Hot answers tagged upper-body-workout
15
If you cross your ankles as your doing your pull-ups it will keep your feet from moving upwards, which is the main cause of swinging. Really focus on using only your arms to do your pull-ups and try to engage your core (abs and obliques) as much as you can to keep yourself from swinging. If you're still swinging, slow down your pace, not only will this ...
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Pavel Tsatsouline's The Naked Warrior focuses extensively on bodyweight exercises, and the one-armed pushup is his choice for a daily upper-body exercise. A couple hints from TNW:
Use an incline. Do the pushups against a couch or a bench and gradually reduce the incline to keep the effort at a challenging, but not impossible, level.
Experiment with the ...
10
You don't need to lift weights every day. Your muscles need recovery time.
If you do want to lift every day, you'd rotate so that you're exercising different muscle groups on different days.
You should let any specific muscle group recover for 2-3 days after working it. If you're exercising your whole body at each workout (which is more normal for ...
7
I am a bodybuilder, and can give you some tips on form in the chest press movement that will help you to focus the work toward the pecs. Of course, in a pressing movement you cannot strictly isolate the chest, but these tips will help you to minimize the involvement of the shoulders and triceps and lats.
To isolate as a bodybuilder would, you want to do ...
6
You cannot target any particular area of the body for fat loss. The body will remove fat from the areas that it feels like need to be reduced first. Proper diet and exercise will decrease your body fat overall, and eventually your body will get to that.
See also:
How can I get a flat stomach?
Will daily push-ups help to get rid of my belly fat?
How to ...
6
You can do sit-ups isolating the one leg which you have injured. Planks might help you a little but they are not all that challenging for the abs area after one moment onwards.
The only exercise that I can think of right now that will completely isolate your knee(and is not very advanced) is the dragon flag. It got popular thanks to bruce lee who ...
5
You are probably lowering the barbell too high up your chest which causes your elbows to flare out. Try moving the barbell lower down your chest on the way down so you can keep your elbows more tucked in (perhaps < 45 degrees to your body instead of 90). This will make sure the bench press is a chest and arm workout and not a dangerous shoulder workout.
...
4
Yes
The 'lower pec' and 'upper pec' are actually both sub-regions of the 'pectoralis major' muscle.
Lower Pec - Pectoralis Major (Sternal Head)
Source: exrx.net.
This is the region that makes up the majority of the muscle mass in the Pectoralis Major. Adding a decline to a bench press or doing exercises that push forward in a manner that is angled ...
4
An incline seat will put more emphasis on the upper chest.
A decline seat will put more emphasis on the lower chest.
An upright machine fly will work both regions of the chest. It's also particularly good for inner chest because it has equal tension throughout the movement, unlike dumbbell flies which have almost no tension at the peak.
You are ...
4
You're absolutely correct that swinging can make pull-ups easier. (It can also make it harder to hold on to the bar. Both of these are not good.) I use two methods to avoid swinging during pull-ups and chin-ups:
Bend my knees at a right angle, without crossing my ankles.
Extend my legs in front of myself, as high as they go. You can do it like the ...
4
While there is little disagreement that weight should be added after a certain amount of reps is reached (commonly 15), actually getting there is a different matter. One approach, initially popularized by Pavel Tsatsouline (see this article for more info), is called "greasing the groove". Pavel claims that "specificity + frequent practice = success", ...
4
For a body symmetry issue you need to address a few things. For one, work out! if you just do you daily tasks you're going to favor one side, that means one side is going to be disproportionate.
Next you need to counter the imbalance, you can do this by increasing the amount of single side workouts(one arm, one leg, one pec, ect). Work the weak side harder ...
4
Wow, that's a lot of volume
Doing 5x5 overhead press and 5x5 bench press is a lot for one day. Doing that, and 5x5 rows, AND three sets of 15 pull-ups is doggone impressive. Even if your pressing weights are puny, that's quite a lot of work. If you can do it, awesome.
My inclination is to lower the volume and make your A and B days more distinct. I'd use ...
3
Considering you just started doing pull-ups and your first episode of muscle soreness came a day after your first exercise, what you're experiencing is most likely Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS). DOMS typically comes about after you do a particularly strenuous activity or an activity that your muscles are not yet accustomed to.
Most people react just ...
3
Unilateral Weakness
When you find a left/right discrepancy in muscle strength, the weaker side will strengthen better if you exercise that side independently of the stronger side. Doing bilateral exercises allows the stronger side to take over. So @ shadesco's suggestion to use dumbbells instead of a barbell so that you can strengthen the right side with ...
3
Instead of a bar, use dumbbells which will enforce each side of your body to push on its own (using a bar, the stronger muscles will be helping you and will be pushing more) and helps in isolating muscles
Introduce body weight exercises to your routine, like burpees, pullups,pushups . These exercises develop overall muscle fibers and strength and will add ...
3
Convict Conditioning has an excellent 10-step progression to the one-arm push-up. It's also detailed here. It took me a month to go from not being able to do one to doing three one-arm push-ups.
Basically, you should start doing these:
Diamond grip push-ups - will strengthen the arms much more
Push-ups with one arm stretched out to the side or on a ...
3
You could work on improving overall core strength and doing different variations of pushups (standard, military, wide, decline, etc). Work at increasing strength and eventually working up to one armed pushups.
Remember, you are doubling the weight that your arm must push when doing a single arm pushup as compared to a two arm pushup. That's like if you ...
3
That machine is called a barbell and you need to deadlift it.
Deadlifting is not something you can start doing without learning it first, like you might with a machine. But no machine can teach to how to lift heavy weights without screwing up your back, learning how to deadlift will teach you exactly that.
Find yourself a powerlifter or trainer at your ...
3
Take a look at this question for an indirect answer to your question. Basically, muscle size and strength do not always go hand in hand. Strength is the ability to do work--and you will never get stronger if you never increase weights. However, you can get bigger when you increase the volume of work with lower weights.
Also note, that beginners tend to ...
3
Try to slow down the pace until you can do full pull-ups with good form and not swing. If you feel that you do not have the power to do the pull-ups with good form, use alternative ways of doing them until you are strong enough.
Alternative pull-ups can be either with one or two legs on something a bit elevated from the ground so that you can help lifting ...
3
I think there is just one advice that can be given in this case:
See a doctor!
Anything else would be plain bad for you. This is something that cannot be answered correctly without a physical exam.
It is clear, that this "clicking" is not something that should be happening normally and should be taken care of by a professional.
3
I also have Erb's Palsey in my left shoulder/neck. I am now almost 20, and I have had therapy and tests done up until I was 12, when I moved away from my therapist I never was able to continue occupational therapy.
Some of the things that helped me the most were wall push-ups, and a thing called 'superman' which you lay on your stomach, put your arms as ...
3
Well thank you, you just made me feel like a freak :)
I think some of it is probably genetics, like how large your ribcage is. I'm not really sure, but that is probably not going to change that much. So it is very likely that regardless what you do you won't look exactly like the guy on the photo. Nevertheless, you can do the best with what you have.
Since ...
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If you do free-weight exercises with good form and appropriate weights, this problem should gradually correct itself. The only important caveat would be that if you do exercises with dumbbells, you need to make sure that you do the same weight and same number of repetitions with you strong right hand as you do with your weaker left hand. For anything you ...
2
Based on the comments you added regarding the price of gym memberships in your area and the reasons why you don't want to buy a set o weights, I strongly suggest that you get a pair of adjustable dumbbells such a the bowflex or nautilus ones. They will cost you a few hundred dollars but will last you for a lifetime. Very compact and convenient for extremely ...
2
Reverse push ups:
Get between two chairs and put your elbows on them with your back towards the floor (You should be looking at the ceiling ). Hold your body stiff like a plank, press your elbows into the chairs as you contract your traps. Relax letting your torso drop as low as you can and get your back as round as you can without falling off the chairs.
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