Upper body training involve a series of movements, and the best way to train the upper body is to treat the upper body as a system of interconnected movements. Many peoples look at upper body movements as the individual movements they prefers to perform. However, it is more important to understand how the muscles in the upper body work together in creating movement.
The upper body contain many muscles that work in the same way and use the same joints to create movement in the upper body. The muscles in the upper body can either support or sabotage the other muscles depending on the load placed upon them. Therefore, it is important to understand how each muscle in the upper body is connected to the other in order to effectively train that area.
How to Train Your Upper Body
Each muscle group in the upper body can be defined by its primary role in the body during movement. For instance, the chest, back, shoulders, biceps, triceps, and forearm muscles each has a specific role in the movement of the upper body. The chest, for instance, contains different angles: flat, incline, and decline.
This is because the chest contains different regions that need to be targeted with different angles of exercise. Vertical pulls and horizontal pulls are two different movements that target the back in different ways. These distinction between muscles are important because they have a direct impact on the health of the shoulders and the size of the arms over time.
Push movements are a group of exercises that work the same muscles and target the same joints in the body. Some of these movements include bench presses, dips, and overhead presses. Because push movements load the same joints in the body, they should all be trained together.
If an individual only perform flat bench presses and push-ups, they may experience flatness of the upper chest and rounding of the shoulders. To fix this movement, you should incorporate incline and overhead press exercises into the upper body movement routine. Adding incline and overhead press exercises will allow for the muscles to be trained in different plane of movement.
Pull movements are the movements that balance the push movements. Examples of these movements include pull-ups, rows, and face pulls. Pull-ups, rows, and face pulls all work the back in different ways; pull-ups and rows can be performed horizontally or vertically.
A horizontal row will create thickness to the back muscles, whereas a vertical pull will target the same muscles but create strength and endurance in different ways. The face pull movement targets the rear and external rotator deltoid in the shoulder. These muscles are responsible for providing stability to the joint when using heavy loads to perform exercises.
Without these shoulder stabilizer muscles, pressing movements can irritate the joint. Arm exercises include both bicep and tricep movements. The triceps account for two-third of the arm between the elbow and the shoulder.
Therefore, it is important to provide more emphasis to the tricep exercises than the bicep exercises. Performing more sets of skull crushers or triceps pushdowns will provide the most benefit to increasing the size of the upper and lower arm compared with performing bicep curls. Although the biceps do require direct training, such as preacher curls, the triceps receive both direct and indirect training in the body.
The three heads of the deltoid muscle must be trained in balance for the upper shoulder to develop proper. The front deltoid receives the most training from bench pressing, but the lateral and rear deltoids require dedicated exercises to maintain balance in the body. Weakness in the rear deltoid muscles will cause the joint to sit in front of the body.
This can contribute to decreased strength and an increased risk of injury to the upper body. Progressive overload is the process that will ultimately allow an individual to see results from their training routine. The concept of progressive overload requires an individual to increase the weight or number of repetitions that is performed each week.
Without increasing the demands placed upon the body, it will not adapt. However, if the body cannot recover from the training, it will be impossible to create a progression in the development of the muscles. To allow the body to recover, you should incorporate deload periods into the upper body routine.
Deload periods require an individual to reduce the amount of training performed every four to six weeks to allow the connective tissue in the body to rest. Without deload periods, the joints in the body will begin to experience pain due to lack of recovery. Using an upper body movement chart allow an individual to understand the relationship of each movement in the upper body.
Should an individual experience pain in their shoulders, the chart will indicate that the rear and rotator muscles need to be trained. Should the upper and lower arms of an individual not increase in size, the chart can help indicate that more training should go into the tricep muscles. Finally, if an individuals posture begins to move forward, the upper body movement chart can help they to understand that their pushing movements need to be balanced with more pull exercises.
Knowing what movements to emphasize with the upper body and how to repeat those movements is the primary goal of upper body training.
