I want to highlight something Staci said about deadlifting at Nerd Fitness.

Whenever anyone asks me where I got my shoulders/abs/etc, I answer the same: deadlifts. Why do a million crunches when I can just do deadlifts instead? Way more fun! Plus, deadlifting is actually more effective.

Yes. You can do literally a million crunches over many years or a few months of deadlifting and get exactly the same effect. Deadlfiting is the single most effective weightlifting exercise there is, bar none, not even a contest and none other is even a remotely close second, especially when safety and ease is considered. That’s why it’s my favorite; it has the most bang for the buck.

A deadlift is a system shock, in a good way: it works nearly every muscle you have, and it doesn’t take all that many reps to do it, either.

If I could only do one weightlifting exercise ever again, it’d be deadlift because I’d still meet 65%+ of my fitness goals without doing anything else.

Deadlifting two hours a week or so will be more effective than any 50 hours of other exercises you might do, so if you aren’t doing that one, you’re probably spending a lot of unnecessary time that you don’t have to spend.