Muscle-Building Exercises You've Never Tried Before!

Expand your exercise library and your muscle size, with these rut-busting movements from an elite team of MusclePharm athletes!



Not only does training with the same exercise lineup over and over get boring, it can eventually impact your results. To get the most out of your hard work in the gym, you have to occasionally hit your body with new stimuli, angles, and tricks.

If you change your exercises as often as you paint your house, try adding some variety to your routine with these nine unique movements and techniques from the fit athletes of Team MusclePharm!

1.Incline Banded Dumbbell Press Supers eded With Incline Banded Fly

Because the weight at the top of the lift will be more than at the bottom, you'll have to reduce the dumbbells proportionately. Loop the band around the middle of the handles so the load is distributed evenly. The movement may be challenging at first (especially toward the top), but maintain control and use a deliberate motion. Once you reach your target rep, drop the weights and immediately do incline flyes with just the band.

Remember that the load increases as you raise the bands, so taking each rep to full extension becomes the most challenging aspect of this exercise.


2. Cable Pull-Through

Courtesy off

Training Tips: Step away from the stack, so there's tension even in the bottom position. All the form pointers you follow when doing RDLs apply here—keep your knees soft, use your arms as hooks (don't pull with them), and don't round your back.

You may be able to use a longer ROM here than with barbell RDLs, but never pass the point at which your back rounds. Allow the weight to bend you over as your glutes move rearward, and come up by pressing your hips strongly forward.

3.Plate Hammer Curl Supersetted With Plate Overhead Extension

Training Tips: Maintain a hammer grip (palms-in) on both exercises. On the latter exercise, keep your elbows pointed up, and don't let them flare to minimize pectoral involvement. Having a spotter handy can help you with some forced reps as well. Muscle Pharm's Brandon Strong does these for 5 sets of 20 reps of each movement.


4.Dumbbell Lateral/Front Raise Combo



Training Tips: For simplicity, Henry keeps both arms pointed in the same direction, whether it's to the right side or left. Use lighter dumbbells to increase your reps—and the burn!

5.Smith-Machine Vertical Leg Press

About The Move: The vertical leg press was a staple machine back when Arnold competed, but you won't find it in most gyms anymore. This version on the Smith machine comes close, but I wouldn't recommend going incredibly heavy. The vertical press is a variation of the lying leg press, but don't expect to use the same poundages, since you're pushing directly up against gravity rather than at an angle.

Training Tips: Place a padded mat on the floor under the unit. You'll want to try a variety of body positions, but you'll want your hips directly under your feet. Make sure you adjust the safeties on each side of the apparatus, if your unit has them; set them below the bottom of the ROM but at a point where you can safely bail.

Because it's critical your feet remain flat and level with the floor throughout, don't use extremely wide foot positions; your feet might become angled, which could possibly allow the bar to slide off. The bar should rest stably between your midfoot and heel, but not too close to the edge of your foot. Use your hands to push up through your thighs to get the bar into the start position.

As you rep, pay attention to the stability of the bar, not only to prevent an accident, but to ensure it doesn't roll, which could allow the hooks on the bar to interfere with the motion. Take your reps deeper to put more emphasis on the glutes. A slow negative is a great way to better recruit the hamstrings.

6.Band Overhead Dumbbell Press Supersetted With Banded Overhead Fly

Training Tips: You can do this superset seated (run the band under the bench) or standing (stand on the midpoint of the band). Adjust dumbbell weight according to band limits (which could range from 20-50 pounds when fully stretched).

Since you won't be using dumbbells on the overhead fly, you may find the bottom of the ROM is pretty easy, but take the second half of the superset to muscle failure. Remember to lock a slight bend in your elbows to restrict the motion to the shoulders.

Training Tips: Keep the movement smooth and under control at all times. As usual, descending deeper into the squat position better triggers greater glute and hamstrings activation.

Make sure your trailing knee doesn't contact the floor. Push up through your front leg to return to the start position. Do all reps for one side before switching to the other.

Training Tips: Raise both forearms unitl they're about parallel to the floor, keeping one side locked in this position, and do 5 reps for the opposite side. Switch sides for 5 more reps. Then, do 10 reps with both sides. Repeat the drill 4 more times. As you fatigue, you may be inclined to use more body English, but try and keep it to a minimum.

About The Move: The reverse hyper on a Roman chair or elevated flat bench is already a good upper-hamstrings and glute move (the lower back gets some isometric work too). If those are still too easy, however, you can up the ante by positioning your body more vertically, which makes you work harder.

You may have to experiment with this exercise, depending on the type of decline bench you have available, adding the ball so your legs hang freely without touching the ground.

Contract your glutes and hamstrings to raise your feet as high as possible, keeping your legs as straight as possible, as you spread your feet to form the letter Y.????