[Old_Fart2]

Another oldie but goodie from Adonis: 25 Best Lifts.

Sample:

25 BEST LIFTS
Science Shows Us the Twenty-Five Best Lifts
for Awesome Abs, Chest, Back, Shoulders, Biceps, Triceps, Forearms, Quads, Hams, and Calves


Articles and books on weight training exercises can be confusing and misleading because they're written for mixed audiences- bodybuilders, competitive lifters, power athletes, and endurance athletes. You are a bodybuilder, so you should do exercises that increase muscle size and definition. Whole body explosive lifts, such as the snatch and clean and jerk, are tremendous exercises for power athletes, but they are less effective for developing an optimal physique.

While power athletes strive to build muscles that work together, the main goal of bodybuilding is to grow and define individual muscles as much as possible and train them proportionately. You must balance muscular development in the upper and lower body. Even specific body parts must show balance. For example, you can't build massive traps without also building the delts, pecs and lats. If you took the advice of lifting books aimed at mixed audiences and did a lot of pulling exercises- cleans and snatches- you would develop the traps, quads, and glutes but wouldn't isolate and define the various muscles of the upper and lower body.


Select exercises based on their ability to isolate and build specific muscles. This is not as easy as it seems. On the one hand, you must do "whole body" large muscle exercises- such as squats- because they are very effective at increasing size while helping you maintain body symmetry (size balance between muscle groups). However, you must also do exercises that isolate specific muscles and muscle groups. You can't be a successful bodybuilder until you can choose exercises that build regional muscle size and specific muscle definition.