The Best Exercise for ______

Jim Kielbaso MS, CSCS

If I had a nickel for every time someone asked me what the best exercise for _______ is, I’d be a rich man.  What exercise should I do to get faster?  What’s the best exercise for my abs?  Which one is best for basketball, soccer or football?  I hear these questions all the time.  Unfortunately, everyone seems to be looking for that magic bullet.  The truth is, a good program takes several things into consideration, but there is never a single exercise that will magically transform an athlete. 

The truth of the matter is that, in general, there is not one single exercise that absolutely must be done for anything.  The purpose of strength training is to improve muscular strength.  Increasing your strength has the potential to prevent injuries and improve just about anything you do.  But, there is not a magic exercise for each sport that is the only thing you should do.  Creating an optimal program involves understanding an athlete’s needs, injuries, and limitations.   The goal is to improve the strength of your entire body without creating muscular imbalances that will ultimately lead to injuries or compromised performance.  A properly designed program will be well-rounded and will meet your specific needs to ensure optimal results. 

Sure, multi-joint exercises like the squat, deadlift, bench press, and chin ups are excellent because they involve a lot of musculature and build strength relatively quickly, but none of them are magic for a particular sport.  The real key is to balance the work you perform at each joint.  For example, for every exercise you do for the front of the shoulder joint such as the bench press, incline press, or dips, you should balance it out by performing a movement that works the opposite side of the joint such as a pulldown, row or chin up.  For the legs, you need to balance the amount of work you do for the quads and hamstrings.

Finally, it’s very important to work the entire body instead of only working certain muscle groups.  Obviously, a sport like soccer uses the legs more than the upper body so you can emphasize the lower body in the workout, but you should not completely neglect the upper body.  Every sport and every individual with have unique needs, but balanced work throughout the entire body is necessary across the board.

So, there is no BEST exercise.  They are all great as long as you know how to use them, remember to train the entire body, take your sport/needs into consideration and balance the amount of work done around each joint.