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The Best Deadlift Alternatives
Conventional barbell deadlifts are one of the best compound exercises for gaining muscle and strength, but you don’t need them in your workout routine. There are plenty of great deadlift alternatives that use barbells, dumbbells, exercise machines, or your own body weight. Some of them are easier, safer, or gentler on bad backs. We’ll cover all of them.
If you want to explain your situation and get a personal recommendation, we’ll answer all the comments. We’re both certified coaches, and we have over a decade of experience working with clients ranging from desk workers to college, professional, and Olympic athletes.
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How Long Does it Take to Build Muscle?
It takes most men about a year to gain their first 20 pounds of muscle. Those first 20 pounds are enough to add 1–2 inches to your arms and bump you up a clothing size. That’s when most guys start getting compliments.
If you succeed at gaining 20 pounds in your first year, then you can gain another 10 pounds in your second year, 5 more in your third, and smaller amounts afterward.
If you fall behind schedule, your muscles will still be ready to grow. You won’t “waste” your newbie gains. When you start building muscle again, you’ll be able to build it quickly.
Let’s go over some research, examples, and exceptions. We can also debunk some common claims.
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The Best Dumbbell Lat Exercises
Your lats pull your elbows in closer to your body, meaning that the best dumbbell lat exercises are some variation of dumbbell row. And dumbbell rows are fantastic. That’s all your lats need. Still, it’s better if you have at least a couple of exercises, especially if you can find exercises that challenge your lats at longer muscle lengths.
If you have a pull-up bar or some gymnastic rings, you can do chin-ups and pull-ups, working your lats just like a lat pulldown machine would. Otherwise, you can do dumbbell pullovers, sort of. They’re surprisingly controversial.
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How Much Muscle Can You Gain in a Year Naturally?
The common rule of thumb is that a natural male lifter can gain about 20 pounds of muscle in his first year, 10 pounds in his second, 5 in his third, and gradually less after that.
Women build muscle just as easily as men do. However, they’re usually smaller, so their average rate of muscle growth is proportionally slower. For example, if the average woman’s frame holds 2/3rds as much muscle as the average man’s, she might expect to gain 14 pounds of muscle in her first year, 7 in her second, and 3 in her third.
More controversially, you can expect to build muscle faster if you’re starting off skinny (full explanation). If you have an athletic background, you might start off more muscular, but future growth might be slower.
Perhaps most of all, your rate of muscle growth depends on how well you train and how much food you eat.
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What is a Recomp? Body Recomposition Explained
Recomp is short for body recomposition, which is when you build muscle and lose fat at the same time. It’s the holy grail of the fitness industry. It’s actually pretty common, though, especially among people who are out of shape or new to lifting weights.
Let’s go over some examples and some research, and explain how to do it.
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The Best Biceps Workout (Dumbbell, Barbell, or Full Gym)
A good default is to train your biceps with 3–5 sets of vertical pulls (like chin-ups and lat pulldowns) followed by 2–5 sets of biceps curls (like preacher curls and lying biceps curls) every week. That gives you 5–10 sets of biceps work per workout, and it trains both the short and long head. I recommend doing that twice per week, bringing you up to 10–20 sets per week.
In the rest of the article, we’ll go into more depth, talk about the best biceps exercises, and give you examples of good biceps workouts you can do with dumbbells, barbells, cables, or at a full gym.
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Are Chin-Ups/Pull-Ups Good for Your Biceps?
Chin-ups and pull-ups are heavy compound lifts, allowing you to heavily load your biceps while working them through a full range of motion. But they also train your back muscles, and some of those back muscles might fail before your biceps get worked hard enough. In that case, biceps curls might be the better biceps exercise.
Fortunately, a study comparing pull-downs with biceps curls found that they both stimulate about the same amount of biceps growth (study). Pull-downs work your biceps in the same way as chin-ups and pull-ups, so I suspect they’re similarly effective.
But there’s some nuance here. The short head of your biceps can work just fine during pulling exercises, but the long head can’t. The long head stabilizes the shoulder joint, so it can’t engage properly during pulling movements. It will grow faster if you do biceps curls.
Then, we need to consider that the distal portions of your biceps (closer to the elbow) grow faster when you challenge them at long muscle lengths (full explanation). Some types of biceps curls are better for that.
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The Best Short Head Biceps Exercises
The short head of your biceps is the simple head. Unlike the long head of your biceps, it doesn’t cross the shoulder joint. Well, it might, but it seems to be less significant than with the long head (study). Regardless, the short head is primarily responsible for flexing your arms, with a secondary function of supinating your hands. That means:
- You can train the short head perfectly well with regular biceps curls.
- You can also train it with pulling movements like chin-ups, pull-ups, and lat pulldowns. Rows won’t challenge your biceps very much, though.
- Exercises that are hard at the bottom are better for building muscle than exercises that are harder at the top (full explanation).
- You don’t need to worry about your shoulder position.
If you don’t have a preacher curl station, I’ll cover some alternatives that should be similarly effective.
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The Best Long Head Biceps Exercises
The main function of your biceps is to flex your arms. That’s what biceps curls are for. But the long head of your biceps also helps to stabilize the shoulder joint, meaning:
- Regular dumbbell, barbell, and cable biceps curls train the long head just fine. There’s no movement at the shoulder joint, so there’s no problem.
- Drag curls, chin-ups, pull-ups, and rows have too much movement at the shoulder joint, preventing the long head from working properly.
- Exercises that keep your elbows behind your body train the long head at longer muscle lengths, which is fantastic for building muscle (full explanation).
- Exercises that keep your elbows in front of your body train the long head at shorter muscle lengths, which isn’t very good for building muscle.
- Exercises that are hard at the bottom are better for building muscle than exercises that are harder at the top (full explanation).
If you want to keep it simple, keep doing regular biceps curls (tutorial video). They’re great for both the short and long heads of your biceps. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that.
But we can go deeper. If you bring your elbows behind your body and challenge your biceps at the bottom of the range motion, the long head of your biceps will get a tremendous muscle-building stimulus. There are two exercises that take advantage of that.
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Full-Body Workouts vs Splits: Which Builds More Muscle?
A new meta-analysis by Ramos-Campo gathered together all fourteen studies comparing full-body workout routines against split workout routines. This is the latest study, and it includes all of the previous ones, so it’s the best evidence we have.
- Full-body workouts train most of your muscles every workout. They’re usually done three days per week, but they can be done as many as five days per week. People like them because they’re more efficient. The downside is that they’re harder. It’s harder to train more muscles per workout.
- Split workouts “split” your body up into different muscle groups. They’re usually done four, five, or six days per week. You could have a Push Day, Pull Day, and Leg Day (Push/Pull/Legs). Maybe you add an Arm Day and Shoulder Day (Bro Split). Or maybe you alternate between upper-body workouts and lower-body workouts (Upper/Lower). People like these splits because you get to train more often without needing to train sore muscles. The workouts are also easier. The downside is that they’re less efficient.
The results show that full-body and split routines both stimulate the same amount of muscle growth (and strength gains). Sometimes, the results lean one way, flirting with statistical significance, but that wasn’t the case here. It really didn’t seem to make any difference at all. Sort of. There’s a catch.
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