Exercise Guides: How To's and Comparisons

The pendulum squat is a plate loaded machine that swings your body through a wide arc as you squat, so the resistance angle changes throughout the rep instead of staying fixed the way it does on a leg press. You stand on an angled platform with a padded shoulder yoke or chest pad holding your torso in place, then bend your knees to sink into a deep squat before driving back up. That arc keeps real tension on your quads through the whole range, especially in the bottom position where a barbell squat starts to lose it, and it’s why the pendulum squat has become one of the go-to machines for quad size in bigger gyms.

You’ll probably need an alternative at some point, mostly because not many gyms actually have one. The pendulum squat machine is expensive and eats up serious floor space, so you’ll find it at bigger commercial gyms and specialty strength gyms, not the average globo gym or a home setup. Maybe your gym has one but there’s always a line for it, or you’re on the road and need a hotel gym substitute. Or you’ve been running pendulum squats for months and your quads have adapted, so a different angle or a free weight option would do more for your legs right now.

I picked these 8 based on how well they keep that same supported, quad-dominant loading the pendulum squat gives you, whether they’re a machine, a belt-loaded setup, or a straight barbell or dumbbell lift. Some are close to a plug and play swap you can run in the exact same slot in your program, and others ask a bit more of your own stabilizers since there’s no machine doing the balancing for you. I’ll tell you when to reach for each one and exactly how to perform it.

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The back extension, also called the hyperextension or 45-degree back extension, is a staple for building a strong lower back. You set your hips against the pad of a 45-degree bench, lock your feet under the rollers, then bend forward at the hips and extend back up until your body forms a straight line. It trains your spinal erectors directly, plus your glutes and hamstrings on the way up, and it’s one of the few exercises that works the lower back on its own instead of as a stabilizer for something else.

You might want an alternative for a few reasons. Not every gym has a 45-degree back extension bench, and most home gyms skip it entirely since it takes up floor space for one exercise. Some lifters find that extending the lower back into that top position is uncomfortable, especially if they’re dealing with a disc issue or they’re new to training their erectors and don’t yet have the control to keep the movement in their hips instead of their spine. And once bodyweight back extensions get easy, the bench puts a hard ceiling on how much load you can add without holding a plate awkwardly across your chest.

Here are the 8 back extension alternatives I reach for most, picked for how well they train the same lower back, glute, and hamstring chain, how safe they are for a lower back that doesn’t love loaded spinal extension, and what equipment they actually need. A few of these trade pure spinal extension for a hip-dominant hinge pattern, which is usually the safer and more useful swap for most lifters anyway. I’ll tell you when to use each one and exactly how to do it.

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The step-up is a unilateral lower body exercise where you drive your whole bodyweight onto an elevated box or bench using a single leg, then step back down and repeat. You can do it with just bodyweight, a pair of dumbbells, or a barbell on your back, and box height usually runs anywhere from knee height to just above it. It trains your quads hardest, with a heavy dose of glutes and hamstrings on the hip extension at the top, and it adds a real balance and stability demand since you’re pushing your entire body up on one leg with no spot from the other.

You might want a change for a few reasons. Not every gym has a box tall enough, and a busy platform or step deck is often the first thing taken during peak hours. A high step-up can also load your knee hard right at end-range flexion when your thigh is past parallel, which some lifters feel in the front of the knee once the reps add up. Or maybe you’ve run step-ups for months and your legs have stopped responding, so you need a fresh angle to keep making progress.

Here are the 8 step-up alternatives I turn to most, picked for how well they still hit your quads and glutes one leg at a time, how safe they are on the knees, and what equipment they need. Some are near-identical unilateral swaps you could drop into the exact same program slot, and a couple trade off the balance demand for more raw load. I’ll tell you when to use each one and exactly how to do it.

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The Arnold press takes a regular dumbbell shoulder press and adds a rotation, so your palms start facing you at the bottom and finish facing forward at the top. That extra twist puts your shoulder through more of its range than a standard press does, and it’s why the exercise trains your front, side, and rear deltoids in a single lift instead of just the front delt like most overhead presses. I’ve got a full breakdown of the exercise itself, its benefits, and exactly which muscles it hits, in our Arnold press benefits and muscles worked guide, so I won’t repeat all of that here.

You might still want a swap for it. The rotation is the whole point of the exercise, but it’s also what makes it hard to learn, and a shoulder that’s already cranky doesn’t always love twisting under load. Some lifters just get more out of a straight vertical press without the added coordination demand, and if you’re chasing a heavier top set, the rotation caps how much weight you can control safely. Or maybe you’ve been running Arnold presses for months and want a new angle to keep your shoulders growing.

Here are the 8 Arnold press alternatives I’d reach for, ranked by how closely they train the same all-around deltoid coverage, how safe they are on the shoulder joint, and what equipment they need. A couple of these are near-identical presses you could drop straight into the same program slot. Others trade the rotation for heavier loading or a more targeted finish. I’ll tell you when to use each one and exactly how to do it.

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The front raise is a shoulder isolation exercise that trains your anterior deltoid through shoulder flexion. You hold a weight in front of your thighs and raise it forward and up to about shoulder height, keeping your elbows nearly straight the whole time. It’s a simple exercise, but it does a good job of isolating the front of the shoulder in a way that pressing movements don’t, since your triceps and chest aren’t around to share the load.

You might want an alternative for a few reasons. Standing dumbbell front raises put the shoulder in a mechanically weak position right at the top, where a lot of lifters feel pinching or discomfort, especially if they raise the weight above shoulder height. Some gyms don’t have a spare set of light dumbbells free when you need them, and if you train at home you might only have a barbell or a band. Or maybe your front delts are already well developed from bench pressing and overhead pressing, and what you actually need is a smarter way to hit them without adding more isolation volume than your shoulders can recover from.

Here are the 8 front raise alternatives I’d reach for, picked for how well they train the anterior delt, how safe they are on the shoulder joint, and what equipment they need. A few of these are near-identical swaps for the exact same slot in your program, and a couple are heavier compound lifts that build the front delt as part of a bigger movement instead of in isolation. I’ll tell you when to use each one and exactly how to do it.

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The Nordic curl, also called the Nordic hamstring curl, is one of the toughest exercises you can do for your hamstrings without touching a weight. You kneel on a pad with your ankles locked under a partner’s hands, a GHD footplate, or a Nordic curl bench, then lower your torso toward the floor as slowly as you can, using only your hamstrings to control the descent. That eccentric lowering phase is the whole point. It’s what makes the Nordic curl one of the most studied exercises in sports science for cutting hamstring strain injury rates in team-sport athletes by roughly half.

You’ll want an alternative for a few practical reasons. Most gyms don’t have a Nordic curl bench, and you need a partner willing to pin your ankles down if you don’t have one. The exercise itself is brutally hard on its own. Most lifters can’t control a single full rep without their hamstrings giving out and their chest slamming toward the floor, so it’s a rough starting point if you haven’t built up eccentric hamstring strength first. Or maybe kneeling on a hard pad for reps bothers your knees, and you’d rather build the same strength standing, seated, or lying down instead.

Here are the 8 Nordic curl alternatives I’d reach for, picked for how well they train the hamstrings through knee flexion or a hip hinge, how much equipment they need, and how safely you can scale them from a true beginner up to someone chasing the same eccentric strength a Nordic curl builds. A few of these are close substitutes you could run in the exact same program slot, and a few are heavier hip-hinge options that build the same posterior chain from a completely different joint action. I’ll tell you when to use each one and exactly how to do it.

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The sissy squat is a knee-dominant quad isolation exercise where you extend your hips instead of flexing them as you drop into a deep knee bend, leaning your torso back while your heels rise off the floor. That combination hits the rectus femoris harder than almost any other quad exercise, since it’s the one head of your quads that crosses both your hip and knee joints, and stretching it at the hip while bending it hard at the knee is exactly what builds that “teardrop” look above your kneecap. Most people do it holding onto a rack or a TRX strap for balance, or on a dedicated sissy squat bench if their gym has one.

You might want a swap for a few reasons. That deep knee bend under a backward lean puts real stress on your patellar tendon right at the bottom, and if your knees already bother you, a sissy squat can make that worse before it makes your quads bigger. The balance alone trips most people up.

It takes weeks to learn to control the lean without a strap to hold onto, and most commercial gyms don’t own a sissy squat bench, so you’re stuck rigging something with a rack or a pair of rings. Or maybe you’ve built the pattern already and want more ways to load your quads once bodyweight reps stop being hard.

I picked the 8 alternatives below for how well they load your quads through a deep knee bend without needing sissy squat-specific gear, and for how much control you have over the range and the load. If your knees ache in that extreme flexed position, ease into range gradually on any of these and back off the ones that spike pain instead of pushing through it. Here’s how I’d rank them and how to run each one.

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The inverted row is a bodyweight horizontal pull where you hang underneath a bar, a suspension trainer, or a set of rings and pull your chest up to it while your feet stay on the floor. It trains your mid-back hard, your lats, your rear delts, and your biceps as a secondary mover, and you can make it harder or easier just by changing your body angle. Walk your feet out to make it steeper and harder, or bend your knees and stand more upright to make it easier. I’ve got a full breakdown of the muscles it hits and why it’s worth doing in our inverted row benefits and muscles worked guide if you want the deeper dive.

You might need an alternative for a few reasons. Not every gym has a bar set at the right height in a rack, and plenty of home gyms don’t have anywhere to hang under at all. If you’re strong enough that bodyweight inverted rows stop being challenging, you’re stuck adding a weighted vest or a chain around your neck just to keep loading the movement, and that’s gear most people don’t own. Or your rack might be tied up with someone squatting and you need a row you can do on a cable stack or with a pair of dumbbells instead. Some lifters just want more back exercises in rotation so the same 3 sets don’t get stale week after week.

Here are the 8 inverted row alternatives I reach for most, picked for how well they keep that same horizontal pulling line into your mid-back, how safe they are on your shoulders and elbows, and what equipment they need. A few of these are close to a straight swap, and others let you load a lot heavier once bodyweight stops being enough. I’ll tell you when to use each one and exactly how to do it.

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The tricep kickback is a single-joint isolation exercise where you hinge forward at the hips, pin your upper arm against your side, and extend your elbow to press a dumbbell straight back behind you. Your upper arm doesn’t move at all. Only your forearm travels, and the whole rep ends with your arm locked out straight behind your body, which is where your triceps hit their hardest squeeze. It’s a light exercise, usually 2 or 3 sets of 12 to 20 reps, and it’s almost always programmed at the end of an arm day rather than as a main lift.

You might want a swap for a few reasons. A dumbbell kickback loses almost all its resistance once your arm passes horizontal, so the hardest part of the lift, the lockout, is also the part with the least load on it. That’s backward from how you’d usually want to train a peak contraction. Some gyms don’t have open bench space for it, your lower back might not love the bent-over hold for high reps, or you’ve simply run kickbacks for months and your triceps have stopped responding to them.

Here are the 8 tricep kickback alternatives I reach for most, ranked by how well they isolate the triceps with a real peak contraction at full elbow extension, how they load compared to a kickback’s weak resistance curve, and what equipment they need. A few of these are near-identical swaps that fix the kickback’s biggest flaw, and others are heavier or bodyweight options for when you want something different entirely. I’ve mixed in cable, dumbbell, band, and bodyweight versions so you can pick one that fits whatever equipment you’ve actually got in front of you. I’ll tell you when to use each one and exactly how to do it.

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The concentration curl is a seated, single-arm dumbbell exercise where you brace the back of your working elbow against the inside of your thigh and curl the weight up with nothing else moving. That braced position removes your shoulders and your torso from the lift entirely, so your biceps take the full load, and it’s one of the best exercises there is for building a hard peak contraction at the top of the rep. Most lifters run it for 2 to 3 sets of 10 to 15 reps per arm, usually toward the end of an arm day once the heavier compound pulling is done. Bodybuilders lean on it specifically because the strict setup makes it easy to feel exactly which part of the biceps is doing the work, which is harder to judge on a standing curl where your shoulders and hips can quietly take over.

You might still want a substitute. Leaning forward with your elbow braced on your thigh can bother your lower back once the sets add up, and training one arm at a time doubles how long the exercise takes compared to a lift you can do with both arms together. Not every gym has open bench space, and if you train at home you might only have a cable setup or a curl machine. Or your biceps have just stopped responding to the same angle after months of running it the same way.

Here are the 8 concentration curl alternatives I’d reach for, ranked by how closely each one reproduces that braced, single-arm, peak-contraction loading. I picked these for how strictly they isolate the biceps and how safe they are on your elbows and lower back, with plenty of dumbbell and cable options plus one machine pick, so you can find something that fits your gym. I’ll tell you when to use each one and exactly how to do it.

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The crunch is the classic ab isolation exercise. You lie on your back with your knees bent, curl your shoulder blades a few inches off the floor by flexing your spine, then lower back down. Unlike a sit-up, you’re not bringing your whole torso up to your knees, just rounding your upper spine enough to squeeze your abs. It’s simple, it needs no equipment, and it trains your rectus abdominis directly through the exact motion that makes your abs shorten and contract.

You might still want to swap it out. Repeated spinal flexion can irritate your lower back or neck once you’re doing high reps several times a week, especially if your form breaks down and you start yanking on your neck to get your shoulders up. A plain crunch also plateaus fast since your bodyweight is the only resistance, and it doesn’t do much for your obliques or your lower abs on its own. Maybe you just want a version you can load with weight, or one that trains the same muscle from a completely different angle.

Here are the 8 crunch alternatives I reach for most, picked for how well they train your abs through spinal flexion or anti-flexion, how easy they are on your neck and lower back, and what equipment they need. Some of these are close bodyweight swaps you could run in the exact same program slot, a couple let you add real weight, and a few skip flexion entirely for lifters whose backs don’t tolerate it well. I’ll tell you when to use each one and exactly how to do it.

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The deadlift is one of the best lifts there is for building full-body strength, but you’ve got two main ways to pull from the floor: sumo and conventional. They look different, they feel different, and they load your body in different places.

Neither one is better across the board. The right pull for you comes down to your build, your goals, and which version you can load and recover from. This article walks through the differences, the pros and cons of each, the muscles they hit, and how to decide which one to put your time into.

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The sumo deadlift is a deadlift variation where you take a stance wider than shoulder width, turn your toes out, and grip the bar with your hands inside your knees instead of outside them. That wide stance drops your hips lower before you pull, which shortens the distance the bar has to travel and puts your torso in a more upright position than a conventional deadlift ever will. Because your hips and knees are both bent more at the start, your quads and adductors do a lot more of the work pulling the weight off the floor, while your lower back handles less shear force than it does in a conventional pull.

You might want an alternative for a few reasons. Sumo pulling isn’t kind to tight hips, and if your adductors or groin don’t love that wide stance under load, you’ll feel it fast. Some gyms don’t have the platform space for a proper sumo setup, and a crowded rack makes the wide stance awkward to work around. Or maybe your lower back has been the limiting factor on your pulling and you want a lift that trains the same hip drive and quad-adductor stimulus without loading your spine as hard.

I picked the 8 alternatives below because each one keeps some piece of what makes a sumo deadlift work, whether that’s the wide stance and toed-out adductor stretch or the heavy hip-dominant pull, across a mix of barbell, kettlebell, cable, and machine equipment. Some of these are close enough to run in the exact same program slot. Others are worth adding on top to build size or to train around an injury. I’ll tell you when to use each one and exactly how to do it.

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The calf raise trains your calves through ankle plantarflexion, meaning you rise up onto the balls of your feet and lower back down under control. Done standing with straight knees, it loads the gastrocnemius, the diamond-shaped muscle that gives your calf its visible peak. Bend your knees, like you do in a seated calf raise, and the gastrocnemius goes slack while the soleus underneath takes over. Most calf work in a typical gym is a standing machine or barbell raise for 3 sets of 12 to 15 reps, but that’s really only half the muscle group.

You might want to swap it out for a few reasons. Your gym’s calf raise machine might be occupied or missing entirely, especially at a smaller commercial gym or a home setup. Calves are notoriously stubborn and respond well to more frequency and more variety than most lifters give them, so running the exact same standing raise every single session tends to stall out. Some lifters also find a locked-knee standing raise irritates their Achilles or knee joint under heavy load, and a different angle can take that stress away without cutting the muscle out of your program.

Here are the 8 calf raise alternatives I reach for most, picked to cover both the straight-knee gastrocnemius work and the bent-knee soleus work, spread across machines, free weights, and pure bodyweight so you’re covered no matter what your gym has. I’ll tell you when to use each one, exactly how to do it, and what to watch for on your first few sets.

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A cable crossover has you standing between two facing pulleys, set anywhere from the floor to overhead depending on the angle you want, gripping a handle in each hand and pulling them down and together in front of your hips or chest. Your pecs do the work of dragging your arms across your body’s midline, and because both cables pull against you from opposite directions, the exercise loads your chest through nearly the entire range instead of just the stretched bottom. It’s one of the best pure adduction exercises for the chest, and the standing setup makes it feel more like a real pressing motion than a lift you do lying down.

A cable crossover trains the same horizontal adduction pattern as a flat dumbbell fly or a pec deck fly, but the resistance behaves differently. Dumbbells lose tension the moment your arms come together at the top, since gravity stops pulling once your hands are stacked over your chest. A cable keeps pulling the whole time, so your pecs stay loaded at full contraction, not just at the stretched bottom. Standing between the pulleys instead of lying on a bench or sitting in a seat means your core and obliques have to resist the pull too. And because the pulleys move, you can set them high, mid, or low and shift the emphasis without ever switching exercises.

You’ll want an alternative for a few practical reasons. Plenty of gyms only have one working cable stack or a crossover tower with a single fixed height, your shoulders might not love standing in that fully crossed, arms-forward position, or you’re training at home with no cable machine at all. I picked these 8 alternatives for how well they keep that constant-tension, cross-body squeeze, how friendly they are on the shoulders, and what equipment they actually need. Keep reading and I’ll tell you when to use each one and exactly how to perform it.

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The good morning is a barbell exercise where you set the bar across your upper back like a squat, then hinge forward at your hips until your torso gets close to parallel with the floor before standing back up. Your knees stay soft with a slight bend the whole time, so almost all the work comes from your hips bending while your hamstrings, glutes, and spinal erectors fight to pull you back upright. It’s one of the best exercises for building a strong hip hinge, and 3 sets of 8 to 10 reps at a moderate load builds real posterior chain strength over time.

There are a few solid reasons to look for a substitute. The good morning puts your lower back under load at the exact moment your spine is most vulnerable, at the bottom of the hinge with your torso near parallel to the floor, so any breakdown in form there tends to show up as lower back soreness or worse. Some lifters just don’t trust that position with a loaded bar across their shoulders, and that’s a reasonable line to draw. You might also be sharing a squat rack, training at home without a bar at all, or simply want a machine or cable option that trains the same hip hinge without asking your spine to stabilize a barbell.

I picked the 8 alternatives below for how well they train the hip hinge without putting your lower back at as much risk, how much equipment they need, and how well they build the hamstrings, glutes, and erectors the good morning is known for. A few of these are near-identical swaps for the same slot in your program, and a couple are safer options if your lower back is the reason you’re looking for a change in the first place. Keep reading and I’ll walk you through when to use each one and exactly how to perform it.

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The upright row is a vertical pulling exercise where you grip a barbell, dumbbells, or a cable attachment and pull it straight up along your torso to roughly chin or chest height. It’s one of the few exercises that trains your side delts and upper traps in the same movement, since your elbows lead the pull up and out while your shoulders shrug at the top. Done with a narrow grip, it also puts your shoulder into internal rotation under load, which is exactly the position that causes shoulder impingement in some lifters.

That impingement risk is the biggest reason people go looking for a swap. If your shoulder pinches or catches as the bar passes chest height, that’s your rotator cuff getting squeezed under the front of your shoulder blade, and grinding through it isn’t worth it. You might also want an alternative if you don’t have a barbell, if you want to train your delts and traps separately instead of lumped into one lift, or if your shoulders have simply stopped responding to the same movement week after week.

I picked the 8 alternatives below for how well they hit the same side delt and trap targets as the upright row, how shoulder-friendly they are compared to a narrow-grip barbell pull, and what equipment they need. A few are close swaps you could drop into the exact same program slot, a couple isolate the delts or traps on their own, and a couple are heavier or more explosive options for lifters who want more out of the movement pattern. I’ll walk through when to use each one and exactly how to perform it.

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The tricep pushdown is a cable exercise where you pin your elbows to your sides and extend them against resistance from a high pulley, using a straight bar, rope, or single handle attachment. Your elbows stay locked in place the whole set, so almost all the work falls on your triceps instead of your shoulders or chest. It’s a staple isolation exercise for a reason, and most people run it for 3 sets of 12 to 15 reps at the end of a push day, once the heavier pressing is done.

You might want a substitute for a few practical reasons. Not every gym has an open cable station, and the pushdown spot tends to be one of the most crowded in the building during peak hours. You might train at home with a rack and dumbbells but no cable stack at all, or you’re working out of a hotel gym that only has a few dumbbells and a bench. Or you’ve been running pushdowns for months, your triceps have stopped growing from them, and your elbows or wrists start to complain the same way they always do once the reps pile up week after week.

Here are the 8 tricep pushdown alternatives I’d reach for, ranked by how closely they match the pushdown’s cable, elbow-locked feel and how well they hold up across different equipment. A few are direct swaps you could run in the exact same program slot. Others are heavier compound options for building strength, and bodyweight exercises for when you’re stuck without a gym. I’ll tell you when to use each one and exactly how to perform it.

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The shrug is about as simple as strength training gets. Grip something heavy and pull your shoulders straight up toward your ears. That simple motion is one of the most direct ways to load your upper trapezius, the thick slab of muscle that runs from your neck out to your shoulders and gives your upper back that finished look from behind. It’s a small range of motion carrying a lot of weight, and that combination is exactly what makes the muscle grow. Most lifters default to a barbell or dumbbells for it, but the traps respond to plenty of other tools too, cables, a trap bar, even nothing but a loaded carry.

You might want a swap for a few reasons. A heavy barbell shrug can beat up your wrists and forearms before your traps ever get properly worked, your grip might give out well before your traps do, or you might not have a barbell at home to begin with. Some lifters also want more out of the movement than a straight up-and-down shrug gives, more range of motion, more retraction, or a different angle to keep making progress once a plain shrug plateaus. And a few of the options below train your traps as a byproduct of a bigger, more useful exercise instead of as an isolated add-on at the end of your session.

I picked the 8 alternatives below for how directly they load your traps, how heavy you can safely take them, and what equipment they need, so you can find one that fits your gym or your garage. Keep reading for when to use each one, exactly how to perform it, and the cues that get you more out of every rep.

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A face pull is a cable exercise where you pull a rope toward your face with your elbows high, finishing with your hands turned out past your ears. It trains your rear delts, mid traps, rhomboids, and the external rotators in your rotator cuff all in one pull, which is why it shows up in almost every shoulder health program you’ll find.

You might need an alternative for a few reasons. Maybe your gym never has a cable station free at face height, maybe you train at home with dumbbells and a band, maybe you want more variety than the same rope pull every single session, or maybe you’re after more loading than a face pull’s usual light weight and high reps can give you. Your rear delts and rotator cuff grow from loaded external rotation and horizontal pulling, and that stimulus works just as well from a machine, a bench, or a bent-over dumbbell angle as it does from the exact rope-to-face path.

Here are the 8 face pull alternatives I reach for most, picked for how well they hit the rear delts and external rotators, how much weight you can actually load onto them, and what equipment they need. I’ll tell you when to use each one and exactly how to do it.

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