The 7 Most Important Exercises

There is an endless list of exercises to choose from. Even as a fitness professional, sometimes its hard to narrow down the selection. Let’s look at the seven most important exercises to integrate into your workout routine.

Ok, so I’m going to admit up top that my title selection of ”most important exercises” is a little misleading for the sake of getting your attention. BUT, that said, while I won’t be handing you seven specific exercises, I think I’m giving you something even better: education. Give a person an exercise, and they do it over and over until progress stops. Teach a person how to select an exercise and they have the basic information on how to figure out some form of progression.

While there are an endless quantity of strength exercises, most of them fit into one of seven categories. They’re broken down by what we call a “movement pattern” (the title “the 7 basic movement patterns” is far less catchy!). Movement patterns are basically a method of categorizing different ways the body moves based on what muscle groups are required to preform movements in a given category.

Why is it important to approach exercise knowing the movement patterns?

Great question, glad you asked. Maybe you’re an anxious beginner who wants to start experimenting with exercise at home. Or if you’ve ever been into a busy gym and were unable to get the piece of equipment you wanted or have gone on vacation and didn’t want to lose the habit of working out, knowing how to adjust your own program on the fly can be really helpful.

The 7 Most Important Exercise Patterns

Push

This is subdivided into two categories: horizontal and vertical. Think: chest press, pushup, and overhead press. Real life applications would be reaching up overhead to put a box on a high shelf (vertical) or mowing the lawn (horizontal).

Pull

This is also split up into two categories: horizontal and vertical. This covers the whole spectrum of rows and pulldowns. This vertical pull down would be you needing to get the box we put on the shelf in the “push” category. Horizontal might be opening a car door.

Squat

We squat all the time without realizing it— every time you sit down and then stand up, that mimics the squat pattern. This category covers all types of squats: goblet squat, box squat, TRX squat. Yes, bar squat is included here, but I want you to forget that move even exists until you’re moving well in the other squat varieties.

Hinge

This one can be tough. In the hinge we sit our hips back while keeping the knees static above the ankles… and the brain (sometimes) hates it. This covers things like Romanian deadlifts and, technically, things like bridges. Daily life application of the hinge is a little tougher to imagine, but has real practical use on days where your knees hurt when you bend them to much - so this offers an alternative.

Lunge

Lunging can have a little overlap with squatting. If you’re unsure of why a lunge may be important, imagine you’ve fallen and you need to get off the floor—you place both knees on the ground, swing one leg out front so you’re now in a 1/2 kneel—then you push yourself off the ground. That’s a portion of the lunge. I would make the argument that the older we get, the more important it is to practice the lunge (just in case we find ourselves on the floor). A transitional exercises that sits at the intersection of squat and lunge is a split squat (ew, I know). I favor TRX reverse lunges for beginners and then work up from there.

Carry

Think of how many times you’ve had to carry a grocery bag in one hand. Here we’re working on keeping the torso as an upright column and not allowing ourselves to tilt to one side or the other against the weight in our hands. We carry around uneven loads every day—the groceries I mentioned, carrying a baby in one arm, carrying a large water bottle at the gym, etc…

Anti-rotation

This is a cousin of the carry. With the carry we’re resisting side to side movement, with anti rotation we’re trying to resist the torso…. rotating. Think: approaching a heavy door on a windy day and being able to plant yourself and having the strength to pull the door open with your right hand without flailing or crumbling into a pile of dust. A Pallof press is where I usually have people start.

Other key takeaways about the most important exercises

• It's generally less about the specific exercises that we select and more about ensuring we’re covering all seven patterns in our workouts.

• One single list of exercises won’t necessarily get us to our goals and finding exercises that we can comfortably, safely execute.

• You’ll notice that there’s nothing listed above about cardio, plyometric training, or sport-specific training; so if you have goals in those areas, the “most important exercises” may look a little different. I would still make a strong argument that the seven fundamental strength patterns should be in everyone’s program, but if you have something you’re training for, you may have other important things you should be integrating.

Let’s wrap this up

While I do have a list of favorite exercises (think: things I would give beginners, clients on vacation, or people who don’t have the time/emotional energy to workout), I wouldn’t be serving my educational goal if I just handed you that list without context or ability to think on your own.