5 Best Bodybuilding Exercises for Men 

It’s beneficial to know the best bodybuilding exercises for men if you’re planning to add mass to your physique.

Usually, bodybuilding exercises are compound movements, which work on more than one muscle group. Moreover, these movements require extra effort, which forces the body to burn additional calories to generate the energy needed for the exercises.

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Best Bodybuilding Exercises for Men

You should have already worked with barbells and dumbbells if you’re thinking of doing heavy movements.

It’s important to understand which muscle group engages during which exercise if you want to tone your muscles and improve your physique, strength, and muscle endurance.

On that note, here's a look at the five best bodybuilding exercises for men:

1) Barbell Bench Press

One of the best bodybuilding exercises for men to build mass and improve their physique is the bench press. You can bench press with dumbbells, but if you have a power rack, you should use that in your workout routine.

Bench press works on the pectoral muscles, triceps, and shoulders. It’s important to ensure you do not flare your elbows too much, keep your chest flared, and pinch your shoulder blades together. It’s important to ensure your muscles engage when you push the weight upwards.

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2) Barbell Squat

When you’re doing bodybuilding exercises, you cannot ignore the legs. One of the top picks from bodybuilding exercises for men is barbell squats.

You can do variations such as front squats and hack squats if you want to take a break from barbell squats.

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3) Deadlift

When working on your legs, you shouldn’t ignore your hamstrings as you work on your quadriceps with squats.

To work on the hamstrings, you need to do stiff-legged deadlifts. Keeping that in mind, you shouldn’t add too much weight to the barbell. You can start with dumbbell deadlifts to get used to the overall motion before shifting to barbell deadlifts.

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4) Barbell Row

Barbell rows are a great compound movement to work the lat muscles, biceps, and rear delts.

To do barbell rows, you need a power rack, otherwise you will have to bend quite a bit to lift the barbell. Nevertheless, you should eventually focus on using enough resistance that will allow you to activate the lat muscles and put stress on them.

If you’ve never done barbell rows before, you can begin with dumbbell rows. This workout helps by enabling you to work on each side at a time while focusing on fixing any strength and muscle imbalance. You can move to barbell rows when you become stronger.

You’ll find the guide to doing dumbbell bent-over barbell rows here.

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5) Barbell Overhead Press

When working on your overall body, you cannot ignore the arms. Most compound movements work on the triceps and biceps, but shoulders are extremely important to improve the overall look.

To ensure your shoulders are developing properly, you need to do bodybuilding exercises that specifically focus on the delts. The barbell overhead press is a top bodybuilding exercises for this purpose.

You can find the guide for doing barbell presses here.

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Bottom Line

When you’re focusing on the best bodybuilding exercises for men, you cannot ignore the other elements of bodybuilding, such as nutrition, hydration, and rest.

You need to be on a calorie-surplus diet to give your body the nutrition it takes to build the muscles. Next, you need to give the muscles rest to grow back thicker and stronger. Finally, you need to keep yourself hydrated to see an overall health improvement.