Weight Training Tips and Articles

Lower Back Weight Training Exercises

  One of the most important areas of the body to strengthen through weight training is the lower back. The lower back muscles help support your body while performing almost any weight training exercise, whether you’re training your upper body or lower body. Having a weak lower back will negatively affect the weights you can use on many exercises, especially the major compound ones that help build the most muscle size.

  The best weight training exercise for strengthening the lower back is without a doubt the deadlift. Deadlifts are a great exercise for the lower back, as well as the quadriceps, hamstrings, and even the upper back and trapezius to a lesser extent. When you deadlift you should try to use your leg muscles to get the weight off of the floor and the lower back to finish a rep at the top. Get your butt low to the ground and keep your lower back arched instead of bent. Use chalk instead of lifting straps to assist your grip when you deadlift because you could pull a forearm muscle if you use straps.

  Another great, though underused, exercise for the lower back is called the good morning. you put a barbell on your trapezius/upper back area like you would while squatting and bend forward with your butt stuck out so you don’t actually bend the lower back too much. Use your lower back and hamsting muscles to lift the weight back to the starting position.

  Hyperextensions will also help you gain lower back strength. Get on a hyperextension apparatus and bend down and raise the body until it’s parallel to the floor to perform a rep. If you want you can use a light weight help to your chest for added resistance.

  Be careful not to overtrain the lower back. Trying to do exercises like squats with sore lower back muscles won’t do you any good and may put you at risk of an injury.

  Once you’ve built up some strength in your lower back you may be surprised by how much more weight you can handle on certain weight training exercises.

Upper Back Weight Training Workouts

  Even though you can’t see the upper back when you are weight training it, it’s still very important to do for overall muscle size and strength gains. Some weight trainers will tend to not do enough weight training for the upper back because they can’t see it when they’re working out. However neglecting upper back workouts could cause you to slouch if you have a well developed chest.

  The best weight training exercises for the upper back are pulldown or pull-up exercises for more width, and row exercises for more thickness. You need to focus on both width and thickness for total upper back development.

  Pull-ups and cable pulldowns will help you develop a wider upper back. You can use many different grip ranges when performing pull-ups or pulldowns to develop the latismuss dorsi, or lats (the wing shaped muscles on the sides of the upper back). Do sets of close-grip and wide-grip pull-ups and pulldowns to hit the lats from a variety of angles.

  Whenever possible you should do pull-ups instead of pulldowns because they force you to move your body through space, which is superior for developing strength in the muscles that stabilize the body. Pull-ups are also harder to do than pulldowns, and the harder an exercise is, the better it is for muscular development. Of course not everybody can do enough pull-ups reps per set. If you have this problem do cable pulldowns with various grips until you gain enough strength to do more pull-ups.

  Rows for upper back thickness can be done many different ways - with barbells, dumbbells, cables, and machines. Try to do most of your sets of rows with free weights and various grip ranges. For added variety, you should switch it up and do some cable or machine rows.

  Due to the many different exercises and grips you can use for your upper back workouts, you can frequently change your routine so you never hit a plateau in your upper back training.

Chest Weight Training Workouts

  The chest muscles, or pectorals, are among the most popular muscles to weight train. Most chest weight training exercises are easy to perform and building large pectorals will give that look of physical power. Becuase of this many weight trainers tend to overtrain their pecs, which can be detrimental to size and strength gains. You should keep your chest workouts simple, performing the basic exercises without doing so many sets that you won’t be fully recovered for your next chest workout.

  After you warm-up the first chest weight training exercise you should do is the barbell bench press. Lie on the bench and pull your shoulder blades inward to pop your pecs out so the resistance hits them harder. Don’t lift your butt off of the bench to get the weight up - if you have to you should use lighter weight.

  Do some incline barbell bench press sets after you do flat benches to hit the upper pectoral muscles. If you have overdeveloped lower pecs you may even want to start your chest workouts with inclines.

  After you do some bench and incline bench sets you can do a few sets of decline bench presses or weighted dips to build that bottom section of the pectoral muscles. Weighted dips are a great, and underused, exercise for this. If you are trying to hit your chest with dips you should try to get your hips behind the rest of your body instead of dipping with your body straight so you aren’t working your triceps more than your pecs.

  Try some sets of dumbbell flat and incline bench presses to get a nice stretch at the bottom of the movement and work the stabilizing muscles that balance the weights. For added variety you can do some dumbbell bench work on a strong workout ball. Bench pressing on a ball will really force you to stabilize and balance the weight.

  Finish of your chest workouts with dumbbell or machine flyes, or cable crossovers. Regularly switch which exercise you use as a finisher to a chest workout to keep your body guessing.

  Try doing 10-12 sets total for your pectoral muscles during your chest weight training workouts with varied rep ranges. This may not sound like much, but if you are training with the proper intensity it should be more than enough. you may want to do more or less total sets depending on how many days you have between chest workouts.