Sorry to break the news to most of you, but if your lifting weights, you actually only need about 8 exercises to get the ultimate physique that you want. When you walk into most gyms these days they have hundreds of machines that supposedly all try to recreate these 8 traditional exercises that have been around for decades. Truth is, all these machines that you see, are a marketing SCAM! Lets say someone walks into a gym, the membership sales guy takes them around for a tour, shows them all  these machines and before you know it the person is drooling! They automatically think that all these different machines will help them achieve their goal. I've worked at a gym for many years, and if your overweight even a little bit, and you want to lose weight, going for the sit down machines is not the way to go. It's not about what machine you use, its about HOW you program your workout. If you work 40+ hours a week at a desk, why would you come to the gym to sit on a machine? Lets get real! You need to do stuff standing up, engaging your postural muscles, core muscles, and abdominal muscles.

These exercises below will help you burn the most fat, get toned, bulk up, build functional strength, and develop the most muscle even if your a male/female. You can use these exercises to both lose weight/get toned or gain weight/bulk up. This is where the diets come in to play. 

Squats are one of the best functional exercises out there. They are even used in physical therapy settings all over the world to get quad, hamstring, and glute activation. In reality, this exercise targets muscles throughout your entire body. It is officially #1 on my list. If done right, you won't have to do a single abdominal crunch in your life, since this exercise actually targets your abdominal muscles if done correctly.

TIPZ for doing squats:
1) Start with your feet both pointing forward
2) Feet placed at shoulder width.
3) Keep your core tight at all times
4) Squeeze the bar, dumbbells, or clench your fist tight during the squat (this helps keep your CORE muscles tight)
5) Make sure your hips are working during the lift (they are supposed to go forward and back
6) Keep all the weight on your heels (i see people doing this one wrong all the time, keeping the weight on your heels puts all the pressure on your glutes)
8) There is different viewpoints about this one, you can either listen to me or go your own route: DONT SQUAT BELOW 90 DEGREES! I have some experience in the physical therapy setting and going below 90 degrees is very bad on your knee. People might say that your glutes won't get fully targeted if you don't go all the way down. Tell them 90 degrees is sufficient enough for all glute activation. Read below

"For athletes with healthy knees, performing the parallel squat is recommended over the deep squat, because injury potential to the menisci and cruciate and collateral ligaments may increase with the deep squat. The squat does not compromise knee stability, and can enhance stability if performed correctly. Finally, the squat can be effective in developing hip, knee, and ankle musculature, because moderate to high quadriceps, hamstrings, and gastrocnemius activity were produced during the squat."

Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2001 Jan;33(1):127-41.

Lunges are also one of my favorite exercises for legs. They really target your entire glutes, hamstrings, and all the little stabilizer muscles in your leg. The awesome thing about lunges is that your feet are spread apart (one in front/one in back), which makes your body unstable! This forces your stabilizer muscles in your entire leg to work.

TIPZ for doing Lunges:

1. If you have knee trouble increase the length between the foot in the front and the foot in the back. It will be harder to balance, but it will take a lot of pressure off your knees.
2. Ideally you want the front foot in a direct line with the foot in the back.
3. You can either do one leg at a time, walking lunges using both legs, or explosive lunges (jumping from one leg to the other)
4. Don't touch your knee to the ground, keep it about an inch above the surface.
5. Keep a straight posture, don't go into flexion. (if you do bend your torso forward, you need to work on stretching your hamstrings)
6. You can use a barbell, dumbbells, or your own body weight for these.

The muscles worked from the infamous cable lat pulldown machine are the latissimus dorsi and a bunch of other stabilizer muscles. Lat pulldown is usually the way to go if your starting out and you can't do a pull up. I believe in functional training to get fit, so my favorite will be the pull up. You can either get a weighted vest, chain belt, or a friend helping you out. 

Pullups have their advantages and disadvantages: 
Advantages: Total body workout, targets your abs, targets forearms, recruits more back stabiliers, and usually requires strong CORE muscles 
Disadvantages: People with muscle imbalances will do poorly in this one, since they will compensate and use incorrect muscle for the lift.

TIPZ for Latpulldown/Pullup
1. Keep a tight grip, it will help work the smallest muscles in addition to the larger ones.
2. Pull to your upper chest
3. Do NOT rock your body and use momentum.
4. Try to keep your elbows as wide as possible while doing the pulldown. 
5. Some people grip the bar super wide, honestly it won't help, your lats will get built based on your genetics and your body structure. Anything more than an inch wider than each of your shoulders is counterproductive, and you will get injured.
6. Go slow on the way up (this is called eccentric contraction, when your muscle is elongating), that is when the muscle gets the hardest challenge and you will get the most effects out of your exercise.

The benchpress has been a staple exercise for many decades now, although it is done at the gym by many, personally, I think thats its overrated. Dumbbell chest press is much better at building nice thick chest muscles. It is also safer, taking a lot of pressure off of your shoulder and rotator cuff. Everyone has a different body structure; while some people may feel the benchpress activates their pecs, others may not. That is why the dumbbell press is my go-to exercise. It allows for a free range of motion so you can actually use the muscles that you want to use, and not compensate with other smaller muscles that are more prone for injury.

TIPZ for Benchpress/Dumbbell Press:
1. Choose the arm/elbow position that is right for you, in the end, it doesn't matter how wide you do the exercise, its all your genetics. (so thank your mom and dad)
2. When you get to the top of the movement, really try to squeeze the pecs, almost as if your trying to take the back of your shoulder off the bench.
3. Elbows tucked in to the side works your chest/triceps more.
4. Elbows out works more chest/shoulder.
5. Change up your palm direction, you can also have your palms facing each other instead of towards your hips.
6. Keep a tight clenched fist no matter what you do! It will help activate your CORE.

Military press is an awesome exercise. Although, unless your a body builder and you really want to build muscle, I would prefer people to do it standing up. Use less weight, and higher reps, which will actually help engage your CORE and abdominal muscles. The deltoids are a group of muscles that are used in everyday life. That is why you need to take care of them. Whether you are a male or female, you need to do this exercise!  You should also throw in a couple of rotator cuff exercises once in a while just so your shoulder joint is as stable. Sometimes I would see huge guys coming into the physical therapy clinic I worked at and they couldn't even lift up their arm. Why?! Rotator Cuff weakness!

TIPZ for Military Press:
1. At the top of the movement, make sure you really try to reach for the sky when you have the weight in your hands. You want to get the full range of motion. Too often, I see guys who have the muscle, but its very limited in its range of motion. You want to be able to handle weight from any angle. So do it right.
2. Engage your core and abdominal muscles by doing this exercise standing up.
3. Don't listen to people telling you to go wider or narrower, your shoulders will grow based on your genetics!!

The standard bicep curl is the main way to workout your bicep. Your bicep is a secondary muscle so it gets worked usually when you do any type of pulling exercises. If you want to have nice toned arms though, I would not recommend relying on secondary muscle action to make your arms look good. You need to do a bicep curl, either with dumbbells (more for size), or using cables (for peak).

TIPZ for the Bicep Curl:
1. If you want to increase your peak, use equipment that will help you isolate that muscle, such as cables.
2. If you want to build up the thickness in your arms use dumbbells.
3. Keep your elbows close to your sides. Don't let your elbow move forward during the curl. Keep it in the same spot.
4. Try to really focus on what your doing during the curl. Focus on getting the blood into that bicep.
5. Thumb out position (standard curl) works more of your biceps brachii.
6. Thumb facing forward position (hammer curl) works more of your brachialis/brachioradialis muscle.
7. If you use good form, no matter what equipment you use, your bicep will get worked. All that matters is your intensity and volume.

Overhead tricep pull is an excellent exercise. You can either do it sitting down or standing up (depending on if you want to engage your abdominals and core muscles). The trick to building up your tricep muscle is that you need to understand that there are three heads of the tricep.  There is the lateral head, medial head, and long head of the tricep. Depending on what exercise you do and your genetics, your body will be more prone to build one of these over the other. In reality, all three get worked at the same time during all tricep exercises, but sometimes one of these heads might be stronger than the rest, and it will get used more frequently. 

TIPZ for Overhead Tricep Pullover:
1. Keep your elbows at your sides at all times.
2. I'm not a fan of using bars for this muscle, use either cables or single handed dumbbells. Most people have a dominant side, which will usually be stronger than the other. Using a bar will only accentuate that weekness. Work on each arm individually.
3. Keeping your elbows at your side, and hands near the midline of your body will work the tricep lateralis more.
4. Keeping your elbows at your side, and hands near the outer edge of your body will work more of the long and medial heads.
5. Make sure you really squeeze your tricep during full extension (try to squeeze it for like a second or two)
6. Keep your elbows tucked in as close to your midline as possible during the overhead tricep pullover.
7. If you want a nice arm look there needs to be balance between your deltoids, bicep, and tricep. If your arm has no definition, you need to identify where you are lacking and where your strengths are. Balance them out! If you need help figuring out where your lacking and what your strengths are, feel free to ask me here.

Everyone wants abs! The truth will hurt most of you but everyone already has a six pack since they are born. The only problem is do you have a low enough body fat to see it? Your Rectus Abdominis muscle and abdominal oblique muscles are the reason you can walk, jump, or run. They can be viewed as the stabilizer muscles. You can do 100's of crunches or situps (which in my opinion are horrible for some people), but you still won't have abs if you have too much fat. Usually you can see someones abs if they are below 10% body fat for males and below 12% for females.

TIPZ on how to train your Abdominal and Oblique muscles:
1. You don't need advanced machinery to train your ab muscles. I've seen a lot of huge garbage machines at the gyms I worked at, yes they look cool, but do they really give you the nice ab shape that you want?No! The best exercises are either laying down, standing up, or on your stomach. You need to have strong core muscles which in reality are the ones keeping your waist in. If your core muscles are week, you might have abs of steel and can do 100's of crunches but your waist will be out there and it will take away from your appearance.
2. One of the best exercises for beginners is the crunch. Now, having said that, you don't need to do the crunch laying down. You can do it standing up while pulling a cable down and really CRUNCHING those abs. Make sure during each contraction you expel all the air in your lungs because this will give you the best contraction. 
3. The trick is to master your breathing during squats, lunges, and any other exercises you do. If you engage your abs in all these other exercises, 6 months later, you will look at your abs in the mirror and be like "Damn! I didn't even do any ab exercises and my abs are looking better than ever!" Always at the apex of any lift, you want to breath out most of the air in your lungs so your abs are getting worked too.

These 8 exercises are all you really need to look good. These exercises combined hit every muscle in your body. It is up to your goals to figure out your training intensity, volume, frequency, and load you want to use. Changing any of these four principles of training will determine whether you look like an ultra-endurance marathon runner, anything in between, or a professional body builder.