The Only 10 Exercises Men Need To Get Jacked - Bodybuilder Ryan Terry

Duration: 10:53 2225 transcript words EN summary

Video summary

Bodybuilder Ryan Terry, a two-time Mr. Olympia winner with over 20 years of experience in hypertrophy training, outlines his definitive list of ten exercises required to maintain an elite physique for life. He emphasizes that while compound movements are foundational, the selection must be adapted based on individual injury history and maturity rather than blindly following trends like CrossFit's "kipping" momentum. His core philosophy revolves around long-lever pulls such as deadlifts, bench presses, and squats to drive overall size, but he specifically highlights hanging leg raises for abdominal development. Terry argues that proper execution of the hanging leg raise requires isolating the midsection by contracting the upper and lower abdominals before initiating movement from the hips, avoiding quad engagement or swinging momentum which can lead to anterior pelvic tilt and back issues like slipped discs. To address specific muscle groups with precision, Terry recommends incline dumbbell chest presses for versatile pectoral development and dumbbell shoulder presses to target shoulders unilaterally while ensuring a full stretch at the bottom of the movement without excessive weight that compromises form. For hamstring isolation, he prefers lying leg curls over seated variations due to better contraction quality, though he acknowledges personal preference plays a significant role in exercise selection. He also includes calf raises targeting both the gastrocnemius and soleus muscles as essential components for complete lower body conditioning. Throughout these recommendations, Terry stresses that if an individual feels a specific variation more intensely than another, they should prioritize it to maximize internal connection and results, treating training as an individual sport where adaptation is key. A critical component of Terry's regimen involves the use of deadlifts despite their potential impact on waistline width, which he justifies by noting that modern physique judging does not heavily penalize leg size or a narrow torso in the same way it once did. He explains that while isolation work like hyperextensions is often preferred for direct hamstring growth now, the deadlift remains valuable for recruiting nearly every muscle group simultaneously and providing an overall stimulus. Furthermore, he advocates for close-grip pull-ups as his number one bicep exercise because they effectively target the secondary arm muscles while allowing athletes to continue training their back without needing a separate dedicated session. This approach ensures that all major muscle groups are addressed efficiently within a sustainable routine. Beyond standard lifting mechanics, Terry places immense importance on isometric holds and blood flow restriction techniques for stage presentation and conditioning. He describes his morning routine involving intense abdominal work where he inhales fully to expand the core before exhaling completely while crunching as hard as possible for three-second intervals at various angles—front, side, and standing—to maximize muscle control and tightness. This brutal practice is designed to combat shaking on stage caused by a lack of neural connection or dehydration rather than just diet and cardio alone. By integrating these poses into his fasted cardio sessions eight weeks out from competition, he ensures that every pose can be held with stability and definition, proving that discipline extends far beyond the gym floor. Ultimately, Terry concludes that success in bodybuilding relies on adapting nutrition and training to one's unique metabolism rather than adhering strictly to external rules or ego-lifting heavy weights without regard for recovery. He warns against overtraining abs by treating them like any other muscle group with two-hour sessions followed by three-to-four days of rest, noting that excessive front-heavy strength can eventually cause distended appearances and back problems requiring compensatory exercises like hyperextensions. His final message encourages athletes to learn their own bodies through trial and error, focusing on the little details of presentation and control that separate elite competitors from amateurs, ensuring a sustainable path to maintaining peak physical condition for life.

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you are someone who has spent the last 20 years focusing on training especially for hypertrophy you are someone that has won pretty much every single title on the planet you have 10 exercises that you can do for the rest of your life in order to maintain as good of a physique as you can what are they and why ten that's very specific ten I just figured I just figured that would be enough for you to get each different muscle group right okay so what are the what are the longest levers that you can pull when it comes to maintaining size or increasing size for a lot of obviously compound lists so you're looking at your deadlifts uh your bench press um and your squats they're always good again these are things that I have had to adapt over the years because of um injuries and things training silly when I was younger okay there's three there's three there um hanging leg raise for core it's one of the hardest mid-sections if you do it properly I think it's one of the hardest uh mid-section exercises but it's phenomenal for your transverse abdomenes your upper and lower abdominals everything just it's a great I feel like that was something that helped me build my my midsection you've got one of the like acclaimed best mid sections in all of Fitness what are the cues that people get wrong when they're doing hanging leg roses so the create momentum this swing which um I think that has a bit to do CrossFit with this Kipping Malarkey and momentum stuff that that came into play a fair few years ago but um yeah I think swinging um I think using the hip flexors instead of the the midsection how do you know if you're doing that you'll feel it you'll feel it down your quads um what's the cue someone's doing a someone's listening to this hanging from a bar right now what is the cue for them to go from I'm hanging straight to I'm doing a leg raise that makes it work appropriately so he's talking the hips in and making sure you're Contracting you're up and lower abdominals before anything else so it's always keeping them fully contracted Minds multiple connection is is a huge thing I believe in that so much yeah Mike Thurston does the same yeah and the thing is the last few years I've done that so much more now as I've got older and more mature I'm not just trying to lift heavy weight and trying to Ego lift and since I've done that the muscle maturity and how my body's developed it's just exponential I just wish I'd done it five six years ago um so yeah so I think that's very important my into muscle connection with hanging leg razors you're going to an L are you going up to touch the bar so either so I used to do all the way to the top um but I alternate now so I'll just do a bit of both um I think there's there's a place for both of them but I think that when you go past a certain point you are recruiting all the muscle groups and so if you want to just isolate your midsection just go to 90 degrees how do you do Progressive overload on that or do you you or you could add weights to you I don't personally no because I was obsessed with my midsection growing up as you say Rob Richards was the guy who got me obsessed with it so I wanted to be on the front covers like Rob was I you see all the magazines and I tried to treat my midsection like any other muscle but some a lot of people think with the midsection you should um train 30 minutes after every session or why every other muscle part we train we train to break the muscle fibers down heavy a lot of load we break the muscle fire that we let them recover two three four days before we hit him again and that's how I looked and viewed my midsection so I'd give them two full hour sessions with a three to four day rest between and add the six to eight rep range really heavy the thing with that I start to develop really chunky ABS blocky ABS but in the end it started to look a bit distended because I'd gone too far with it and I was causing so many back problems had slipped discs from it and basically it's because I was too front heavy too front strong so it took a lot of years to start having to uh hyper extend for every crunch I did they said I had to do two hyper extensions wow so yeah it was you needed to compensate for all of that anterior strength that you developed and so now I don't tend to go too heavy and we do a lot of own body weight stuff okay cool so you've got four you've got squat bench deadlift yeah okay hanging leg raises six more slots to keep your body uh so so I'll go with uh some isolation work so we'll we'll probably go with like an incline dumbbell chest just because um you can do very a lot of different variations on that but I think it's great for development um shoulders aren't getting much work at the moment all right shoulder press we'll go with a dumbbell shoulder press because it's great for isolation unilateral um and that's quite important um obviously so we need to do some hamstring work so we would do I would I would say stiff like deadlift but now we I think if we're going to try and create some growth I think we're gonna go for like a lion hamstring curl heavy you prefer a lying to a seated I do yes um yeah I do but I don't know if that's down to the fact I just get better contraction off that I think it's personal preference um in my eyes like I've always said that with any type of exercises if you feel an exercise more than another stick with it Go With It do the extra sets and Reps on that particular exercise because that's where you're going to get the most out of it if you're doing an exercise because someone else has told you to do it and you're not getting that my internal connection or you're not revealing it there's no point and that's that's what I love about bodybuilding as well nutrition and training you adapt it to you it's it's an individual sport you can have people around you supporting it but your metabolism and the way you train the way you eat it all falls on you so learn the body yourself and adapt as you go okay three left what have you got I've lost where we are now um squat bench deadlift hanging leg raise uh incline chest press with dumbbells shoulder press seated car phrase seated calf raise oh so you want to get the Soleus moving yeah we'll get them in okay okay we'll cover them and then um two left we need overhead tricep extension rope pivoted from the bottom of a pulley yeah right okay yeah what are the cues that people get wrong there because this is a something that I absolutely love to do but where do people go wrong quite mechanically quite a complex movement yeah I think you can go too heavy too soon and start recruiting and start yeah pulling I don't know with the shoulder I think it's it's important to lock your elbows in a fixed position as well as the shoulder make sure there's no movement there I like to elongate and stretch it out and not a lot of people go too far with it but I like to overextend slightly to get a full stretch um and a full contraction at the top um online we need biceps done and then we've got everything then what's your number one bicep exercise what is my number one box you know what I'm going to say I'm going to say it um this is a bit of an outward on this because I've done loads of them today is um pull-ups close grip pull-ups I know it's a back workout but your secondary muscle is bicep and the contraction I get off that for my bicep every week I hit them I always want to bring my back up anyway so it's an excuse to just hit the back as well but I think that's a great overall exercise given the fact that you've added deadlifts in what is it that you're finding as a physique competitor that first off isn't massively judged on your legs and secondly wants a narrow torso why would you put deadlift into that kind of a workout so I've never believed this with I don't know if scientifically this is right but with deadlifting I've never I used to deadlift every week I don't so much now do a lot more isolation on hyper extensions again because I get a better contraction I do hypers I prefer to deadlift but I do hypers mainly but with a deadlift um obviously recruits near off every muscle in the in the body so it's great for for an overall workout but um I've lost my train of thought well what were we saying why are you using deadlifts given that you want to have a small waist yeah like I say because I train my midsection the way I do I do a lot of ice attention in the morning and what's that so it's basically all about ISO holds so you breathe in fully breathe in with you exhale every bit of air out of the body and you crunch your abs as hard as you can for three seconds and then standing up standing up yeah you can do that with any muscle parts I it's the most monotonous thing a bodybuilder can do but it's one of the best things for for muscle control for getting everything tight for condition I challenge anybody to do this so do we'll keep it simple three three from the front three from the side so you've got 300 bleaks on either side so you've got so you inhale hands of yet as you come down you crunch you exhale every bit of air out you crunch and hold it for three seconds as hard as you can it's good to have your top off because you need to seriously tense do it again and crunch try and do that 10 times and then go to the side and then crunch down hold and they do that 10 times and they do that 10 times have 30 seconds rest go again and then go again I do it five rounds and you're literally dripping wet through and the blood volume you get in your midsection is insane so you can do that with like um with your biceps or between exercises so if you're doing um yeah like a bicep curl you can straighten you hold your pose a double bicep and you hold you squeeze your midsection you squeeze it your biceps as hard as you can for 20 seconds say you come out and you go straight back into your working set it is brutal but if you ever see on a bodybuilding stage when when people are out there shaking because they've got no connection they've got no control over their bison that's why that happens yeah yeah there's also there's other factors what can happen dehydrated they're tired Etc et cetera nine times out of ten that will be down to the fact they've not done any ISO holes or they've not took the time with their posing to practice the posing um and that's something I always pride in myself and I remember the first few shows I did on the Olympia stage we're all we're all back um hitting from the back and the guy's going like Ryan what you know how are you holding that how are you holding that because they're all everyone's shaking and it's because eight weeks out from any show 30 minutes after my fasted cardio I'll do ISO holds with every every pose I have to do and every muscle group so it's it's horrendous but these are the things that people don't see these are like so when you look at bodybuilding oh yeah you eat some meals and you train uh twice a day but it's the the little things it's the what I've I'm I obsess over because it's okay having a great work ethic like in the gym or having the discipline to eat your six meals and and not cheat but it's also the other bits of presentation which is so important what's happening people if you enjoyed that then press here for the full unedited episode and don't forget to subscribe peace foreign