Enhance Anaerobic Health: Weight training helps enhance anaerobic capacity by increasing muscular strength, power, and speed. Better anaerobic fitness helps you perform better during high-intense short-burst activities, like sprinting.
Improve Functional Fitness: Compound exercises, such as deadlift and overhead press, solidify the basic functional strength that is required in daily life, such as picking an object off the floor or a lifting box overhead and placing it in an appropriate place.
Time-Saving: Compound exercises stimulate various muscles simultaneously and help you train your entire body in a shorter time than isolation workouts.
Beginner Compound Resistance Exercises for Strength and Size
Improve lower body strength, balance, and coordination.
Enhance hip flexibility and engage the abdominal muscles.
Level up your functional fitness that helps in daily activities.
Steps to perform:
Holding a dumbbell in each hand, stand upright in the split stance.
Keep your arms straight by your sides with your palms facing up.
Brace your core and maintain a neutral spine position.
Lower into a lunge until your rear knee almost touches the floor.
Press through your leading foot to return to the starting position.
Repeat on the opposite side and perform as many reps as possible.
Front LungeTips/Mistakes:
Take a long stride, keeping the front knee above the ankle.
Push through the heel when returning to the starting position.
Avoid Leaning forward excessively and letting your knees go past the toes.
When to Perform:
Lunges is an excellent exercise to do anytime you like. You can do it on weighted cardio day, leg strengthening day, or total body workout day.
Best Bodyweight Compound Exercises for Beginners
8. Pull Up
Muscle Worked
Force Type
Equipment Needed
Back, Biceps, and Abs
Pull
Pull-up Bar
Exercise Benefits:
Pull-ups target the upper body, especially the back and biceps.
Improve upper body strength, endurance, and appearance.
Bolster abdominal and grip strength.
Steps to perform:
Hang onto the bar with a grip slightly wider than shoulder-width apart.
Engage your shoulder blades and, retracting them, pull your body up towards the bar by bending your elbows.
Continue until your chin clears the bar.
Lower yourself with control until your arms are extended.
Pull UpTips/Mistakes:
Engage your core muscles.
Use assistance bands if needed.
Grab the bar with an overhand firm grip
Avoid over-arching your back and swinging your body when pulling up.
When to Perform:
You can do the pull-ups at the start of your sessions if you want to perform more repetitions on your back day. Even if you don’t do a complete pull-up, do the partial reps or hang onto the bar.
9. Bar Dip
Muscle Worked
Force Type
Equipment Needed
Chest, Triceps,
Push
Dip Station
Exercise Benefits:
Bar dips target the chest, triceps, and shoulders simultaneously.
Enhance upper body strength, stability, and muscle definition.
Improve pushing power and functional strength.
Steps to perform:
Grab the bar’s handles firmly, hoist yourself up, and keep your arms straight.
Slightly lean your torso forward, maintain a flat back, and brace your core.
Bending your arms, lower your body until your shoulders are below your elbows.
Push through your palms to extend your arms and return to the starting position.
Bar DipTips/Mistakes:
Keep your chest up and shoulders down.
Hold your core tight for stability.
Use your palms to extend your arms.
Exhale after each rep.
When to Perform:
You can superset bar dip with pull-ups to build a muscular, ripped torso.
10. Chin Up
Muscle Worked
Force Type
Equipment Needed
Biceps, Back, and Abs
Pull
Pull-up Bar
Exercise Benefits:
Chin-ups work the back and biceps and strengthen upper body muscles.
I'm an online personal trainer, fitness blogger, and fitness enthusiast. I love researching and writing about exercise and nutrition. I share science-based, practical, and logical information that can help you achieve your desired fitness goal.