Here are my top three mass building workout exercises for gaining lean muscle quickly.  If I had to pick just three, it’d be these ones.  These exercises have been proven to pack on vast amounts of size and strength over your whole body, provided you’re getting adequate nutrition and rest. A word of warning though – packing on muscle quickly doesn’t mean packing on muscle easily.

These exercises are tough, and that’s precisely why they stimulate a large growth response in your body. Stick with them for eight weeks, eat and rest well, and you’ll see impressive gains.

A barbell, a rack and a pullup bar is all you need.

1) The Squat.  The squat is the king of leg exercises, and probably the best all-round exercise you can do in the weights room.  It stimulates large amounts of growth in the thigh hip and lower back structures. Honestly, after a year of squatting I felt like my thighs and glutes were made of solid iron or something. The effect really is that profound.

2) The Deadlift.  The number one exercise for the “posterior chain”. Sometimes thought of as the purest test of raw strength because it involves picking up a “dead” weight from complete rest. An excellent choice for thickening up your hamstrings and lower back especially, and you’ll probably see benefits in the middle back and traps.

3) The Pull-up.  In my opinion it’s the most important upper body exercise. We already know bodyweight exercises stimulate the most growth, and if you want to add upper back mass, the pull-up is a must have in your mass building workout.  Perform them with a supinated grip - otherwise known as doing chin ups - to give the biceps a decent workout.  This really should be all you need for significant bicep growth (there, I said it )

So if I absolutely had to pick three mass building workout exercises, it’d be these.  If I were to extend it to a top five, other candidates would include the standing shoulder press, dips, bench press and the power clean.  But that’s another article entirely

Tags: bodyweight exercises, deadlift, gaining lean muscle, nutrition and rest, posterior chain, pullup, raw strength, size and strength, squat, upper back mass

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