Getting your upper body fit and strong takes a lot of work! After all, there are so many different muscle groups to work — shoulders, back, arms, chest, and core — so you have to spend time working each of them. The good news is that there are a few movements that will build a lot of power in your upper body and hit some or all of those muscle groups at once. Here are the best exercises to increase your upper body strength:

Push-Ups

A push-up is the perfect upper body “pushing” exercise. It engages your core and hip muscles while your triceps, shoulders, and chest do all the dynamic work. You’ll find that few exercises engage your “pushing” muscles as effectively, and it’s the perfect bodyweight movement to help you get in killer shape without the need for weights.

Pull-Ups

Yet another bodyweight movement, this one that focuses on the “pulling” muscles. When you do a pull-up, it takes a lot of core control to keep your body from swinging, and your biceps, shoulders, and upper back do the hard work of pulling you up and controlling your descent. This bodyweight workout is crazy hard, making it the best of the pulling exercises.

Military Presses

A military or overhead press is one of the most commonly used shoulder workouts, thanks to the fact that it’s a simple movement: just push a heavy barbell straight up over your head, lower it to your shoulders, and repeat. The movement not only works your deltoid muscles, but it also hits your triceps and engages your abs and back to keep your body stable as you push the weight. Definitely good for upper body strength!

Bench Presses

Bench presses focus on your chest, shoulders, and triceps, and they’re the weighted version of push-ups. The fact that you can adjust the incline and decline of the bench press means you can hit your muscles from various angles, and even shifting your grip on the barbell will affect the part of your muscles that get the heavy work.

Pull-Downs

Pull-downs are like the reverse, weighted version of pull-ups. Instead of pulling your body up to a bar, you’re pulling a heavily weighted bar down toward you. If you can’t do pull-ups yet, don’t worry about it! You can keep adding weight to the cable pull-down machine until you’re strong enough to lift your body weight, then try a few pull-ups. It’s a great exercise to get you in pull-up shape!

Clean and Press

The clean and press combines a lower and upper back movement with an overhead press that hits your shoulders, arms, and core. It’s one heck of an upper body workout, one that hits nearly every muscle (except your chest). It can take time to learn how to do it right and might be dangerous for your back if done incorrectly, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll find it’s one of the best exercises to increase your upper body strength.

If you want a stronger upper body, these are the movements to include in your daily resistance training workouts!

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