Bench press, military press, bicep curls, and tricep curls.

Dont know what your plan is now but the big 5 will cover every muscle and guaranty strength increase.
Squats, bench, shoulder press, bent over rows, dead lifts - 5 sets of 5 reps twice a week. All free weight with bar. Start light to get your form down perfect . Add 5lbs to your weight every gym session until your last rep is close to your max effort. From there just add 5lbs when when that last rep gets easy, usually every 2-3 weeks.

Second this, and would only add two things:

First, when you start to feel tired or start to plateau, do a "deload" for a couple days (just like a rest week, same concept) with lower weight and lower volume.

Second, one of hte issues the OP mentioned is that it's boring, so reducing down to the big 5 might not be what you're after, but on the otherh and they really are all that you need. So one solution would be to add "accessory lifts" for each big lift, for example dumbbell bench or should press, incline bench or dips as accessories for bench / OHP, and straight leg deadlifts, deficit deadlifts or single-leg romanian deadlifts as deadlift accessories, and box jumps, front squats, split squats or lunges as squat accessories.

For these, just pick a weight where you can do 10 reps, 3 times with good form, and don't worry too much about tracking weight. Do however many you want and have time for. if you're already squatting twice a week, for example, you probably don't need (or want) accessories. But if you did a split where you lifted each main lift ONCE per week (e.g., a bench day, an OHP day, a squat day, a deadlift day) then you would want to do accessories. In that case, you'd do OHP accessories after completing the main lifts for bench day, bench accessories after completing OHP day, squat accessories after completing deadlift day, and deadlift accessories after completing squat day, etc.

Don't do curls, curls are dumb

---

"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

Not sure if it technically qualifies as strength training, but for your core, I find the best results are just you and the mat. Planks, leg raises, pushups, etc. Best if instructor lead though to push yourself. I do that in combination with the basic upper body weight lifting described in this thread.

---

"The first virtue in a soldier is endurance of fatigue; courage is only the second virtue."
- Napoleon Bonaparte

What are tricep curls?

---

Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

Second this.

Also, if you are appropriately bracing your core while squatting, deadlifting or OHPing heavy weights, you are already getting core work, and the core endurance and stability exercises (like planks, bird dogs etc.) will just be icing on the cake

Try this one for some suffering:
https://drive.google.com/...XB0/view?usp=sharing

---

Ryan
http://www.SetThePaceTriathlon.com
http://www.TriathlonTrainingDaddy.com
I got plans - https://www.trainingpeaks.com/...dotcom#trainingplans

TRX suspension trainer is really good and works your muscles a bit differently.

^ Yep.

It amazes me every time when I tell people the squats are great core exercises the reaction is "really?".

Mark Rippetoe's starting strength model is a great way to start to build foundational strength. His YouTube channel is a gold mine for learning the barbell lifts in a. very basic and easy to understand model.

The key is to start light and really learn the movements rather than just going heavy from the get go.

Agree 100%. I say, don't fear the heavy weights--some people think you'll get too bulky, but the fact is, for a lot of people and especially endurance athletes, it takes a lot of grinding to get huge--but definitely start light and work your way up.

Ha, and hte only time i ever had a six pack to speak of (even during my lean, mean running, rowing or cycling years) was when i was also lifting heavyish (for me anyway :))

Another thing that shows how the core and the squat work together: My squat warmup became much more effective after i started adding planks into it. I think by firing up those muscles, you're helping to let your brain know that it can safely move more weight, so it'll activate the additional leg and hip muslces to let you do it.