Probably since the very first day you ever meekly poked your naïve head into a gym, you were told which were the most effective exercises. If you wanted a great chest, you had to perform the bench press. For legs, the squat was mandatory. The leg extension and even other pressing exercises were only good for "shaping," whatever the hell that was supposed to mean. Guess what? It's all bull.
Coming from someone who has rated exercises dozens of times in print in terms of effectiveness, let me tell you now that some of the allegedly "magic" exercises will do very little for some people, and some of the "worthless" exercises have done wonders. In my case, most of my thigh size was built with leg extensions, leg presses, and hack squats, not barbell squats. Bench presses never did much for me, but dumbbell bench presses and heavy machine flyes certainly have.
I would wager that most of you reading this have at least one or two "shaping" exercises in your repertoire, like concentration curls or side laterals, that have been responsible for a good deal of muscle being added to your body. And we can also apply this to the perennial argument over free weights versus machines. Most people use a mix of both, yet there have also been many trainers who found their bodies responded best to either predominantly one or the other.
You know that feeling when you've found an exercise that works well for you. You feel in the groove, strong, and achieve wicked, skin-busting pumps. It doesn't matter if you're doing one of the barbell basics or some exotic move on a cable. If you get that special feeling and consequent growth from any exercise, then that's a great exercise for you. Only you can be the judge.
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