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The seated cable row with a neutral grip is a great exercise for women who want to build some muscle in their back. You use a weighted cable machine that is set up horizontally with foot plates. Like other horizontal rowing variations, the main muscles it works are the lats, rhomboids, forearms, traps, and rear delts. It’s also fairly good for your arms, though, and should stimulate a bit of biceps growth. Let’s take a closer look at how to do this row variation, common mistakes, and how to program it into your workouts.

The Barbell Romanian deadlift is one of the best female lifts because it’s a compound lower-body exercise that targets your hamstrings and glutes while also training hip mobility, good posture, and balance. The barbell allows you to safely and consistently increase the weight over time, allowing for easy progressive overload. The end result is not only an attractive, curvy body but an athletic one too. Let’s take a closer look:

The double dumbbell front squat is a great variation for women ready to progress past the dumbbell Goblet Squat. It’s a great choice because while it hits the quads and glutes, it’s also a full-body exercise that hits the anterior core, upper back, and shoulders as you stabilize the dumbbells on your shoulders. The double dumbbell front squat will help to develop not only an attractive female body but an athletic one, too. Let’s take a closer look:

The single-arm (1-arm) dumbbell row on the bench is a classic lift. It’s a great beginner exercise for building muscle in your upper back. The main muscles it works are the lats, traps, and rear delts. It’s also fairly good for your arms, though, and should stimulate a bit of biceps growth. Let’s take a closer look at how to do it, common mistakes, and how to program it into your workouts.

The dumbbell sumo deadlift is a great variation of the conventional barbell deadlift. It helps to build strength in the quads, glutes, and hamstrings. What makes it different is that you stand in a wide stance with the dumbbell between your legs, like a sumo wrestler, and you use a dumbbell (or kettlebell) instead of a barbell. Inside, we’ll take a closer look at what that means in terms of benefits, when to use this variation as a female lifter, etc.

The clamshell is an isolation exercise for many of the glute muscles that don’t get stimulated to their full potential with the standard squat or hip thrust movements. For women looking to get the most three-dimensional and athletic glutes, they’ll need to be training the rotation motion of their legs. Clamshells are a great exercise for this. Let’s take a closer look.

The single-leg hip thrust is a great isolation exercise for building up the glutes. You can do it with your own body weight, or you can load it with a weight plate, a dumbbell, a kettlebell, etc. Inside we’ll show how to do the proper form (one version with your body weight and one with a weight), common mistakes to avoid, and tips for including it in your workout programming.