5 best exercises for building upper-body muscle when you're short on time at the gym, according to a top coach (2024)

• We live in a muscle-obsessed culture.
• If you train smart and hard, you don't need to spend every day in the gym, though.
• Build your upper body with chest presses, rows, lateral raises, bicep curls, and tricep extensions.

It feels like everyone wants to look ripped these days.

Being absolutely jacked seems to be a prerequisite for playing a lead male role in movies, and that muscle-obsessed culture has trickled down to public gyms. It makes sense, then, that the global protein-supplement market is expected to be worth $38.36 billion by 2029, according to Precedence Research's estimate.

The trouble is, the average person may not have endless time to spend pumping iron, nor money for a personal trainer or chef. But the good news is you don't need them.

It's possible to build muscle in a couple of half-hour workouts a week, provided you train both smart and hard.

Building muscle has a lot more benefits than just making you look swole, though, for both men and women.

Having more muscle and strength makes everyday activities, be that carrying shopping loads or lifting your suitcase into an overhead compartment, easier. It also reduces your risk of injuries and falls as you age and can improve posture, helping to reduce aches and pains.

Cliff Wilson, a bodybuilder and industry-leading physique coach, told Business Insider that while lengthy workouts might produce better muscle growth, you can still get results in short sessions.

While there are only a few movement patterns for the lower body, stimulating every muscle in the upper body requires a wider variety of exercises, Wilson said.

"It doesn't mean you can't hit it all with only a few exercises," he said. "It's just that each muscle group is a little more isolated than on the lower body."

Here are five upper-body exercises to hit to grow your arms, shoulders, chest, and back.

Chest press

A chest press is a classic compound movement that works the pecs, triceps, and front delts. It can be done in various ways, including via a barbell bench press, machine press, or dumbbell bench press.

If you're short on time, using dumbbells or a machine can often be quicker than a barbell, which requires loading and unloading.

If you're newer to the movement, a push-up is a great way to work the chest as well as the core and scapula muscles, and you can work your way up from push-ups on the knees to full-body ones. Once you can easily do sets of, say, 15 push-ups, it's time to increase the challenge by transitioning to chest presses.

"The only time I would say push-ups don't work is if you become so good at push-ups, they're not challenging enough, and then it actually becomes problematic from a time perspective," Wilson said. "Because if you're knocking out three sets of 50 on your push-ups, then it's going to take you a while."

Row

There are several ways to perform a row movement, such as a resistance machine, a bent-over dumbbell row, or a barbell row.

"It's going to work upper back muscles. It's going to work your lats. It's going to work your traps," Wilson said.

Using free weights (dumbbells or a barbell) stimulates the lower back, too, making the movement even more effective.

Lateral raise

While rows build the rear delts and presses build the front delts (back and anterior of the shoulders, respectively), creating well-rounded "boulder" shoulders — which make arms look muscular — requires working the sides of the shoulders. For this, Wilson recommends lateral raises.

"The main thing that you want for shoulders is to be able to hit the side of the shoulder, which will also make your shirts fit better, and make your waist look a little bit smaller," Wilson said. "So I do think a lateral raise of some kind is important to put in the program, even though it's more of an isolation movement."

Dumbbell lateral raises are the obvious choice, but some gyms also have machines that mimic the movement.

Bicep curls and tricep extensions

While the biceps and triceps are also worked in the rows and presses, it can be beneficial to hit them again with some curls and extensions. However, you won't need too much volume (i.e., too many reps and sets) as the muscles have already been worked.

"By the time you get to training your arms, they've already received stimulation from your chest and back exercises," Wilson said. "So you only need a set or two usually to create a good amount of muscle growth for the majority of people."

You can do bicep curls and tricep extensions with dumbbells or a resistance machine.

If you're more advanced, consider tricep dips: "Dips will also work your chest, your front delts, and your triceps at the same time," Wilson said. "So the more you can get crossover between muscle groups being used within one exercise, the more you're going to maximize your time-efficiency factor."

Think about rep range to maximize time

If time is of the essence, assess the rep range you're working in.

"Usually I see people needing huge recovery times for very heavy weight, so if you're trying to work on a very heavy set of only five or six reps, you're probably going to be really gassed after that, and then you're going to need to recover for a while before you begin your next set," Wilson said.

"And then, likewise, if you do very high reps, 20 or 30 reps, it's going to take awhile to knock out all of those reps," he added, "and also you're going to be very tired from a cardiovascular standpoint."

This is why he recommends people work in an eight- to 12-rep range to maximize efficiency, which is also traditionally the rep range recommended for muscle growth.

"It's challenging enough with a heavy load where you're not knocking out rep after rep after rep, and then you're not going to need huge recovery time," Wilson said. "Usually people are ready to go within 45 seconds to a minute to get ready for their next set."

He advises people to put their phones away during workouts, as looking at your phone between sets can easily make your rest periods increase in length without you realizing it.

"If you only have 30 to 40 minutes, I don't think there's a lot of time to talk or scroll," Wilson said. "You've got to handle your business and then save the talking in the scrolling for outside of the gym time."