Whether you’re an experienced bodybuilder or you need to get in shape cause of the office life, strength training is needed to improve yourself. Having strength isn’t about who’s tougher. Strength improvement leads to better muscle development, a better posture in daily life and more stamina. It’s easy to feel physically tired all day, especially if you work a desk job. You get fatigued and feel like your energy levels are constantly down. Building strength will solve all of this and here’s how you can do it with these exercises.

1. Push and pull

Combine pulling exercises with pushing exercises during your workout routine to strengthen your muscles equally and to maintain a balance. Common pulling exercises are rows and pull-ups, and the most frequent pushing exercises are squats, barbell presses, push-ups, and bench presses.

Most pulling motions will engage your biceps and your back while pushing motions will work out the triceps and chest. If you don’t strengthen 1 of these muscle groups as much as the others, you risk serious injury. Maintain your balance and build up all muscle groups.

2. Squat

Squats are the most common exercise you will see performed at the gym, and for good reason. To perform a squat you will engage all of your leg muscles and your core. You can start training your technique without weights. When you get comfortable with the form, you can add weights by holding a barbell on your back with as much weight as you can handle.

3. Deadlift

The deadlift is another must-do exercise. It trains your entire backside, especially your glutes. You can easily use extra weights with this exercise because of how easy it is to maintain balanced, however, practice form first. If you don’t learn the technique properly, you can seriously injure your back. Ask a trainer to help you out with this one until you get it right, and remember to lift with your legs, don’t use your back.

4. Bench press

Everyone knows this one from athletes, college kids or movies. The bench press is the ultimate exercise for your upper body. It tests your chest mainly but also engages your biceps and triceps. It’s highly recommended to have a friend or a trainer when performing bench presses because it’s possible to injure yourself if you use too much weight. It’s common for people to try and lift more than they can and then they’re stuck with the barbell on top of their chest.

5. Intensity

Weight lifting is used for building muscle, building strength, weight loss or all three at once, depending on your goals. All three goals are achieved by lifting weights but at different intensity levels. For strength building, the idea is to make a high-intensity effort for short intervals of time. You need to find your weight limit for each exercise and work within that limit. Three to six reps per set are enough, and if you’re a beginner three sets are all you need.

Don’t forget to take a break! In between high-intensity sets, you should take three to five minutes to rest your muscles. It might feel like a long time, but this is considered standard when working out to build strength.