The Most Important Excersises

If you call yourself an athlete and are not in the gym lifting heavy things on a consistent basis, you are really doing yourself a disservice. Its not about looks or proformance or speed  (although of coursethose things benifit), its about injury prevention, general health and athleticism.

1. The Squat. The most basic of all human movement. Sit down and then stand up. Congraduations you just did a squat. You just did the thing that will greatest help you get the body you want. A leg press is NOTHING in comparison to a real squat; if you think otherwise, you've been lied to.
2. The Deadlift. Something is on the ground, pick it up. Lift with the knees and then with the back. Wanna get powerful? Deadlift
3. The Overhead Press (really 3 related exercises). A weight is on your shoulders, lift it over head. Overhead push strength is everything in sports. The beauty of real weight lifting in comparison to machines is that you must stabilize your entire body under that weight. Bench press is great, but a standing press is a total body exercise.
4. The Pull Up. It uses every single muscle in the back (especially when you do then correctly. Read: Kipping PUs). If you could not, dangling in the air, pull your way back over the precipice, you should probably start working on that.  Can't do a full pullup yet? Start with jumping PUs instead of a row machine.

I guarantee that if you do circuit training with just these 4 exercises  you will show twice as much gain as you would doing all those stupid machines for three times as long. Don't believe me, come to the gym with me sometime and I'll show you what a real workout is.