Weight Training Tips and Articles

Building Upper Back Width

  If you’re trying to build a muscular physique through weight training it’s very important to create a wider appearance in your upper body. Doing this will give you a classic Herculean look and create an illusion of a smaller waist even if you haven’t actually decreased the size of it.

  One way to increase your upper body width is to build the latissmus dorsi muscles of the upper back. The lats are the large wing-shaped muscles of the upper back and building them will help make you look wider.

  The best exercises for building wider lats are pull-ups and cable pulldowns. Pull-ups are a superior exercise to cable pulldowns because you’re moving your body through space when you do them, but many weight trainers may not be able to do enough pull-ups for an effective set if they weigh too much or haven’t built up enough strength so the pulldowns are a great alternative to building a wider upper back. If you want to do pull-ups but can’t do too many reps, there are alot of gyms that have assisted pull-up machines that will allow you to get enough reps to build the lats.

  Whether you do pull-ups or cable pulldowns you should vary your grip to get the most muscle growth possible. Close grip pull-ups and pulldowns with an underhand grip will give you a nice contraction when the bar is at your chest, while wide grip pull-ups and pulldowns with an overhand grip will give your lats a nice stretch to start off a rep. To get the best overall upper back development you should include both close grip and wide grip pull-up and cable pulldowns. You can also experiment with other grip ranges if you’d like.

  When you do pull-up and pulldowns exercises you should always do them to your chest or neck. Pull-ups and pulldowns to behind the neck put your shoulders in a precarious position which may cause an injury.

Do Abdominal Exercises On A Core Ball

  Abdominal workouts are great for strengthening your core and giving you washboard abs if you don’t have a layer of body fat covering them up. Chunches are an especially great exercise for building the abs. However, many weight trainers and workout enthusiests do their crunches on flat benches or machines with a flat back support that don’t allow you to stetch the abdominals at the beginning of a rep.

  To build muscle for any part of the body it’s very important to do full reps during your weight training exercises. Part of a full rep is getting a nice stretch at the beginning of a repitition and a good muscle contraction at the end of it. While you can get the hard contraction you need at the end of a crunch rep on a flat bench, you won’t be getting much of a stretch because the bench won’t allow you to go any further back at the beginning of a crunch rep.

  To get that stretch to start a crunch rep you should do them on a core ball. When you do abdominal exercises on a core ball you’ll be able to stretch your midsection to start the rep which should result in an even better contraction at the end of it. Training your abs on a core ball will also allow you a lot of variety. You can add a twist to your core ball crunches to help buiild and strengthen the ab - oblique area on each side of your midsection. You can also start a set of an ab exercise on a core ball with your lower back on the ball to get a better stretch and make the reps harder. Then, as you get closer to failure you can move your body forward so the ball is higher up under your back so you can crank out a few more reps. A weighted medicine can also be used at the beginning of a set of crunches on a core ball and dropped as you get to failure so you get some more reps with just your body weight.

  Beyond the fact that you’ll get a better stretch in the abs when you train on a core ball is that you’ll also be strengthening many small stabilizing muscles and improving your balance. Try doing your abdominal training on a core ball get the most out of your workouts.

Target The Brachialis Muscle For Thicker Arms

  If you’re trying to build bigger arms through weight training you obviously need to do biceps and triceps workouts. However, there is a small muscle called the brachialis that lies between the bis and tris that you also need to train for optimal arm muscle size. Targeting the brachialis with a few sets during your biceps training will help give your arms a thicker look.

  While most biceps exercises will hit the brachialis indirectly, there are some exercises that you can do that will target it more specifically. Hammer curls are the best exercise for building the brachialis. To do them you take a dumbbell in each hand with the palms facing you and your thumbs forward like you were going to do normal dumbbell curls, but instead of rotating your wrists on the way up you keep your hands in a fixed position as you do the reps. At the end of a repitition your hands should be in a position like if you were using a hammer. Some gyms have curls bars with grips that allow you to do hammer curls with both arms at the same time. Do some sets of hammer curls during your biceps workout to target the brachialis.

  Another exercise that will hit the brachialis is the reverse grip barbell curl. You basically do a normal barbell curl but with an overhand grip rather than an underhand one. You won’t be able to use near as much weight while doing reverse curls as you would for normal ones. This exercise will also hit the back of the forearms.

  Make sure to do some exercises targeting the brachialis as part of your weight training routine and you will gain a thicker look in your upper arms.