How to Get Muscle Fast: Stick With These Proven Compound Exercises

When it comes to building lean muscle in the quickest and most efficient way possible – you need to stick with the power exercises.

The 5 exercises we are going to feature in this article are the proven 5 best muscle-building exercises in the world. The reason is quite simple – They place a huge emphasis on the largest muscle groups in the body as well as working the surrounding secondary muscle groups.

For years, the biggest body builder and best fitness models have placed a HUGE emphasis on these 5 muscle-building exercises. You need to be strong in all 5 of these exercises to build a great all around physique.

Have you ever seen a guy with a gigantic chest and puny arms? Have you ever seen a well-sculpted back with absolutely no muscle definition anywhere else? Of course not! The human body does not work this way. If you want to maximize your muscle building potential in every muscle group, you need to have an all around well-built physique that can support muscle growth for your entire body. This means that you need to put a strong emphasis on your lower body, back and upper body.

Most people make the mistake of working out their upper body way too much and neglecting their lower half. THIS IS A MISTAKE!

Increasing your strength and muscle mass in your lower body will help you build muscle in your upper body.

By focusing on the most important exercises that place the greatest amount of stress on your body’s largest muscle groups, you will be able to unleash your natural muscle building hormones (Testosterone and Human Growth Hormone) as well as put a huge emphasis on surrounding muscle groups.

Muscle Building Exercise #1: Bench Press

The bench press is the holy grail of the upper body exercises. How many times have you heard someone ask how much can you bench? While it is a bit flashy, it is also VITAL for building muscle in your upper body.

The bench press works your large pectoral chest muscles, as well as your triceps, upper back, and shoulders. If you want to put on weight and lean muscle mass fast, you should be bench pressing regularly. The dumb bell bench press also works well.

Bench Press Tips:

If you want to really see progress with your bench press, try alternating your grips to narrower and wider to focus on different aspects of your chest.

Another great bench press tip that will unleash your muscle building potential is to do reverse negatives. This means that you will focus on lowering the weight to your chest as slow as possible, while your spotter lightly presses down to make it more difficult. This is an old school body building technique that really works!

A third bench press tip that you will hardly see done anywhere is to perform slow motion repetitions. Maximizing your time under tension is one of the best ways to break down more muscle fibers and build lean muscle tissue. This was made famous by body building trainer and nautilus workout equipment founder Arthur Jones. Try a 5-5 pace on your bench press, meaning 5 seconds up and 5 seconds down.

Muscle Building Exercise #2: Dead Lift

The dead lift is the backbone and foundation to your muscle building exercises. The dead lift is one of the best all around exercises for your entire body and places a huge emphasis on your lower back, hamstrings, quadriceps, traps, lats, glutes, forearms, and calves! That is quite an impressive list of muscle groups, and you will be hard pressed to find an exercise that works more muscle groups than the dead lift.

The dead lift is probably the most important exercise that you are not performing regularly.

You will be hard pressed to find a guy who is dead lifting as much as he is bench-pressing, but you are also just as hard pressed to find a guy who has an incredibly well rounded physique. The guys with the best physiques in the world understand the importance of dead lifting regularly, and it can also help prevent many injuries. Having a weak lower back and core is a major precursor to many serious weight lifting injuries.

Dead Lift Tips:

Dead lift is all about form. To understand and visually see how to do proper dead lifts watch the clip below.

One of my favorite dead lifting workouts consists of performing a pyramid style routine and a reverse pyramid routine.

In the pyramid style routine, you will start off light and perform 12 repetitions, then add 20 lbs to each side and perform 10, add another 20 lbs and perform 8, and add on 40 lbs and perform 4-6. You should start with a weight that you can just barely do 12 times, and work your way up to follow the repetition sequence.

A reverse pyramid is just the opposite of this. You will start off with a very heavy set in which you perform 4-6 repetition and take weight off for each set while the number of repetitions increase. On my reverse pyramid sets, I like to limit my rest time to 60 second between sets for an added challenge.

Muscle Building Exercise #3: Squat

Ahhh, the squat! It’s the most crucial lower body exercise and ultimate test of lower body strength. The squat is arguably the best quadriceps and glute workout on the planet.

Your quadriceps are one of the largest muscle groups in the entire body, and it has actually been found that increasing your lower body and quadriceps strength can have a positive effect on your upper body strength.

If you want to maximize your muscle building potential you need to place a huge emphasis on the bench press and squat. Consistently challenging yourself and going heavier on these two exercises will help you tremendously. Just look at the physiques of some of the NFL’s most physical specimens. These physiques were built dating all the way back to high school, as football players place a huge emphasis on the squat, bench press, and other power exercises.

It is no wonder they look like such impressive athletes. They have an incredible all around foundation that can support muscle growth and they have maximized their muscle building hormone output.

Squat Tips:

Just like the dead lift, the squat is all about perfecting the right form. The squat is one of the easiest exercises to get a lower back injury or injure your knee. Make sure that you are squatting with the perfect form.

Watch the clip below to get a visual representation of the perfect squat form.

You must make sure that your feet are securely on the ground and about shoulder width apart to begin. One of the best ways to ensure that you don’t hurt your lower back is to tense and flex your abs throughout the squat. This will also help you with a nice secondary core workout while you squat!

Just like the dead lift, the squat can be done utilizing the pyramid and reverse style pyramid. Make sure that you are always increasing the weight and pushing past your comfort zone.

To add another challenge, try a front squat. This is where the bar will be held in front of you instead of behind your head. This is a much tougher squat movement, and is an advanced motion. The front squat is used by many basketball players and athletes because it places such a strong emphasis on the front of the leg.

Muscle Building Exercise #4: Pull Up

The pull up is an extremely advanced upper body exercise, and is very challenging. This is why the pull up is left out of many training routines. You can also perform advanced pull ups by doing wide grip pull ups and weighted pull ups with a weight belt.

Many people don’t like performing pull-ups – especially if they weigh a lot. The more you weigh the harder it is to perform a pull up.

The pull up is such an incredible upper body exercise – and is one of the most important exercises for building bigger arms. Have you ever felt the pump in your biceps after performing a set of wide grip pull-ups? If not you aren’t doing them right!

Pull-ups work all of the major muscles in your back, biceps, Shoulders, and Lats.

Pull Up Tips:

It is important to perform a few variations of the pull up exercise to maximize its effects on your physique. Depending on your grip placement, the pull up can work a variety of muscles. The hardest and most important pull up movement – the wide grip pull up will place an incredible emphasis on your lats, biceps and traps.

The regular grip pull up is also important, and places more emphasis on the middle back and shoulders. This is the standard pull up motion. Check out the video clip below to see the hand placement.

The 3rd pull up variation is close grip pull-ups, and this one places the strongest emphasis on your biceps and shoulders. You will feel more of a pull in the head of your bicep muscle with the close grip pull up. Check out the clip below to see the difference.

Another way to maximize the muscle building effects of the pull up is to get a weight belt and do a weighted pull up. If you are an advanced lifter you should try this with the wide grip pull up – one of the hardest upper body exercises on the planet!

You can perform a weighted pull up with any of the three pull up variations. Check out the animated clip below.

Muscle Building Exercise #5: Dip

The dip is an incredible exercise at isolating parts of your lower chest as well as putting major emphasis on your tricep muscles. Your triceps are in fact a much larger muscle group than your biceps – and if you want to get big arms you need to place a huge emphasis on developing your triceps.

The dip is one of the best tricep exercises you can do, as well as a great chest and shoulder workout.

Dip Tips:

Just like every other exercise on this list, proper form is vital. You want to make sure you are going down to about a 90-degree elbow bend. This will ensure that you are working out your lower chest and maximizing the dip movement.

To add an extra challenge to the dip, try using a weighted dip belt. If you are an experienced weight lifter, you should be able to perform a dip with a 45 or even 90 lbs of resistance. This is an incredible upper body exercise and will develop strong triceps, chest, and shoulders.