Upper Body Exercise Tips
Read these 35 Upper Body Exercise Tips tips to make your life smarter, better, faster and wiser. Each tip is approved by our Editors and created by expert writers so great we call them Gurus. LifeTips is the place to go when you need to know about Muscle Building tips and hundreds of other topics.
Reps and Sets for Abs
Abdominal muscles don't need to be trained differently than other muscles, 6-20 reps, 3-4 sets.
Twist on Dumbbell Fly
Add a twist at the top of the dumbbell fly movement in order to get a more intense contraction of the chest muscles.
Isolating Triceps
There are a number of exercises that target the triceps. Some popular ones are dumbbell or barbell overhead extensions, kickbacks, lying extensions, cable machine pressdowns, and cable extensions. Most gyms have triceps machines. Exercise bands or tubing can be used in place of dumbbells. The thing to remember about triceps is that it straightens the elbow, and you have to do that against gravity. You can choose one or two exercises and do two or three sets of each. You also use the triceps in bench presses or overhead presses, so there's no need to overdo the isolation exercises.
Curl Bar to Ease Wrist Stress
Use an EZ curl bar instead of a straight bar when doing biceps curls; this will help to remove stress from the wrists by placing them in a more natural position.
Upper Chest Exercises
The best exercises for upper chest are incline bench presses and incline flies. You can also try a cable cross with the handles held rather high. You will probably get better results if you also include some flat presses and military presses to not neglect the surrounding areas.
Working the Deltoid
The best exercise for the entire deltoid is the military, or overhead, press. This does emphasize the anterior delt, though, so if you have time and especially want to work shoulders, it's a good idea to add a set or two of lateral raises and/or posterior flies.
Increasing Kickback Intensity
When performing kickbacks, pause when arm is fully extended and raise arm slightly to increase muscle stimulation.
Back Development
To develop your back, do pull-ups or chin-ups, or lat pulldowns at the gym. Also do an exercise that works the middle back. Bentover rows can do this, as can low cable rows or back machines that use an overhand grip. You should also do some shrugs for your traps and reverse flies to target the posterior deltoid. Chin-ups and pull-ups both use lats, traps, and rhomboids. Chins use more biceps and pull-ups more forearm.
Pull-ups for Back Muscles
Do pull-ups for the lats by taking a wide grip and concentrating on using your back muscles. Build up to adding weight when you do the exercise. Pull-ups will help you develop a nice set of back muscles, if done properly.
Arm Development
It is easy to overwork your arms. These are relatively small muscles, and also get worked with exercises like pulldowns or bench presses. Sometimes better results can be achieved by doing more chest and back exercises that use arms and fewer specific arm exercises. Another approach is to use heavier weight and fewer reps. Muscle development is partly genetic, so it's possible to get very strong but not show a lot of muscle. This lean look can be very attractive if that's what's natural for you.
Hugging a Barrel
On a dumbbell fly, in order to properly perform the exercise visualize your arms wrapping around a tree or barrel. This will keep your arc wide enough and keep the movement from becoming like a bench press.
Bench Press Angles
Vary the angle of the bench when doing bench presses to target different parts of the pectoral (chest) muscles.
Order to Train Abdominals
Train lower abs first before the obliques and upper abs, to target them more effectively.
Shaping the Chest Muscles
Dumbbell flys will help to bring out the separation and shape of the chest muscles.
Military Press Intensity
On military presses lower the bar only to the level of the ears and extend to a point just before lockout to keep tension on shoulder muscles throughout the movement.
Building Forearms and Grip
Doing heavy dead lifts and shrugs will build forearm and grip strength, provided you are not using wrist straps.
Working Shoulders After Chest
When you do pressing movements, such as the bench press, you also use the front part of your shoulder, the anterior deltoid. If you do a heavy shoulder workout the day after a good chest workout, you may be overworking the anterior delt. There's less problem with adding stress to your chest muscles on shoulder day. Lots of people do work chest one day and shoulders the next, and it may depend on your choice of exercises, but it would be best to structure your workouts so you don't have to do that.
Focusing the Bench Press on the Chest Muscles
When performing a bench press, you should keep your rear deltoid muscles on the bench as much as possible. In other words spread the chest by keeping your shoulder blades pulled towards your spine and drop the shoulders in the direction of your waist. This will help to keep the focus on the chest throughout the movement.
Dumbbell Exercises for Chest
Either dumbbell bench presses or flies, or both, will improve your chest muscles. It's good to do your presses on a bench, though you can use an exercise ball if you prefer. You can even do presses on the floor, but your range of motion will be limited. Flies can also be done on a bench or on the floor. If you have a bench that inclines, you can add incline presses or flies after you have been working on flat bench versions for a while.
Dumbbell Fly Alternative
As an alternative to dumbbell flys you can do a cable crossover movement. When doing this movement make sure to focus on squeezing the center of your chest. This is another way to help bring out the separation in the center of the chest.
Upper Body Strength
The basic exercises for upper body strength are push-ups and pull-ups. With barbells or dumbbells, you can do bench presses or bentover rows. You can add military presses for your shoulders and biceps curls and triceps extensions for your arms. Gyms have specialized machines for all of these. You can look up more about these to get information for your assignment.
Isolating Abdominals
For abs, to lessen hip flexor involvement and avoid overworking the neck extensors, put your tongue on the roof of your mouth and flex your hamstrings when doing crunches.
Forearm Positioning on Bench Press
Your forearms should remain close to vertical throughout the bench press movement. This will lessen the stress on your wrists. The exception would be the close grip bench press in which case you would use a significantly lower weight.
Sculpting Arms
To sculpt your arms, do exercises for both biceps and triceps. Choose a weight that fatigues your muscles in 12-15 repetitions. Do two or three sets of each. This is not enough to give you bulky muscles but will give your muscles tone. Using weights that are too light will not give your muscles enough resistance.
Lateral Raise Variation
With lateral raises, bend arms slightly at the elbows to make the exercise easier and straighten arms to make exercise more challenging.
Elbows in or out for lat training??
The latissimus dorsi muscle performs two main actions:
humeral extension and adduction. Seated rows with the elbows out(horizontal abduction) utilize the rear deltoids and rhomboids more than the lats. Lat pulldowns are a pure adduction movement and seated rows with the elbows in is pure extension. Therefore, to train the lats effectively, keep your elbows in near your body on seated rows.
Targeting the Chest
On the bench press, the wider the grip the more it targets the pectorals (I.e. chest) lessening the involvement of the triceps
Isolating the Deltoids
On shoulder movements such as the lateral raise and front raise, only lift the weight to shoulder level to minimize the involvement of the traps.
Losing Fat from the Arms
You can't target certain body parts for spot reduction. If you have lost weight overall except on your arms, just keep up what you are doing and your arms will follow. You can also do some light weight training for your arms to tone them and make them look better.
Targeting Different Back Muscles
On back exercises such as pulldowns and bent over rows, vary the grip to work different parts of the back; close grip, wide grip, forward and reverse grip
Sculpting Arms
To sculpt your arms, do exercises for both biceps and triceps. Choose a weight that fatigues your muscles in 12-15 repetitions. Do two or three sets of each. This is not enough to give you bulky muscles but will give your muscles tone. Using weights that are too light will not give your muscles enough resistance.
Bench Press Arm Positioning
While performing the bench press, when the upper arms are parallel to the floor keep them at a 45 degree angle to torso to lessen the stress on the shoulders.
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