8 Exercises Every Serious Athlete Should be Doing

On far too many occasions, people have engaged in physical training with the sole intention of building muscle mass and shedding body fat. Under these circumstances, it is quite common for their initiation to be overseen by their local gym’s  in-house personal trainer, who provides them with the foundational body recomposition advice they are looking for. 

Specifically, the new trainee is prescribed a set of exercises that induce hypertrophy throughout the entire body, gradually increasing their muscle mass over time. This fresh workout guidance is supplied alongside a few dietary modifications, some encouragement to shed additional calories through cardio, and probably an encouragement to take supplements like creatine and protein.

Armed with this advice, the trainee can power their way through hundreds of workouts over many years with the results yielding precisely what they were hoping for — a slimmer waistline, and an aesthetically pleasing shape. However, whenever they try their hand at local sporting events, like softball games or 5K runs, they are often shocked to discover that their dramatic aesthetic improvements haven’t translated into harder-hit softballs or blistering foot speed.

To put it plainly, the pathway to athleticism is often different than the road that leads to lean muscle and a defined physique, even though there is often quite a bit of overlap in the training both superficially and foundationally. 

It just so happens that if you are seeking to become a serious athlete and you’ve already been lifting weights for some time, you’re probably only a couple of adjustments away from having a workout plan that will turn you into the free agent that everyone wants to add to their team’s roster.

What the science says

The good news is that you’re already on the right track if you’re going to the gym and engaging in resistance training. Multiple meta-analyses have taken dozens of studies of elite athletes into account, and deduced that the foundation of athletic development lies in performing multi-joint resistance exercises to improve sprint speed, jump height, change of direction, maximal strength, and power output. (1) (2)

To arrive at these outcomes, the three approaches that were deemed to be the most effective were traditional resistance training exercises or their variants, classic Olympic weightlifting or their variants, and plyometric training like various jumping exercises.

Customized approaches

Please keep in mind that there is a difference between becoming generally athletic, and striving to increase your general athleticism for either a specific sport, or to make you better at performing your role within that sport. 

For example, the mechanics of baseball and softball necessitate that athletes work diligently to develop rotational power that transfers directly to the throwing of a ball, or the swinging of a bat.

Conversely, marathon runners focus far more on exercises that improve posture, stability, and strength in the core and hips, while being very careful not to overexert themselves in ways that will interfere with the quality of their daily runs. 

In short, if you’re trying to become athletic within a specific sporting domain, you should be mindful of the areas in which you’d like to improve before you fully devote yourself to exercises that may not help you improve in the areas that truly matter within your sport.

Individual exercises that yield results

Notwithstanding the fact that it’s important to craft the ideal blend of exercises that align with your specific athletic needs, the following eight exercises are all tried and tested methods of measurably improving athletic prowess. While it isn’t necessary to perform every exercise mentioned here, throwing a few of them into your weekly rotation is likely to have you jumping higher, running faster, and striking with greater force than ever before.

1. Squats 

Squatting trains your leg muscles — including your quads, glutes, and hamstrings — to apply force against the ground in the exact pattern responsible for launching you into the air when you jump, or pressing your feet against the ground to sprint. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that multiple studies have proven squatting’s ability to improve athletic performance in precisely these areas.

In a 2025 meta analysis, regular squat training at virtually any intensity level significantly improved jumping performance and maximal sprinting velocity in test subjects, with effects that were comparable to those of athletes who engaged in dedicated jump training. (3)

Moreover, one specific study proved the superiority of the squat over other exercises that ostensibly train the same muscles in a similar pattern; squatting improved both the squat jumping and countermovement jumping abilities of study participants by at least 12 percent; leg pressing produced improvements that barely registered by comparison. (4)

2. Olympic weightlifting derivatives 

Olympic weightlifting truly is a special class of exercises, because all of the included movements are compound, and necessitate the sudden, explosive application of force. Unsurprisingly, strategically training each element of these lifts — the snatch, and the clean and jerk — can help you to acquire tremendous power in both your upper and lower body.

In one study, classic Olympic weightlifting improved vertical jumping and countermovement jumping to a greater degree than traditional resistance training. (5) Unsurprisingly, a meta-analysis of multiple studies confirmed these findings, while also indicating that training with traditional Olympic weightlifting could significantly improve squatting strength. (6)

Additionally, if you find the full weightlifting movements from the floor to a full overhead extension to be too technical or troublesome, simply adding hanging cleans and hanging snatches to the training routines of female college athletes was able to aid their vertical jumping measurements and 40-yard sprinting times. (7)

Alternatively, Olympic weightlifting may not be quite as effective in helping you run faster, at least not on its own. A separate meta-analysis concluded that while Olympic weight training was able to boost the sprinting performance of runners, it was not as effective at doing so as resistance training, plyometric training, or the dedicated training of sprinting mechanics. (8)

3. Deadlifts

Unsurprisingly, a head-to-head comparison of the effects of squatting and deadlifting on measures of athletic performance showed that study participants achieved similar improvements to lower body strength and jumping performance whether they were in the squatting or deadlifting group. (9) 

This means that while squatting may seem to transfer more naturally to jumping because of the position of the weight above your musculature as opposed to beneath it, the net result of the two training approaches on jumping height is essentially the same.

The strongest evidence supporting deadlifting’s role in improving athletic performance comes from a 2015 study of college-aged novices who performed two weekly training sessions consisting solely of deadlift work for 10 weeks. At the study’s conclusion, average vertical jumping height increased by 7.4 percent, while markers of rapid torque development in the lower bodies of the test subjects improved by at least 18 percent and as much as 49 percent. (10)

As further evidence of the similarity between squatting and deadlifting and their links to athletic performance, researchers were able to accurately predict the sprint times and jumping abilities of elite youth basketball players based solely on their maximal squat and deadlift performance. (11) 

In other words, if you want to improve your sprinting and jumping ability, and you have a barbell and no squat rack, simply deadlifting the weight from the floor should be sufficient to have you seeing improvements in as little as two months.

4. Hip Thrusts

The superior glute activation of hip thrusts has made it a go-to exercise for people who prioritize increasing the size of their backsides. Shapeliness aside, these same people might find that the same hip-thrusting movements have helped them to develop sizzling speed that grew along with their glutes.

In a study of adolescent males, a six-week program of hip-thrust training improved sprint acceleration and horizontal force production, with mid-thigh peak force increasing by an average of 10 percent, and 20-meter sprint time being lowered by nearly 22 percent. (12) The researchers concluded that hip thrusts might even be superior to squats if an athlete’s goal was to improve sprint time rather than vertical jump.

Even so, a separate study found that both hip thrusting and squatting improved the running and jumping performance of female soccer players with no significant differences between the groups in terms of the degree of their improvements. (13)

5. Bench Press

Bench pressing is a staple of most all-purpose strength-and-conditioning programs across a wide range of sports, so its isolated effects amongst athletes are difficult to identify. However, it is universally accepted that the bench press contributes significantly to overall size and strength in the upper bodies of those who perform the exercise regularly.

Admittedly, there are some shortcomings in the study methodologies that attempt to link bench pressing to athletic performance, but they are easy to explain. First of all, it’s difficult to find athletes over the age of 18 who are already involved in sports that don’t include some form of bench pressing or a similar movement within a series of other exercises in their training. Therefore, it is very difficult to isolate the effects of just the bench press on measurable athletic performance outside of bench pressing itself.

With that being said, there is evidence that bench pressing strongly correlates with the execution of two of the prominent arm-based measurements of athletic performance: punching power and throwing power.

In a study of 12 professional fighters, the velocity of the bar when carrying heavy loads during bench press training was an accurate predictor of maximum punching velocity. (14) This suggests that a powerful bench press could carry over into a more damaging punch in a fighting context.

Perhaps the purest example of citing improvement to throwing velocity based solely on strength gains acquired through bench pressing came from a 1994 study of youth baseball players. In that study, the bench-pressing group experienced an average throwing velocity increase of four percent, while a group that trained using medicine ball throws experienced no increase in throwing velocity despite some overall strength gains that approached nine percent. (15)

6. Pull-Ups

Obviously, pulling exercises improve overall back strength and development. Regrettably, this is a situation similar to the bench press, as it’s difficult to find trained athletes who don’t already perform pull-ups or some other variation of a pulling exercise with regularity. Furthermore, it is similarly difficult to find athletes whose upper-body strength improvements can be measured in isolation from several other strength training methods other than pull-ups. 

Still, there are some exceptions to this that help to prove the value of pull-ups and other pulling-focused exercises on athletic performance. This is due to the fact that there are pull-dominant sports like swimming in which some youth coaches have rejected weight training in favor of more in-water conditioning exercises and aerobic training. This leaves the athletes free to incorporate resistance training after they’re already well into their careers.

In a 2024 study, eight competitive swimmers were asked to add pull-ups to their ordinary training programs for a period of 10 weeks. At the conclusion of the study, it was observed that all of the swimmers had dramatically improved their power output during the first 15 meters of their 50-meter races, and achieved time improvements over that distance owed exclusively to the time dropped within the first 15 meters of the race. (16)

A separate test found that the pull-up performance of trained swimmers was a valid predictor of their short-distance sprinting performance. (17) In essence, not only does pull-up training directly improve the sprinting performances of swimmers, but the fastest in-water sprinters all seem to perform well when their pull-up capabilities are tested.

7. Rotational Ball Throws

If you’re an active baseball or softball player on the high school or collegiate levels, or even a regular contributor to your local summer league, you may want to pay extra close attention to this section. The essential rotational elements of baseball — including both the ball-throwing and bat-swinging foundations of the sport — have supplied endless opportunities for researchers to evaluate how the rotational-ball-throwing exercise using a medicine ball translates to functional improvements in these movements.

In the landmark study on the effects of rotational ball throws on the strength of high school ballplayers who had never previously trained using the exercise, 12 weeks of training resulted in a 17 percent increase in dominant torso rotational strength, and an 18 percent increase in non-dominant rotational strength, which apply to throwing strength. Furthermore, they also achieved a 10 percent increase in hip-torso-arm rotational strength as achieved through the medicine ball “hitter’s throw” exercise. (18)

Later studies with both male college baseball players and female handball players upheld the finding, with the handball players improving their throwing velocity by an average of 14 percent. (19) (20)

8. Weighted Carries 

The simple act of picking up dumbbells or kettlebells, standing upright, and then walking around while holding them at your sides is one of the most functional exercises you can do, despite not being a particularly eye-catching or impressive exercise to be seen doing within a gym setting. 

The first benefit achieved through farmer carries and suitcase carries is found in their elevation in the strength of several posterior core muscles in a manner superior to that of other exercises like static holds and planks. In a 2024 study, the farmer’s carry and suitcase carry elicited muscle activation as much as three times greater in the core muscles along the posterior chain in comparison to the plank. (21)

While this benefit is enough to make these exercises extremely practical for strengthening the core in a way that improves posterior resilience across multiple sports, there is another asset to be achieved through these exercises, and that has to do with elevating testosterone levels through practical movement. Farmer’s carries were included amongst a series of strongman exercises that were observed to increase testosterone in test subjects while simultaneously training their anaerobic systems. (22)

Truly Functional Fitness

When you get right down to the essence of why you should be working out, there are several exercises that will improve your form, but fewer that will optimize your function. If you’ve been engaging in resistance training for years, chances are you’ve already made remarkable improvements to your size and strength. By throwing a few of the aforementioned exercises into the mix, you can also rest assured that you’ll have all of the athletic tools required to back up your impressive appearance.

Sources

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