
5 top exercises you must try in 2025

Summary
When it comes to fitness, not only do you need to strengthen your muscles and improve mobility, but you also need to be free of pain and injury. Here are five great exercises to help you do soAt one point, it was the norm to go to the gym, follow a trainer, do a handful of exercises mentioned on a booklet, and keep at them in a progressive pattern until you hit certain goals. But social media has changed all that.
A few searches on YouTube or Instagram, and your feed becomes a full-blown do-this-do-that exercise list. I enjoy this, because the variety of seeing what is being done in gyms around the world is easier than finding one person to trust and take you through a fitness journey.
However, curating this is the challenge. As 2024 comes to an end, here are the exercises that I added this year to my routine. Some led to strength, some to gains and some improved the way I felt.
Hip fall-backs
If this was a ranked list, then hip fall-backs would be number one on my list, for the simple reason that it has changed my game. The hip-flexor is one of the toughest muscles to train and fall-backs are the only way to train them in an extended state.
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I was so impressed with this that I wrote an entire article on it for Lounge, titled The best exercise to strengthen your hip flexor muscles. High performance coach Vernon Griffith has popularised this exercise with top sports stars. It is important to keep this small muscle healthy, mobile, and strong, because a tightness here could lead to issues in the back, the glute and the knees. So if you are to choose one exercise to add to your 2025 to-do list, this is the one.
Weighted and seated good mornings
I found out about this quite late in the year but it’s been a game changer for the lower back, and has helped the constant feeling of sciatic weakness dissipate. I use this every other day, and as the first exercise after a little mobility work.
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On back day, I increase the weights and decrease the reps. Sitting while doing good mornings not only strengthens the spinal erectors but also unlocks hip mobility. In 2025, I will superset these with reverse hypers, focussing specifically on lower back power to safeguard against challenges post the age of 35.
Partial calf raises
For the longest time, the thought behind a calf raise was to go as high as possible, and then come all the way down before the next raise. Ideally done on a platform, this would stretch the calf on the way down before the contraction. However, there was new research which suggested that a full range of motion is not necessary in calf raises.
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The paper, titled Greater Gastrocnemius Muscle Hypertrophy After Partial Range of Motion Training Performed at Long Muscle Lengthssuggests that “the inclusion of the calf raise exercise performed with partial ROM in the initial portion of the excursion should be considered." Which means there is no need to go all the way down, instead, focussing on going all the way up, in order to promote hypertrophy. I have been doing this and my calves have never looked better.
Charles Glass’s cable flys
I hated the cable fly machine despite years of going to the gym. Ignoring it was a habit. Until I saw a Charles Glass video on leaning forward when getting ready to push, and going back into a natural straight backed position while pushing forward. Voila! So this is how one is supposed to do flys. It is not possible to do this technique with dumbbells but use the machine, and feel the change in your chest muscles.
Step away bicep concentration curls: Done on the cable machine, this is another exercise that makes me look forward to biceps day more than before. Biceps have been a weak point for me, and it was important to find something that gave me visible growth while also keeping my upper back safe, and would be easier to progress.
Done using a cable machine, make sure you keep the grips just below face level. Now do a high bicep curl, and at the point of maximum concentration, take a big step back while holding it. Step forward again, and slowly release to the starting point. And repeat.
The first few reps seem easy, but this exercise, which I saw Jeff Cavaliere do for his Athlean-X channel, will knock your biceps out after a while. The fact that you are pulling while at maximum concentration adds more time under tension, which is the entire purpose of bicep training.
Pulasta Dhar is a football commentator, podcaster and writer.
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