing than pulling because it's probably going to injure your shoulders over the long haul. Now we got that covered. Let's go into the next one, which is going to be a hip dominant movement pattern. So a hip dominant movement pattern would be things that obviously you are using your hip musculature in order to complete that movement. So something like a deadlift, for example. A deadlift is a very hip dominant movement. You could do a sumo deadlift. You could do a conventional deadlift. You could do a trap bar deadlift. You could also do a Romanian deadlift. You could do a barbell Romanian deadlift. You could do a dumbbell Romanian deadlift. You could do a single leg Romanian deadlift. You could do a regular dumbbell deadlift with 2 dumbbells down by your side. I would also incorporate into the hip dominant movements hip thrust. For example, you can do a barbell hip thrust. You can do a Smith machine hip thrust. You can do a single leg hip thrust. You can do a kickstand hip thrust. I hope you're starting to see there are many kinds of hip dominant movement patterns. And again, the hip dominant movement pattern is where your hip musculature, mainly hamstrings and glutes, are going to be the main driving factors of those movements. If you think about a hip thrust, if you think about a Romanian deadlift, if you think about a sumo deadlift, if you think about these movement patterns, they are mainly worked by your hamstrings and your glutes. So incorporating some hip-dominant movement patterns throughout the course of the week is going to be very beneficial for you. But it doesn't have to be a barbell deadlift from the ground. You might do a Romanian deadlift, you might do a single leg Romanian deadlift or a hip thrust, but you don't have to do a barbell deadlift. So hip-dominant movements. We are then going to dive right into the next part, which is going to be your knee dominant movements. And these are your standard squat exercises. But here's the thing, and this is like— this one in particular, I don't know why people think this, but people think you have to do a barbell back squat. You could, because that is a knee dominant movement. Your knee is the main joint that's kind of like getting the most action there. Is— again, is a squat going to work the hip joint? Of course it is. Like a squat squat is a multi-joint movement pattern, but a knee-dominant movement pattern. It could be a barbell back squat, but it also could be a barbell split squat. It could be a dumbbell split squat. It could be a Bulgarian split squat. It could be a reverse lunge. Hell, it could even be a step-up to a degree. It could be a front foot elevated split squat. It could be a rear foot elevated split squat. It could be a goblet squat. It could be a goblet box squat. It could be a barbell back squat. Are you starting to understand here? It could be a leg press, for example. Knee dominant movement patterns are essentially your squat or split squat movement patterns. And then also as well, potentially a leg press thrown into that equation. So if you're doing some sort of squat, single leg, double leg, walking lunges are one as well, right? Like all of these movements are going to be squat dominant movement patterns. And so as long as you are getting done, the squat dominant movement pattern, you don't necessarily have to do a barbell back squat. There are plenty of other exercises you could potentially perform. Now again, I'm not sitting here like shitting on a barbell back squat. I program barbell back squats and I do barbell back squats, but I don't want you to think that's the like only movement pattern and you have to do it every single workout program. There are other exercises you can throw in there that still have the same squat movement pattern, still going to work your quads, Still going to work your glutes, still going to work the same musculature, just in a different way. And with the knee dominant movement patterns, to be quite frank with you, I would include at least one unilateral movement. And unilateral just means one leg, because a barbell back squat or a goblet squat, or if you're doing a double leg leg press, that's using both legs. You want to incorporate unilateral movements into your training because if not, number one, you could potentially develop some muscle imbalances which can lead to injury over time because when you're always doing double leg inherently you're going to kind of bias one side more than the other. And if you have that muscle imbalance, you won't ever be able to correct it because you're never working each side equally. You're always doing bilateral. So if you incorporate unilateral movements, Like if you do a Bulgarian split squat, for example, which I can put here above a video of me doing and showing you how to do Bulgarian split squats, you can check it out if you want to. But if you do a Bulgarian split squat, the only thing that can work is the leg that is down. So you are working on those muscle imbalances and you'll be able to work the muscle you want to work that much more because you're putting all of your attention, all of your focus on that side. It can help with things like stability. It can also help your core strength as well. It can help your balance, all of those things, which again, just aside from like looking good naked, that's really cool. Looking good naked, sweet. But I think we also want to be strong. We want to be functional. We want to be healthy. We want to be, you know, be able to go out like into the real world, not just like in our only like workouts. We want to be able to do things in real life, hikes, you know, play with our kids, all that kind of stuff. Unilateral movements will be able to help that as well. So I really want you to include at least one unilateral movement, especially a knee dominant movement into your workouts. And I'll show you that as I show you an example lower body workout. Got it. Now the last one is going to be doing some core exercises and the core exercises I've kind of broken down into flexion-based exercises versus anti-movement exercises. These could be anti-flexion, anti-rotation, just anti-movement in general. And by the way, I've done a video here on YouTube somewhat recently on me going through an example core workout that I do. So if you want to check it out, it should be just a few videos back. I think the thumbnail is me like showing my abs or something because I guess that's what they call clickbait. But the video is there as well as I wrote an article on my website Very in-depth detailing what your core workouts should look like. So my website is just ericrobertsfitness.com. I can link the article here below in the description of this video. But really quickly, flexion-based exercises are going to be your like standard ab exercises, like where you're kind of bringing your ribs closer to your belly button. So crunches, cable crunches, reverse crunches, sit-ups, things of that nature. And then anti-movement patterns are going to be your things like Pallof presses, your things like plank transfers, your things like farmer's walks, farmer's carries. Again, if you know what none of that stuff means, that's okay. Check out the video I did on YouTube. I literally show me going through the exercises so you can see what it is. And that article I wrote, I have all of those exercises in there as well. So as long as you have these movement patterns over the course of a week, if you're doing these kind of movements, you're killing it, man. You are getting all of your movement patterns done throughout the week. And again, I'm going to show you an example lower body day, but I know people are going to ask me, well, how the hell does that look throughout the course of a week? Here's what I'll say. If I will again link a video here, it's on my YouTube channel. I cover how to set up your weekly workout routine. So I'll link that video here if you wanted to get more knowledge. That video can help you because it depends on Whether you do like a 3 times a week setup or 4 times a week setup. So I kind of talk about how to set up your exercises and what your days will look like and, and so on and so forth. Again, I'll give it to you here, but you can check that video out. It can help you out a ton, I think. So now that you've got that down, really quickly before we head into your lower body day, what you can then add in after you've got the meat and potatoes, right? You've got your, you know, upper body push, upper body pull, you know, you've got your hip movement, knee movement. You might be thinking about, well, like Eric, when do I put in bicep curls? When do I put in leg extensions? When do I put in leg curls? When do I put in tricep extensions? When do I put in shoulder raises? After you've gotten these movements in, you can then kind of just like sprinkle in some of those isolation-based movements towards the end of your workout. So again, I'll show you what a lower body day might look like here, but get your meat and potatoes down first. And then you can add in, like, let's just say somebody really wanted to grow their arms on an upper body day. Once they've gotten like some of their pushing, some of their pulling, they got their movements down towards the end of the workout. Cool. Like, you know, add in some bicep curls, add in some tricep extensions. If you do that and follow that kind of like game plan, I guarantee you will see progress. And just really quickly, I'll plug this too. I'm not sure it's plugging because it's fucking free, but I've done an entire podcast. Yes, I have a podcast. I've done an entire podcast on how to set up like a workout routine. I just talked about isolation-based exercises. If you don't even know, if you never heard that before, listen to that podcast. I kind of talk about in what order per day you should set up your workout routine. Which I will actually show you right now on the board with lower body. All right, so let's now cover what a lower body workout just might look like. Let's say this day is going to be a knee dominant day. You're going to start with a knee dominant movement, and let's just say for the fun of it, you are going to start with a barbell back squat. I know I just talked all this shit about barbell back squats, and here I am, but let's just say you start with that. Remember, That is a knee dominant movement. It is a bilateral, 2 leg. It is a bilateral knee dominant movement. Remember that. Then let's say you go into a dumbbell Romanian deadlift for 3 sets of 6 to 10 reps. That is going to be a hip dominant movement. So already you've gotten the knee dominant movement and a hip dominant movement. You're rocking and rolling, baby. Then let's say you next have a superset. A superset is just where you do both exercises back to back with minimal rest in between each exercise. Then you rest after you get done both exercises. So let's say you have a hip thrust supersetted with a Bulgarian split squat. So you're having yet again another hip dominant movement with A knee dominant movement, which a Bulgarian split squat is a unilateral— one leg— it is a unilateral knee dominant movement. So thus far, you're killing it, man. Let's say you then wanted to add in some isolation work like we talked about. What you could do is, let's say you added in a lying leg curl machine for 2 sets of 8 to 12 reps to really just make sure you hit your hamstrings. And this right here, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 exercises. If you do this workout right here, and you can like take a screenshot of it and like go for it, this will fucking destroy your legs. That's a whole side note. You don't need to do 18 fucking exercises, but this right here, this is how you would set up a lower body day with the information that we just learned. So I hope this video was able to help. Help you. If it did, please feel free to give the video a thumbs up, subscribe to the channel. And what I will say is this: if you just got done watching that video and you're like, holy shit, that is a lot of information— myself and my team, uh, pretty much do this for a living. What you can do is check out one of our 2 coaching options. The first is going to be our Clubhouse. This is more our group coaching option where I make workouts like I just showed you, I make these workouts every single month. Every month you get a new workout with exactly how many reps, how many sets, all of the guesswork taken out for you. I can link that here below. It's just erfclubhouse.com. Or if you think you want more like individualized, personalized one-on-one coaching with diet, nutrition, every single thing, you can click the link in the description once again as well. To apply for one-on-one coaching with a member on my team. So hopefully look to hear from you soon. Let me know you came from the video if you did, and I hope you have a great day, okay?
