A four-week super upper body workout plan should be consistent, but with minor changes each week to keep your muscles guessing, so they can respond and grow. Train your upper body three days a week on nonconsecutive days for four weeks, splitting upper body muscle groups -- so that you are training chest and triceps on Monday, shoulders and abs on Wednesday and back and biceps on Friday.
Week One
Focus week one of your training on barbell exercises. Complete each exercise in the routine using a weight in which muscle exhaustion occurs between eight and 12 repetitions for three sets each, not including warmup sets. Keep rest periods between sets about 60 seconds in duration. Train your chest and triceps with exercises such as barbell bench press, incline barbell press, barbell pullover, cable crossovers, close-grip bench press, EZ bar lying overhead triceps extension and cable press downs. Train your shoulders and abs with exercises such as overhead barbell press, upright row, barbell front raise, decline crunches and hanging leg raises. Train your back and biceps with exercises such as deadlifts, bent over barbell row, T-bar row, seated cable row, barbell curl, EZ curl bar preacher curl and single arm cable curl.
Week Two
Week two of your super upper body workout will include the same exercises as in week one, but reduce the repetition range and increase the resistance to focus on increasing strength and power. Select a weight in which muscle fatigue occurs between four and eight repetitions for three working sets, resting 90 seconds between each exercise.
Week Three
Change the exercises in week three so you are primarily using dumbbell exercises. Dumbbells are free weights like barbells, except they can create a greater challenge by forcing your body to use more stabilizing muscles to perform the movements. Complete three sets of eight to 12 repetitions, resting 60 seconds between each set. Train your chest and triceps with the exercises such as dumbbell bench press, incline dumbbell press, chest dips, dumbbell flys, dumbbell kickbacks and lying overhead triceps extension with dumbbells. Train your shoulders and abs with exercises such as dumbbell shoulder press, Arnold press, dumbbell lateral raise, bent over lateral raise, reverse crunches and leg lifts. Train your back and biceps with exercises such as single arm dumbbell row, dumbbell incline lying dumbbell row, lat pull down, dumbbell curl, dumbbell concentration curl and incline dumbbell curl.
Week Four
Continue to use the same dumbbell exercises performed in week three of your plan, but increase the weight and decrease the repetitions. Complete each exercise routine for three sets of four to eight repetitions, resting 90 seconds between each exercise.
Considerations
It is necessary to train all areas of your body to improve overall health and fitness. Consider adding in one or two days of lower body strength training, and four or five days a week of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise such as brisk walking each week.
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