These are the best exercises to build muscle (science-based)

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

00:40 #1 Triceps: Barbell Bench Press vs Barbell Skull Crushers

01:39 #2 Quads: Front Squat vs Back Squat

03:02 #3 Triceps: Overhead Extensions vs Pushdowns

04:18 My Online PT Course

04:43 #4 Hamstrings: Stiff Legged Deadlift vs Nordic Curls

06:29 #5 Hamstrings: Seated Leg Curls vs Lying Leg Curls

07:44 #6 Bicpes: Wide Grip Pulldowns vs Barbell Biceps Curls

09:44 Outro

Transcript:

What are the best exercises to build muscle mass? To answer this question there are a number of studies we can look at. Most of these studies had participant perform one or the other exercise in isolation equating all known variables. So they did exercise A or exercise B with the same volume, same training intensity, etc. and then after a bunch of time they measured which of the exercises produced the most muscle growth in the target muscle. I’m going to present a number of these comparisons to you, and you can guess to see if you know the answer. And we’ll see if you are an omniscient muscle god that knows everything there is to know about muscle hypertrophy or… a moron. The test begins now.

We want to build our triceps, get them horseshoes. Which of the following exercises is better? The barbell bench press or barbell skull crushers? tick-tock Probably not the hardest one. But could you guess which heads were most affected by which exercise specifically? On average, barbell bench presses are not as effective as triceps skull crushers in research, and it’s specifically the long head of the triceps that remains under stimulated with pressing movements. The long head also acts at the shoulder, and it faces a bi-articulate muscle conflict, or if it contracts at the shoulder, it’s pulling your elbow back down. That’s obviously not what you want when you are trying to press the weight up, so the triceps, specifically the long head of the triceps cannot maximally contract during an exercise like a bench press. Growth in the medial and the lateral heads was similar in the barbell bench press and the skull crushers. So it’s really specifically the long head that you’re under-stimulating with pressing movements.

#2: We want to build our quads. Are we going to do front squats or back squats? If you know anything about biomechanics, you know that front squats are more quad dominant then back squats. However, there is a lot of concern in bodybuilding circles that front squats have the upper back as a limiting factor, not the quads. So which one of these builds more muscle mass? In this study in strength trained women there was no significant difference in muscle growth after 12 weeks. However, I will say that this study slightly leans in favor of front squats because the growth was 5.1% for front squats, compared to 4.4% for back squats. Moreover, the groups were equated in range of motion, and most people have an easier time getting a bit of extra range of motion at the knee when they do a front squat. Also, training volume was individualized based on their former training volume, and this resulted in a slightly higher training volume for the back squat group, with 22 versus 19 sets per week. And yes, that’s a brutal squatting volume.

Based on this study, the claim that the upper back or the core in general is the limiting factor for front squats and not the legs is not supported. Or, at least, the difference is no greater than with back squats. For many people, though, it feels like the core or the back is the limiting factor doing front squats, or even squats in general. However, this fits with recent research that subjective and objective muscle activity barely correlate at all. So which muscle you feel the most is not necessarily the muscle that is actually activating the most. Our feelings are influenced by a host of other factors than actual biomechanical force production.

Face off #3: I want more triceps gains. I’m not happy with the skull crushers because they hurt my elbows, so I want a different triceps isolation exercise. Should I do overhead triceps extensions or should I do triceps push downs? In the one study we have that make this comparison, overhead triceps extensions grew the triceps about 40% more than triceps push downs. Interestingly, the growth was in all heads of the triceps, not just the long head, as you would biomechanically perhaps expect. The long head is stretched during overhead triceps extensions, therefore, you might expect more stretch mediated hypertrophy or however you want to call the general phenomenon that at longer muscle lengths muscles typically grow more when they are subjected to high tension. The extra growth in the medial and the lateral head of the triceps might be because during an overhead triceps extension you have a pretty good resistance curve, and in the stretched position there is also good resistance.

In contrast, during a push down, most of the resistance is in the bottom position when the triceps is shortened. So even for the heads that are not stretched by performing an overhead triceps extension, by having the elbow and the arm overhead, you still experience greater tension in the stretch position during an overhead triceps extension than during a push down, depending on the exact execution. So overhead triceps extensions, in this study at least, were a clear winner.

Comparison #4: Fresh off the press, a new study compared stiff legged deadlifts vs Nordic hamstring curls. The Nordic hamstring curls were done in a machine to equate the intensity with the stiff legged deadlifts. Which of the exercises produced the most muscle growth in the hamstrings? After 9 weeks, there was equal growth in the hamstrings overall. However, the pattern of muscle growth differed. The Nordic hamstring curls were most effective for the semitendinosus, whereas the stiff legged deadlifts were most effective for the semimembranosus. This may sound like a pattern that doesn’t have an obvious biomechanical explanation, and indeed it doesn’t, but the hamstrings are a very complicated muscle group with different fibers that have different leverages at different muscle lengths. So at different parts of a movement or even during the same movement at different positions, different fibers have regional muscle activation.

This has been well established in prior research, and even the same pattern of muscle growth has been found in prior research. Interestingly, there was no difference in muscle growth in the biceps femoris, and you might expect that the short head of the biceps femoris, which is the only head of the hamstrings that flexes the knee, so it’s like the only head that’s active during a leg curl movement, like Nordic hams, you would expect that head to grow more from the Nordic hams, but it didn’t. And that’s because using the ultrasound in the study, they could not differentiate between the short and the long head of the biceps femoris, so we don’t really know if that’s the case. I’m quite confident, based on the biomechanics, that the short heads grows more from leg curls.

Due to the significant regional differentiation of the hamstrings it’s clear that there is no simply better option here, and you need both types of movements to optimally stimulate the hamstrings. The hamstrings and complicated muscle groups in general need a certain amount of exercise variety to maximally stimulate all the muscle fibers. At the minimum, I recommend that you have a hip hinge movement and a leg curl movement in almost every program. Now, I know some of you are thinking: “Bruh… Nordic hams? Ain’t nobody got access to that!” Okay, let’s look at some leg curls that are more accessible.

Face off #5: Seated vs lying leg curls. Which is the better hamstrings builder? The answer, according to this study, which I might add was pretty well controlled with a 12 week duration and using a within subject design, so subjects performed one lateral movement with one leg and the other lateral movement with the other leg two equate for genetic and nutritional factors, is… seated leg curls. Seated leg curls grew the hamstrings better, specifically in the heads that are stretched at the hip when you are in a seated position. During a seated leg curl movement your hip is flexed. This stretches the hamstrings, specifically the heads that are active at the hip, the bi-articulate muscle heads, so not the biceps femoris short head. And indeed the short head of the biceps femoris had the same muscle growth during the seated and the lying leg curls, but the other heads grew more during the seated leg curls. Again, though due to the regional differentiation of the hamstrings, this does not mean you should only do seadted leg curls.

The hamstrings benefit from a variety of movements and stress on different muscle lengths. The hamstrings likely benefit from being trained with emphasis on different muscle lengths and different movement patterns. By the way, this is one of the studies, in my view, that provides the most compelling evidence that muscles generally grow more when they are trained at longer muscle lengths. However, it is just one study and it was untrained individuals.

Face off #6: I need bigger guns, bigger biceps, that is. Should I do wide grip pull downs or barbell biceps curls? Obvious one, right? Actually, in this study the growth was similar in the biceps. Statistical power might have been lagging with only 10 subjects training twice per week for 10 weeks. But this study is in line with the finding that, if you look at the big, big picture literature, generally when you train a muscle group and that muscle group is clearly a synergist or an agonist during a movement pattern, so it’s basically one of the primary muscles that is producing the movement, it likely grows the same, regardless of the exact exercise you’re doing. At least if there are no big differences in like the muscle lengths that are stimulated, A pull down is a movement that features heavy elbow flexion. The biceps are an elbow flexor, so in that sense it makes sense that they are maximally stimulated. The body will recruit the maximally.

However, it is worth noting that the main author Paulo Gentil does not have the best reputation for integrity as a scientist, and he is known to find things in research that kind of confirm to his prior beliefs. There was also the Barbalho scandal in which it turned out that one of his students, I think it was, Matheus Barbalho was strongly suggestive of having been doing fraud, basically making up data and Paulo Gentil was pretty dismissive of that and saying like, you know, you know, kids these days. On the other hand, we do have another study that found that pull downs, supinated grip pull downs in this case, stimulate similar levels of muscle damage compared to biceps curls. And in the total literature in general compound exercises typically simulate approximately equal muscle growth as isolation exercises.

So overall, I do think that many people underrate compound exercises for muscle growth, and they fail to take into account that many of the compound exercises in their program already train their arms. And in my experience with coaching clients and educating other personal trainers, I think people in general do underestimate, men in particular, the contribution that compound exercises have towards arm growth, and a lot of people get arm injuries, elbow injuries, because they’re just overtrain the biceps and the triceps, because they only count the direct volume from isolation exercises, which doesn’t make any sense.

All right. That’s enough pop-quiz time for today. I hope these exercise comparisons helped you build more effective training programs, and if you’re interested in seeing more of these exercise comparisons, and knowing exactly all the research we have and how to build muscle, lose fat, and optimize your program, check out the link in the description for my online PT course. You’ll learn absolutely everything there is to know about how to build an amazing physique. I hope you’ll enjoy it.