Many men and women seek to improve the strength and muscle definition in their upper body. This not only improves a person's overall appearance but also can be highly functional if you have to perform regular lifting, pulling or pushing tasks. Whatever your reasons for wanting to improve your upper body, you will see the biggest fitness gains when you design an effective weight training program and follow it regularly.
Shoulders
You use your shoulders, or deltoids, in many chest, back and arm exercises, according to Liz Neporent, Suzanne Schlosberg and Shirley J. Archer in "Weight Training for Dummies." Including shoulder exercises such as barbell overhead presses and lateral raises can increase your ability to lift weights with other upper-body muscle groups. Shoulder injuries are common in upper-body workouts, however. Ensure that you do not move your shoulders at unnatural angles, arch your back or lower weights over your head behind your neck. These types of lifting mistakes contribute to overtraining injuries.
Chest and Back
If you want to get the most out of chest or back weight training, pair these exercises, according to Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bill Dobbins in "The New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding." As you become stronger, perform supersets of these exercises, meaning as soon as you finish a chest exercise like bench press you immediately perform a back exercise like lat pulldowns. Additionally, Schwarzenegger states that upper chest exercises like inclined bench press will help your pectoral muscles develop to their fullest.
Arms
Arm exercises like biceps curls and triceps pressdowns are some of the most commonly performed upper-body exercises. Much like chest and back exercises, you can combine biceps and triceps exercises in supersets to maximize your lifting results. According to bodybuilder Roger Lockridge, performing a high volume of arm exercises for up to four weeks will give you the best size results. You need to be careful not to put too much emphasis on your arms in your upper-body training, however, because it will lead to overtraining that limits your enthusiasm and muscle gains.
Abdominals
Your abdominal muscles differ from the other muscle groups in your upper body because you are highly unlikely to overtrain them, Len Kravitz, Ph.D., of the University of New Mexico states. Perform traditional body-weight exercises like situps and reverse crunches up to five times a week for the best results. Abdominal exercises can be interspersed with other upper-body exercises to give the muscles you are training more time to recover.
Sets, Repetitions and Frequency
You will need to vary the number of sets and repetitions you perform in a workout depending on your training goals. If you want to become stronger with your upper body, perform two to four sets of an exercise with three to eight repetitions per set while lifting close to your one repetition maximum. If you want size gains, increase your repetitions to 10 or greater with more sets while decreasing the weight you are lifting to 70 percent or less of your one repetition maximum. Other than your abdominals, you need to allow your upper[body muscle groups around 48 hours of rest between workouts so the muscles can recover and grow.
References
- UNM.edu: Abdominal Training, Len Kravitz, Ph.D.
- Bodybuilding.com: Build Bigger Arms; Roger Lockridge
- "The New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding"; Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bill Dobbins; 1998
- "Weight Training for Dummies"; Liz Neporent, Suzanne Schlosberg and Shirley J. Archer; 2006
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