Exercises to Get Rid of Dad Bod: The 12 That Actually Work

If you’ve typed “exercises to get rid of dad bod” into Google, I’d bet money on what you’re hoping to find: a list of ab exercises. Some crunches, some planks, maybe a bicycle kick or two, done for ten minutes a night until the middle disappears.

I’m going to save you eighteen months of frustration. That approach doesn’t work, and it doesn’t work for a reason that’s worth understanding before you do a single rep.

A dad bod isn’t one problem. It’s two problems wearing the same jumper: a layer of fat sitting over your midsection, and a loss of muscle underneath it — particularly in the shoulders, back, chest and legs. Ab exercises don’t touch the first one (you cannot burn fat off a specific spot, no matter what the video thumbnail claims) and barely touch the second.

What actually works is exercises that build muscle across your whole body while burning a serious number of calories. Muscle raises your metabolism permanently. It fills out your shoulders and back so your waist looks smaller by comparison. And heavy compound work burns far more energy in a session than any amount of floor-based ab work.

So here are the twelve exercises that do the job, why each one is on the list, and how to put them into a week that fits around actual family life.

The Two Rules Before the Exercises

Rule one: get stronger over time. An exercise only works if it gets harder. Ten press-ups this week, twelve next week, feet elevated the week after. If you’re doing the same workout in March that you did in January, your body has no reason to change. This is progressive overload, and it’s the entire game — I’ve broken it down properly in progressive overload explained for dads.

Rule two: the fat comes off in the kitchen. Training builds the muscle and burns some calories. The deficit that strips the fat off the top comes from what you eat. You will not out-train a diet of leftover fish fingers and 9pm biscuits. My simple diet plan for dads covers the eating side without turning it into a project.

With those two in place, here’s what to do.

The 12 Best Exercises to Get Rid of Dad Bod

1. Goblet Squat

Hold a dumbbell or kettlebell at your chest, squat down until your thighs are at least parallel, drive up through your heels.

The goblet squat is the single best starting exercise for a dad who hasn’t trained properly in years. Holding the weight in front forces an upright torso, which means it teaches good squat mechanics rather than exposing bad ones. It hits quads, glutes, core and upper back all at once, and it burns a genuinely surprising number of calories.

3–4 sets of 10–12 reps.

2. Romanian Deadlift

Weight in both hands, soft knees, push your hips backwards while keeping your back flat, lower until you feel a strong stretch in the hamstrings, then drive your hips forward.

This is the exercise most men have never done and most men desperately need. Years of sitting shut down the glutes and hamstrings, which is a large part of why the lower back aches and the posture collapses. The RDL rebuilds the whole back of your body — and a strong posterior chain is the difference between a body that looks upright and athletic and one that doesn’t.

3–4 sets of 10–12 reps.

3. Press-Up

Hands slightly wider than shoulders, body in a rigid line from heel to head, chest to the floor, push back up.

Chest, shoulders, triceps and a serious core demand, with no equipment at all. If standard press-ups are too hard, put your hands on the stairs or the kitchen counter. If they’re too easy, put your feet on the sofa. Whatever version you use, the aim is to make it harder over time rather than just doing more of the same.

3–4 sets of 8–15 reps.

4. Bent-Over Row

Hinge forward at the hips with a flat back, pull the dumbbells to your ribs, squeeze the shoulder blades, lower under control.

Rowing is the direct antidote to a desk job. It builds the mid-back, which pulls your shoulders back and instantly changes how you carry yourself. A dad with a strong, thick back looks in shape even before the fat’s fully gone — that’s not vanity, it’s just how proportions work.

3–4 sets of 10–12 reps.

5. Reverse Lunge

Step backwards into a lunge, front thigh parallel, drive back to standing.

Single-leg work exposes and fixes the imbalances that build up over years of carrying a child on one hip. Reverse lunges are also far kinder to knees than forward lunges, which matters once you’re past 35.

3 sets of 8–10 each leg.

6. Overhead Press

Dumbbells at shoulder height, brace your core hard, press straight overhead until your arms lock out.

Shoulders are the exercise that changes your silhouette faster than any other. Build the delts and your waist looks narrower without a single pound of fat leaving it. The core bracing required also trains your midsection harder than most dedicated ab work.

3 sets of 8–10 reps.

7. Kettlebell Swing

Hinge, hike the bell back between your legs, then snap your hips forward hard so the bell floats to chest height. The arms are ropes, not levers.

The swing is the closest thing to a cheat code on this list: it builds the posterior chain and delivers a genuine cardiovascular hit at the same time. Ten sets of fifteen swings with sixty seconds’ rest takes eight minutes and will leave you in no doubt that you trained.

5–10 sets of 15 reps.

8. Dumbbell Floor Press

Lie on the floor, press dumbbells from chest height to lockout.

A brilliant chest builder for home training with no bench. Stopping when your triceps hit the floor also protects shoulders that have accumulated some mileage.

3 sets of 10–12 reps.

9. Step-Up

Step onto a solid chair or bench, drive through the heel, control the way down.

Cheap, joint-friendly, and brutal for the glutes and quads once you hold dumbbells. Also carries over directly to real life — stairs with a toddler on your shoulder become noticeably easier.

3 sets of 10 each leg.

10. Farmer’s Carry

Pick up something heavy in each hand and walk. That’s the whole exercise.

It builds grip, traps, shoulders and core, and it teaches you to stand tall under load, which is exactly the posture correction most dads need. It’s also the most functional exercise on earth if you’ve ever carried the entire weekly shop in one trip to avoid a second journey.

4 sets of 40 metres.

11. Plank

Forearms down, body rigid, glutes and abs squeezed hard. Not a rest position — an all-out isometric.

Yes, there’s one core exercise on the list. Not because it burns belly fat, but because a strong braced midsection makes every other lift safer and stronger, and protects your lower back.

3 sets of 30–60 seconds.

12. Brisk Incline Walk

Treadmill on an incline, or a proper hill, at a pace where you can talk but not comfortably.

The most underrated fat-loss tool available to a dad in his forties. It burns real calories, it doesn’t interfere with recovery from your strength sessions, and you can do it with a pram. Thirty to forty-five minutes, three times a week.

Putting It Together: A 3-Day Week

Three sessions of roughly 40 minutes, on non-consecutive days.

Day 1 — Push and Hinge

Exercise	Sets	Reps
Goblet squat	4	10–12
Press-up	4	8–15
Romanian deadlift	3	10–12
Overhead press	3	8–10
Plank	3	30–60 sec

Day 2 — Pull and Legs

Exercise	Sets	Reps
Reverse lunge	3	8–10 each
Bent-over row	4	10–12
Step-up	3	10 each
Dumbbell floor press	3	10–12
Farmer’s carry	4	40 m

Day 3 — Conditioning

Exercise	Sets	Reps
Kettlebell swing	8	15
Goblet squat	3	12
Press-up	3	max reps
Bent-over row	3	12
Incline walk	—	20 min

On the days between, walk. Aim for 8,000–10,000 steps. It sounds unglamorous and it’s responsible for more dad-bod fat loss than every HIIT class combined.

If you want the full progressive version of this with weekly loading, the ultimate dad bod workout plan lays out the whole programme.

What to Expect, Honestly

Weeks 1–3: You’ll be sore, your strength will jump quickly (that’s your nervous system, not muscle yet), and the scale will move a little as water shifts. Nothing visible in the mirror.

Weeks 4–8: Clothes start fitting differently, particularly around the shoulders and chest. This is the phase where most men quit because progress feels slow — it isn’t slow, it’s just invisible from the inside.

Weeks 9–16: The change becomes obvious to other people. Waist down noticeably, shoulders and back filled out, and a completely different energy level day to day.

Sixteen weeks. Three sessions a week. That’s around 48 workouts to meaningfully change your body — fewer sessions than most men waste in a year of unfocused gym visits.

Frequently Asked Questions

What exercise burns the most belly fat? None of them specifically, and any article that names one is selling something. Fat comes off your whole body in the order your genetics decide, driven by a calorie deficit. The exercises that help most are the ones burning the most calories and building the most muscle — squats, deadlifts, swings and rows — not crunches.

How long does it take to get rid of a dad bod? Three to six months of consistent training and sensible eating for a clear visible change. Twelve to sixteen weeks is realistic for the first properly noticeable shift.

Can I get rid of a dad bod without a gym? Yes. Ten of the twelve exercises here need nothing more than a pair of adjustable dumbbells, and several need nothing at all. See 4 ways to build muscle without a gym membership.

Should I do cardio or weights to lose the dad bod? Both, weighted towards lifting. Strength training preserves the muscle that keeps your metabolism up while you lose fat; if you only do cardio in a deficit, you lose muscle alongside the fat and end up smaller but still soft. Lift three times a week, walk daily.

How many days a week should I train? Three quality sessions beats five rushed ones you resent. Three is enough to change your body and sustainable enough that you’ll still be doing it in six months.

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The dad bod doesn’t come from one bad decision. It comes from a decade of perfectly reasonable ones — late nights with a newborn, meals eaten standing up, gym memberships that lapsed quietly. Undoing it doesn’t require a dramatic overhaul either. It requires these twelve movements, three times a week, done a little bit better each time.