In the past few years the tremendous capabilities of this magical hormone, named Testosterone, came into light. The number of benefits that the testosterone has, for both men and women, are so much that it has become one of the favorite topic for health freaks. But the bad news is that a huge percentage of population is testosterone deficient.
A study showed that, the average man today has about 10% less testosterone than the average man a decade ago. The reason behind this, might be the rapid movement of humans towards automation. The physical activity have reduced to bare minimum.
So, in order to pull the testosterone to an optimal level we must take a few efforts, exercise is one of them. The real reason people don’t have enough testosterone, is, because our body doesn’t feel the need to produce it. Therefore, we should give our body a valid reason for it to increase testosterone production.
In this article, we will talk about the best exercise to increase testosterone. Women can also perform these exercises but weight must be adjusted accordingly.
1) Dips
Dips is a pretty good way to boost your testosterone. Simple because the other exercises require more technique and skills. Many of you, might have done it in your childhood too. It targets your triceps, chest, back and shoulder. Hence, an ideal compound exercise. Dips destroys a big number of muscles and hence the body releases a huge amount of testosterone for repair.
You can do dips on the dip bar, but if you don’t have dip bars in your gym or you prefer exercising at home, then you can use two chairs. On the dip bar, the position of your body will decide which part you work on more. If you tilt forward, while dipping you build chest muscles and when you are completely straight you work on your triceps.
2) Surya Namaskar
Surya Namaskar means “Sun salutation”. Although it sounds more of a spiritual thing but in fact it is one hell of an exercise for your overall body. Surya Namaskar is made up of 12 yoga poses. So, when you do 1 Surya Namaskar, you are getting benefits of 12 yoga poses.
As for testosterone, Surya namaskar, target a great number of muscles at once, many times more than any other exercise. The best part is you can do it at home. Depending on the intensity, it can help to relax you or can be great exhaustive exercise. Targets multiple muscle and exhaust you, 2 qualities of testosterone producing exercise.
3) Barbel Squats
The normal squat is also very effective compound exercise. By adding weight to it, you can take it to another level. Barbell squats target a major portion of your back and legs. Although it looks simple, but still it requires some skill and technique.
For beginners, only barbell is enough. Or if you want to experiment with some weights, then you can use “Smith machine”. You just have to remember to keep your back straight as you go up and down and don’t move your knees in front(or try as much as you can).
4) HIIT
It stands for high interval intensity training. It consists of number of maneuvers that must be performed at very high intensity. There are no fixed exercises in HIIT, different HIIT program can have different exercises targeting different muscles less or more. But, usually the end result is same.
The concept here is that maximum number of muscles must be used, in the minimum time. HIIT uses almost all the muscles of the body and increases testosterone in great proportions. In the beginning, you might have trouble coping up, for that, you can work on you legs and back for around a month before you start HIIT.
It is also the fastest way to remove fat, and when you lose fat the testosterone level automatically increases.
5) Bench press
Bench press is usually associate with chest but it is not true at all. In fact, it is a workout for both the muscle building and strength building. It works on your chest, upper back, triceps and biceps. If done correctly, it is one of the best exercise to increase testosterone.
There are many ways to do a bench press wide grip(chest), close grip(triceps), etc. You can chose one of them depending on what muscle group you want to target. If you are a beginner you can use “Smith machine” to do bench presses. Although it won’t be as effective, as the main part of any exercise is stabilization, and Smith machine takes that responsibility from you.
6) Dead lift
One of the most effective testosterone boosting exercises. You go to a good trainer and ask him, what is the best exercise to build muscles. The answer would be the dead lift. The main job of testosterone is to build muscles and when you are dead lifting a huge amount of T gets released.
That testosterone is also used by other muscles to grow. That is why, dead lift is good for overall muscle growth. Depending of the weight you lift and the reps, the amount testosterone will be secreted.
7) Pull ups
Pull ups is one of the simplest and effective muscle building exercise, that is usually ignored. Pull ups covers all the muscles in your upper body, your forearm,biceps, triceps, shoulders, back, wings, etc. In the beginning, you can start without weight, with time you can add a little weight.
In army and navy, pull ups is very common exercise for increasing both strength and endurance. Many people can’t do pull ups because they don’t know the right technique to increase the number of pull ups they can do.
NOTE: Swimming
Swimming is considered as one of the best exercise. You think of a muscle in your body and I guarantee you that there is 99% chance that, that muscle is used while you swim. But, the more muscle and more testosterone concepts doesn’t work with swimming. In fact, a study has shown that intense swimming decreases the level of testosterone significantly in both males and females. So, if you want to swim and increase your testosterone at the same time, try to keep the intensity low.
Conclusion :: Exercise to increase testosterone
From my personal experience I can say that, it not about how much you do an exercise, its about how much you can push yourself. For example, if you do 10 squats easily and and stop there, it won’t be of any use. Its when you start exceeding your limits, that’s when the real magic happens. Try this yourself, for one week do everything a little more.
If you think you can do only 8 reps of a dead lift, now force yourself to do 10 or 12. Those extra 2 or 4 reps will be 10 times more effective then the first 8 reps. You will notice the difference.
View Comments (1)
You should remove the bit about swimming and testosterone. The only study that shows this is seriously seriously flawed and only looked at children.