Jeff Cavaliere Says These 12 Exercises Are All You Need to Build Muscle

Building muscle, improving strength, becoming a better athlete and creating a body that is more resilient to injury can seem daunting, if not impossible. But Jeff Cavaliere of the Athlean-X YouTube channel argues there are just 12 fundamental movement patterns you need to achieve all those goals.

Instead of overcomplicating your training, he argues that you should instead focus on movement patterns that work the entire body. From the legs, back, chest, shoulders, arms and core, to the stabilising muscles that are crucial to your training but can sometimes get overlooked, according to Cavaliere, you can achieve all your physique and athletic needs in just 12 movements.

'The best exercises for building muscle are not always the flashiest,' Cavaliere says. 'They are the ones that allow you to progressively overload, move through the right ranges of motion, train multiple muscle groups, and develop strength that carries over to everything else you do.'

Here's how to structure your training programme with just 12 movements.

Squat

When it comes to building lower-body strength, there could only be one winner: the squat. Squats target the legs, glutes, hips and core in one fell swoop, are hugely versatile, and replicate everyday movement.

'We know that this exercise is incredibly powerful for hitting the quads, glutes, adductors and even the hamstrings,' Cavaliere says. 'It's also one of the most fundamental movement patterns that we all need to learn how to get stronger at. I mean, hell, even getting up and down off the toilet every day is going to require that you know how to squat.'

And, even if you are unable to do traditional squats due to knee or back pain, Cavaliere recommends still incorporating the pattern into your workouts. Variations, such as the Bulgarian split squat or box squat, are both suitable options that place less pressure and stress on the joints.

Deadlift

'There's no better exercise for hitting the posterior chain than the deadlift,' he says. 'The deadlift is going to train the all-important hinge pattern, which is one that you're going to need to master if you not only want to excel at the lift, but actually in everyday life.'

For Cavaliere, performing the hinge correctly is vital for building strength through the posterior chain while still protecting your lower back. This entails letting your hips sit back as you bend over at the waist, rather than just doing the second part. Focus on getting the technique right first before you start loading up the bar.

Bench Press

Rounding off the traditional big three compound movements is the bench press. It's an exercise that develops a powerful chest and challenges the shoulders and triceps at the same time. It can also be adapted depending on minor injuries – using dumbbells, for example, can restore stability without placing unnecessary strain on the shoulders.

'Remember, there's one thing that's always a great equaliser in those cases, and that is just simply slowing the reps down,' Cavliere adds. 'If you perform these reps very, very slow, often times the pain that you feel goes away. And that goes back to a thing I say all the time. Is it the structure that's the problem or is it the stability? And often times, on the bench press, it's stability. If you learn to lower the weights a lot slower and perform each rep with intent, often times those pains go away and your ability to perform the exercise is restored.'

Pull-Up

Cavaliere views the pull-up as not only one of the best bodyweight exercises, but one of the best back exercises. He highlights how it's one of the most effective ways to build your lats, upper back, grip strength and core, and should feature heavily in any training programme.

'It demands not only a great amount of strength to pull your entire body weight way up to the bar, but it requires that you're able to do so with a rigid torso, meaning you have to be able to keep good core stability from your feet all the way up to your fingertips,' Cavaliere says.

Face Pull

'The face pull is one of my favourite exercises,' Cavaliere explains. 'Once again for the posterior chain, but this time for the upper body because it doesn't just do one thing. It trains the upper back, rotator cuff, and scapular retractors. Three areas that we often times just don't do enough things for.'

By simultaneously requiring elbow flexion, scapular retraction and external shoulder rotation, face pulls are a great exercise to improve shoulder health and develop upper back strength. As you can tell, Cavaliere is a keen advocate for them, too.

Banded External Rotation

This movement helps strengthen the rotator cuff, and is effective in correcting any muscular imbalances that you might be suffering from.

'I'm a big believer in the corrective exercises and especially those that train external rotation of the shoulder. The rotator cuff muscles are the only muscles that externally rotate the shoulder,' he explains.

'This is one muscle imbalance that you're creating that you're not gonna be able to overcome, at least not at the expense of the health of your shoulder. Something as simple as banded external rotation here is going to get the job done.'

Lunge

Lunges train single-leg strength, stability and control. They boost athleticism, too, because sporting pursuits are rarely performed with both legs at the same time.

For that reason, it's an exercise that should play a fundamental role in your workouts, in any variation that works best for you.

Push-Up

When performed with enough intensity, there's always a time and place for push-ups. That's according to Cavaliere, who is keen to stress that they need to be challenging enough to actually create a stimulus.

'If you can easily do 30, 40, or 50 reps, it is time to choose a harder push-up variation so you can continue building strength and muscle,' he says. 'The right push-up variation can challenge the chest, shoulders, triceps, and core with nothing more than your bodyweight.'

Feet-elevated push-ups, weighted push-ups, clap push-ups and archer push-ups are all variations of the exercise that can make things more difficult.

Overhead Press

The bench press covers the horizontal pressing motion, but the vertical press is still essential for any decent programme. Take your pick from barbell or dumbbells, and press overhead. And for those that struggle to overhead press without pain, then there are still things you can do to alleviate any issues while still getting the benefits of the movement; for example, by using just one dumbbell at a time.

'The advantage here is that you have a better chance to stack your joints more appropriately with your wrist over your elbow over your shoulder, which will often times introduce the stability that you're lacking,' Cavaliere says. 'That makes this exercise once again a pain-free option.'

Lying Tricep Extension

Despite receiving a stimulus from the bench and overhead press, Cavaliere still likes providing the triceps with some specific accessory work. That's where he adds in the lying tricep extension.

'The thing that I love about this exercise is it puts that all important long head, the medius portion of our triceps, which is basically two thirds of the size of our arm, on a great amount of stretch on every single repetition,' he explains.

Barbell Curl

'When you're looking to round out that arm development, and I mean literally round it out, it doesn't have to be complicated,' Cavaliere says. 'As a matter of fact, when it comes to bicep training, there really is nothing complicated because we're talking about a simple hinge joint up and down. For me, the barbell curl is going to be my choice.'

Cavaliere likes being able to load up the barbell heavier than he usually would a dumbbell, and introducing cheat reps where he can take advantage of the heavy eccentric loading. That means introducing a minor swing to get the weight to the top, before then controlling it back down to overload the muscle.

Barbell Row

Last but not least is the barbell row. Rows help to balance out your pressing and build the upper back, and provides the horizontal pulling motion that is needed.

'If the pull-up was addressing our vertical pulling needs, the barbell row is going to take us to the promised land when we're looking to address our horizontal pulling needs,' he says. 'And once again, the variation here matters less than the movement pattern itself.'

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