With warm weather here, it's time to bare our bodies to the world. Most of you yearn for sleeveless weather but, now that it's here, you might be rethinking life without sleeves if you've neglected your strength training. Get back into strength training with something new: pyramid training.
Tips for Training Your Upper Body
First, working your upper body along with your lower body is important for making sure your body is in balance. It's also nice because it makes you stronger and it helps even things out if you happen to be larger on the bottom than you are on top.
When training your upper body with weights, you want to work ALL of your muscles including your chest, back, shoulders and arms.
Tips for training:
- When you can, train your larger muscles (chest and back) first. These muscle groups can handle heavier weight and you want your arms nice and fresh to be able to lift heavy.
- Work your upper body 2-3 non-consecutive days a week
- Choose a heavy enough weight so that you can ONLY complete the desired number of repetitions (6-8 for muscle building, 10-12 for muscle/endurance and 12-16 for endurance). The last few reps should be done with difficulty.
- You can work your entire body in one workout or split your workouts into different muscle groups on different days
- Invest in a basic set of dumbbells ranging from 3-15 lbs. Your arms will need less weight than your chest and back.
Pyramid Training
Most of us tend to get stuck in routines when it comes to strength training and you may not have noticed how long you've been doing the same workout. To jumpstart your training, why not try something new?
Pyramid training is just one way to lift weights and involves changing your reps and weight for each set of each exercise. In other words, you'll start light and end heavy or start heavy and end light. Changing the weight for each set will push you past your usual limits and really engage all those muscle fibers for lean, strong arms. If you're ready to get started, here's your Upper Body Pyramid Workout.
