#493 - 100 Exercises Ranked for Maximum Healthspan

Siim Land (0:00)

There are hundreds of exercises out there. Some of them build muscle, others build endurance, and some of them are just a waste of time. So in this video, I decided to rank a hundred different exercises in the context of health and longevity. Which exercises are the best for overall health and that most people would benefit from? Timestamps for everything are down below. All right, we got our tier list here, and exercise number one is zone two cardio. Essentially, low intensity, steady state, cardiovascular exercise, running, cycling, swimming, whatever, you know, whatever you want to do it with, but essentially 60 to 70% of your maximum heart rate or below the lactate threshold. And I'm going to put it in a good tier. I think that it is a very underrated form of exercise, still this low form of exercise. And yes, for maximal fitness benefits, it's not the best form of exercise, but it still has a place. And when we're talking about general health and longevity, then you want to do a lot more of this low intensity exercise, rack that up and sprinkle in some high intensity exercise. You don't want to be doing as much of high intensity exercise as possible. You want to kind of rack up the hours of low intensity physical activity and then intersperse it with this high intensity exercise. Barbell squats, I think, are absolute god tier. One of the best exercise or the best exercise for building lower body strength, including hip bone density and spinal bone density. One of the reasons I think I have very high spinal bone density is because of doing a ton of heavy barbell back squats. Pistol squats. So these ones are just one leg squats. You go up and down with one leg and it looks like a pistol. So I think pistol squats aren't the most absolutely essential. If I never had to do pistol squats, then that would be fine. I think they are a good example of if you are able to do pistol squats, they're a great example of good leg strength, good leg mobility, knee mobility, good knee strength, ankle mobility, all those things. So they are a prestigious exercise. If someone is able to do pistol squats, then they're fit and functional with their lower body. So I will put it in the goo tier. Split squats. So Bulgarian split squats, other types of split squats. So I would consider them also to be... They are a unilateral exercise, so they are a lot more functional than a standard barbell squat in that perspective. So you're doing it one leg at a time. It reduces the likelihood of muscle imbalances, etc. And incorporate some balance. So I'll put it into the god tier. If you do some split squats, then that's gonna be very good for not only leg strength, leg muscles, but also balance. Deadlift. Now, I think deadlifts are the most effective exercise for lower back and even your lats, and grip strength, and hamstrings, and a lot of different muscle groups. But I don't think that it's the most essential for just general health and agility. If you do deadlifts, then that's gonna be fine. They're not gonna be the absolute god tier, in my opinion. I'm gonna put it in the goo tier. Pull-ups are god tier. So pull-ups are one of the best upper body exercises, in my opinion, because you're not only using one of the largest upper body muscles in your body, which are the lats and the other muscles in the back, but it's also an exercise that is relative to your body weight. So it's a kind of litmus test that if you're overweight or not, or if you have just too much mass, if you're able to do 10, 15, 20 pull-ups, then it means you not only have good muscle strength, but you're also either lean or just normal body weight. Whereas if you're, let's say, super strong with a deadlift, but you're not able to do more than five pull-ups, then it can mean that you just have too much mass. Now, maybe if you're a strong man, that's fine. But in the context of this health and longevity tier, I would still categorize pull-ups in the gut tier, probably one of the best exercises overall from this list currently, because you need to be slightly lower body fat, and have a kind of decent muscle mass. So it's a balance between these two. That's why it's the absolute best, in my opinion. Push-ups. Now, push-ups are, you know, similar category as pull-ups. You need to be semi lower body fat, et cetera. You need to have decent muscle strength to do a bunch of push-ups. But the push-ups, the limitation of push-ups is that you'll end up doing tens, even over a hundred push-ups if you're super advanced. So, in one set, so it becomes a lot less, you know, effective in terms of overall muscle strength. It's going to train a lot more muscle endurance. Now, if you added a weighted waist or something like that, then yes, you can make the push-ups a lot harder, but push-ups have a kind of ceiling. If you're able to do over 50, 60 push-ups, then you're already maximizing a lot of the benefits of push-ups, unless you're going to train for muscle endurance, et cetera. So I'll put it in the good tier. It's a very good exercise. I think everyone should do some push-ups, but it's going to be a lot less effective than pull-ups, in my opinion. Barbell row. So using the barbell to do rowing, you lean over or lean forward, and you're doing the rowing motion. Now, there's a lot of different types of rowing. You can drop the bar in between reps. You can keep it off the ground throughout the set. Different versions of it, I'll put it into OK. So first of all, if you're doing the barbell row, then yes, you're using your back muscles, but a lot of the effort also goes into your hamstrings. So you're not really isolating the back muscles that much. So that's why you're kind of limiting your own growth in terms of back development if you're doing the barbell row. It's an otherwise great exercise. I like it. It's one of my favorite, like, horizontal pulling exercise. So a pull up is vertical pulling exercise. You're doing up and down. Horizontal pull is the row when you're leaning forward. So I think it's, you know, great. I like it, but it's just not going to be that effective. And by the way, I'm not incorporating these different machine exercises that much, maybe a few of them. And the reason is because, you know, you can do hundreds of different versions of machine exercises. You can do the barbell row on a machine with the rowing. So arguably, the machine row can be a little bit more isolating towards the back. So, but I'm not going to cover all of these machine exercises because we'll be staying here for hours. You know, I put the barbell row, it's not even that functional, right? So in the everyday world, you're not going to be doing this kind of rowing motion where you're just leaning forward and pulling something towards you. A deadlift is a lot more functional in the real world as well. A barbell row, not that much compared to a pull up or even like a barbell squat, for example, dumbbell, one arm row, basically the same exercise but you're doing with a dumbbell and unilateral. So I'll put it also in the OK tier for that reason. Overhead press. Overhead pressing is obviously can be quite functional. If you lift something over your head, that's going to be super functional, but it's very unlikely that you'll be pushing something over your head and everyday setting something that weighs more than like 50 kilos. It's going to be very unlikely that you'll do that. Of course, in a few scenarios, it might happen, but there's again like a limitation of how functional it is. But it's certainly one of the best exercise for overall strength for the upper body. So I'm not going to put it in the God tier, I'll put it in the good tier. Dumbbell shoulder press. So for hypertrophy purposes, dumbbell shoulder press is better because you're taking out some of the emphasis on the back with the overhead press. You're really using your upper back a lot and embracing your core, etc. It's a lot more functional, but it is less effective for muscle growth for the shoulders, whereas the dumbbell shoulder press is more functional for shoulder muscle development.