Weight Training Tips and Articles

Do Forced Reps For More Weight Training Intensity

  If you weight train it’s important to train with a lot of intensity to build more muscle mass and strength. If you just go through the motions and use the same amount of weight for the same amount of sets and exercises during each workout how can you expect to make gains. Challenge yourself, gain some strength, and eventually you’ll get bigger.

  One great way to get more intensity in your weight training workouts is to use forced reps. Forced reps are extra reps that you do on a set that you’ve already went to failure on with the help of a spotter. If you are bench pressing and can’t possibly get one more rep have a spotter assist you for a couple of more.

  Forced reps are best done on certain exercises. Bench press and shoulder press exercises are perfect for getting some extra forced reps with the help of a spotter, as well as many bicep and tricep exercises. Pull-ups are another exercise you can use forced reps on by having a spotter give you a boost to finish a few extra reps. You can also get some assisted forced reps on certain leg exercises such as leg presses, leg extensions, leg curls, and hack squats.

  When you have a spotter help you with some extra reps be sure not to overdo it. Too many forced reps could very well lead to overtraining. Just try to get 1 or 2 extra assisted reps on a few sets per workout. If you get to the point where your spotter is working almost as hard as you are while they assist you, you’re doing too many. Just having their hands under the bar with a small amount of assistance is all you should need for an extra rep or 2.

  Try some forced reps on a few exercises and eventually you should be able to get those extra reps by yourself.

Shoulder Weight Training Workouts

  If you weight train, building bigger, wider shoulders is a must for that Herculean look most men are striving for. The shoulder, or deltoid, muscles are made up of the front, side, and rear attachments, or heads. For total deltoid development you need to do some specific training for each head of the shoulder muscles.

  Many weight trainers start their shoulder workouts off with military presses to the front. This is a great exercise for building the shoulders, but if you’ve been lifting weights for a while and have built some muscle size you may overdevelop your front deltoids as compared to the side and rear delts. Many chest exercises like the bench and incline press involve the front deltoids so you may not need to do as much work on them when you do your actual shoulder workout. Because of this you may want to start your deltoid workout with dumbbell presses. Dumbbell presses will allow you put more of the resistence on the side delts.

  Because of the work your front deltoids get from chest exercises and your rear deltoids get from back exercises you should do more exercises for the side delts when you train your shoulders. Building the side head of the shoulder muscles will help add width to them. Besides dumbbell presses, you can do many variations of side laterals to build wider shoulders. You can do side lateral raises with dumbbells, cables, or machines.

  You should also do a few sets of rear lateral raises for the rear deltoids since they only get some secondary work from back exercises. You want to develop each head of the deltoids as evenly as possible so you may want to avoid doing too much direct work on the front delts if they are overdeveloped during your shoulder workouts. Front lateral raises may not be necessary because of this.

  You can train your trapezius muscles with the shoulders if you want. The best trapezius exercise is the shrug. You can do shrugs with a barbell or dumbbells. To get the most out of heavy shrugs you should use chalk or wrist straps to assist your grip.

  Here’s a sample shoulder workout with most of the focus on the side deltoid heads.

Dumbbell presses: 3-4 sets

Dumbbell side laterals: 2-3 sets

Cable side laterals: 2-3 sets

Rear laterals: 2-3 sets

Shrugs: 3-4 sets

Drop set of your choice to finish with.

  Because the shoulders (besides the side head) are involved in so many upper body exercises it’s easy to overtrain them. A shoulder routine like this should help you avoid overdoing it and decrease the likelihood of injury.

Tips For A Wider Back

  Most weight trainers strive for a wider upper body appearance to get that classical muscular look. To do this you must decrease the width of your midsection and increase the width of your shoulders and upper back. Adding width to the latismuss dorsi muscles of the upper back will help you achieve a wider appearance.

  The latismuss dorsi, or lats, are the muscles on the sides of the upper back that span from the bottom of the ribe cage to the shoulders. Just about every upper back weight training exercise involves the lats. Row exercises are great for overall back thickness, but if you want to add width to your lats you need to do pull-up and pulldown exercises.

  Because you move your body through space while doing them, pull-ups are superior to cable pulldowns for adding width to your upper back. However, if you having been working out for very long or are too heavy you may not be able to do many pull-ups. Thankfully many gyms now have pull-up machines that you can put your knees or feet on with weight assisting you to get more pull-ups. If you can’t do many pull-ups and don’t have access to an assisted pull-up machine, cable pulldowns are still great for building upper back width.

  To fully develop the lats you can do pull-ups and pulldowns with many various grip ranges. Close grip pull-ups and cable pulldowns will give your lats a nice stretch and contraction, while wide grip ones will help build the outer portions of the lats. Use a variety of grips to get the most out of pull-ups and pulldowns and get a wider upper back.