Barbell Workout for Beginners (13 MUST-DO Exercises)

Check out this barbell workout for beginners.

When you are just starting your fitness life, there is a lot to learn. Doing the right movements and getting enough bang for your bucket is like learning a whole new language. Understandably, when there is a lot to unpack, there can be too much information that might seem relevant, but actually it isn’t.

Do you want a quick info that is extremely valuable and awesome for you, beginner? There is a thing called newbie gains, which means that if you haven’t done much exercise before in the gym, your first few months will make you gain a lot of muscle and see you progress incredibly well.

In other words, if you are a beginner, you should be experiencing lifting heavier weights or doing more exercise every week for a few months. That means you will be getting stronger, more athletic and overall fitter the more you go to the gym.

athlete participates in the crossfit open

And the best way for you to get the best benefit is to choose the right exercises to do early on. And everyone agrees that those are the compound lifts, or the exercises that move more than one muscle group at a time. That way you get stronger in multiple areas of your body with a single exercise. But which ones should you choose?

A comprehensive list of 13 exercises that comprise this barbell workout for beginners was created and shared by coach Chris Wilson.

Chris Wilson is a renowned strength coach at Critical Bench, a website focused on health and strength that delivers many tips on how to get stronger, fitter and healthier with a YouTube channel with more than 1 million subscribers.

Check out his barbell workout for beginners that you should definitely do regularly.

Barbell Workout for Beginners

These 13 movements, part of this barbell workout for beginners were chosen because they will recruit the most muscles in your body, across your entire body. That way you won’t behaving a strong upper body and lacking in the lower body.

What you want, as a beginner, is to learn how to do these movements properly, work your entire body, and understand the muscles they target and why they are good for you.

So here is Wilson’s list of 13 movements of an amazing barbell workout for beginners that you should have in your workout:

Bent-over row
Overhead press
Squat
Deadlift
Bench press
Close-grip press
Curl
Arm extension
Shrug
Upright row
Lunge
Step-up
Good morning

Some exercises in this list are isolation moves, the opposite of compound movements – they focus on a single joint, thus only one muscle group is activated during the exercise. It is the case of the curl and the arm extension.

But coach Chris Wilson explains why he chose these, nevertheless. If you want to know how to perform each one of these movements properly, or to understand more why these are some of the best movements to have in this barbell workout for beginners, click on the video below.