The ONLY 7 Exercises You Need To Build An Athletic Physique

0:00 There are only seven exercises your body needs to build an athletic, lean, capable body. Not 70, not seven. And if you train all seven of them properly, you'll get stronger, faster, look more athletic, and spend less time in the gym than the average gym girl. In this video, I'm going to walk you through every single one of the seven movements, the variations you can pick from for each, and how to put them all together into a training program that actually delivers results. I used to do the classic gym girl workouts where I targeted different muscle group with every session close to two hours in the gym at any one time. Until I got to the point that I was dreading the gym, resenting the fact that I wasn't progressing in the way that I wanted to, even though I was putting so much into it. So, I started looking more into performance-focused training, and what I learned shocked me. Your body doesn't recognize specific exercises, it just recognizes movement patterns. And all of the movements you do in the gym fall into one of seven movement patterns.

0:57 When you train the seven movement patterns instead of chest day, glute day, arm day, three things happen. You get stronger faster because compound movements load more muscle at once. You stay injury-free because you build a body that knows how to work together as one unit. And you start to enjoy the gym because you no longer see your training as this chore that you have to do in order to look a certain way. So, let's get into the seven movements starting with the one that you're probably already doing. The first movement pattern is the squat. The squat trains your quads, glutes, and core, and it's probably one of the best movements you can do for building your lower body strength. But remember, we're talking about movement patterns, not specific exercises. So, when I say the squat, I don't mean a barbell back squat. The squat pattern is any exercise where your knees and hips are bending and your torso is staying relatively upright.

1:44 That could be a barbell back squat, or it could be a goblet squat, a hack squat, a leg press, a squat. They all train the same pattern. So, pick which squat pattern you do based on what equipment you've got available to you, your experience levels, and also just what you enjoy and what you can progressively load over time. I personally do the Zurcher squat at the moment because I really like the extra challenge that having the bar at the front of my body puts on my core. But, do whatever works for you. The second pattern is the hinge. If the squat is the king of the front of your legs, then the hinge is the king of the back. We're talking glutes, hamstrings, lower back, all of those muscles that give you that athletic look from behind. The hinge is any movement where you're bending at the hips whilst keeping your back flat and your knees relatively straight. The classic hinge is the deadlift, but again, you've got lots of different options. You've got the Romanian deadlift, a single leg Romanian deadlift, good mornings, and even a hip thrust falls into the hinge category.

2:40 The mistake most women make with the hinge is skipping it because it can be hard to perfect the form and it doesn't feel as immediately glute burning as some of the other glute isolation exercises out there. If you're struggling with form, I've actually got an entire video dedicated to how to do an RDL and within that it teaches you how to hinge properly. So, have a watch of that when you're done with this, but I promise you nothing has built my hamstrings and glutes like RDLs have, especially single leg RDLs. They are my favorite exercise, possibly ever. So, if you're only doing hip thrusts and ignoring the rest of the hinge exercises, you're missing out on some pretty key things in your gym routine.

3:18 You want to do at least one hinge variation a week, ideally two, but we'll talk about that shortly. Pattern three is the lunge or more accurately anything that works one leg at a time. Now, this is where things get interesting. Most people skip single leg work because it's hard. It's humbling and you just can't go as heavy. But, single leg training is where that athletic look is built. It evens out the imbalances between your stronger and weaker side. It teaches your body stability and control and it builds your legs and glutes in a way that bilateral training simply can't.

3:51 Variations of this movement pattern include reverse lunges, walking lunges, Bulgarian split squats, step-ups, and lateral lunges. My personal favorite is the Bulgarian split squat, particularly with a barbell. It is brutal, but in the best way. If you've never done single leg exercises, I'd start with reverse lunges or maybe a step-up, and then you can build your way up. But again, with all of these exercises, you can do a whole host of different variations from being at home with zero equipment and just doing body weight to then maybe moving on to add dumbbells into the mix and eventually adding in barbells. I've actually put together a complete guide on the seven different movement patterns and loads of example exercises within each. Because if I was just listing off all of the exercises that fit into each pattern, we would be here for hours.

4:36 It's completely free and you can download it at the link in the description. But back to our movement patterns, pattern four is the push. And this is where I want to introduce a concept to you that most people completely miss, which is that there are two directions of pushing, vertical and horizontal. And you need both. The vertical push is anything where you're pushing weight overhead, an overhead press, a shoulder press, or a landmine press. Whereas a horizontal push is anything where you're pushing weight away from your chest. So a dumbbell press, a bench press, or even a push-up.

5:04 If you only train horizontal pushing, you'll build your chest and your front delts, but you'll neglect your shoulders and vice versa. So every week you want to aim for one vertical push and one horizontal push. Pattern five is the pull, and just like pushing, you've got two directions, vertical and horizontal. Vertical pulling is anywhere where you're pulling weight down towards you or pulling yourself up towards a fixed point. So pull-ups, lat pull-downs, and assisted pull-ups all fit into this category. Whereas horizontal pulling is anywhere where you're pulling weight in towards your body. Think cable rows, dumbbell rows, and gorilla rows. And I'd argue that pulling is one of the most undertrained patterns in women's programs. We've been told for years, focus on your glutes, your core, your arms, and we've neglected our backs. But I don't know about you. The thought of having a toned back is just so appealing to me. And a strong back also helps with posture correction, so it's a win-win. I personally like to do a little bit more pulling than pushing throughout my week just because I spend a lot of my time at a desk. And like I say, pulling is really good for your posture, so it's something that I do want to focus on.

6:05 Pattern six is the carry, which is the one that I would say most people just skip entirely, which is exactly why I want you to make sure that you're starting including it. A carry is exactly what it sounds like. You pick up a weight and you walk with it. Farmer's carries, suitcase carries, front loaded carries, weight to walks, they all look kind of simple, but they build something that none of the other movement patterns do. And that is full body integration.

6:30 Your grip, your forearms, your shoulders, your core, your posture, your breathing all working together at once. And carries are also the closest thing in the gym to real life function. The strongest, most capable women I know all train carries. And the bonus is that carries train your core in a way that no amount of crunches ever will because they train your core to do its actual job, which is protect your spine under load. Honestly, throw a carry into the end of your workout once or twice a week and you will feel it everywhere. And our final pattern, pattern seven, is rotation. Just like push and pull, this one comes in two flavors, rotation and anti-rotation. Rotation is the movement of twisting through your torso under load. like a cable wood chop, a Russian twist, or a rotational slam.

7:16 Anti-rotation is the opposite. Your body has to resist being twisted whilst everything stays stable. Paloff press, bird dogs, dead bugs, and pretty much every proper core exercise that doesn't involve crunching. Most aesthetic focused training programs ignore rotation and anti-rotation movements completely, which is why we end up with weak and underdeveloped cores even though we're hitting abs three times a week. Crunches only train one of the jobs that your core does. Real life requires your core to stabilize, rotate, and resist rotation. So, you need to make sure that you're training rotation and anti-rotation in the gym every single week. I've actually got a whole separate video that delves into that deeply and gives you loads of different exercise examples. So, if you are interested in training your core properly, definitely have a watch of that after this. Now, here's how I'd actually put all of this together into a week of training. You don't need to be doing all seven movement patterns every single day. We're going to be spreading them across the week. Personally, I like my sessions to be full body. When I train just my upper body, for example, in a session, I find that towards the end I get really tired and my performance just drops. So, training full body allows my muscles to recover in between sets, and it means that I can push really hard throughout the entire session. I go to the gym four times a week, but honestly anywhere between two and four is good. And as I mentioned, I personally do a little bit more pulling than pushing to help with my posture, and I also do a tiny bit more hinging than squatting because glute growth is one of my goals. Every session starts with two compound exercises, one for my upper body and one for my lower body, and then I go into accessories, but honestly that is a whole other topic for a whole other video. But I have included examples in the free guide below in case you want an idea of how that all works.

8:53 Honestly, train this way for 3 months and you will look more athletic than you did after a year of glute focused training because you'll be building a balanced and capable body and not just chasing a burn in one specific area. So, those are the seven movement patterns that you need for an athletic physique. Squat, hinge, lunge, push, pull, carry, and rotate. Pick variations within each that fit your body, that you enjoy, and that you can progressively load over time. That is the entire game. And the best part is that if you train this way, you will be spending way less time in the gym than you would be if you were doing a body part split. But you'll also be making amazing progress because you'll be doing exercises that give you a lot of bang for your buck. So, two to four sessions a week, 45 minutes to an hour each time, and make sure that you're really pushing yourself in every exercise. That's it. That is all you need. Remember to grab the free guide to all of this below so that it all makes sense and you can start putting it into practice. And if you want the video that explains why training this way works so much better than aesthetics-focused training, that's my breakdown of how I went from training like a gym girl to training like an athlete. It's the philosophy behind everything in this video and it's linked right here. I'll see you in the next one.