Packing Your Shoulders

Packing Your Shoulders

            Packing your shoulders when lifting is crucial to preventing injuries and getting the most out an exercise while working out.  To pack your shoulders, you need to just make and keep your shoulder blades together and compact when doing lifts that require your back to be straight.  The difference between doing a lift with or without packing your shoulders can be the difference between and injury and a well spent time exercising.

Exercises that are crucial for packed shoulders are:

·         Barbell curls

·         RDLs

·         Dead lifts

·         Pull-ups

·         Bent over rows

·         Bench press

·         Inclined bench press

·         Dumbbell flies

·         Dumbbell press

Back Exercises

Back Exercises

The back may not seem like it but it is a very important muscle of your body.  About every time you pull something, lift something off the ground, or slide something heavy, you are using your back muscles.  The back has three main muscles in it, the traps, the lats, and the lower back.  Your traps are the muscles that make up your shoulder, it connects from your neck to the edge of your deltoid and narrows all the way down to your glutes.  Your lats are the outside of your back, it’s what makes the V-shape of your body.  Your lower back is just that, the lower portion of your back muscle.

Traps

·         Shrugs- Shrugs are very simple, you grab dumbbells or a barbell, hold it to the side of you, arms straight and you shrug, moving your shoulders up and down.  This is about the only exercise that focuses on the traps muscle but most other exercises that focus on the back will also define and grow the traps.

Lats

·         Lat Bar Pull Downs-  “Red Bull doesn’t give your wings, lat bar pull downs give you wings”, your lats are also known as your “wings” because they are at your sides and are wing shaped muscles.  Lat bar pull downs are probably the best exercise for lats.  You need a machine to do this and a lat bar.  You hold the lat bar up with your arms straight and you pull the bar down to your knee without bending your arms.

·         Bent Over Dumbbell Flies- To do this you need to dumbbells, bend over slightly holding the dumbbell straight and perpendicular to the floor, then you pull the dumbbell away from each other and up towards you until they are about the same height as your body.

·         Bent Over Rows- Bent over rows just needs a barbell and weight.  Do the same as the bent over dumbbell flies but pull the bar up to your chest keeping your back straight.  You can do this with regular or a reversed grip for different angles.  Also known as bo(bow) rows.

Lower Back

·         Supermans- About the only lower back exercise I know.  You lay flat face down on the floor and lift the upper part of your body bending at your lower back.  You may feel tension and slight pain from this exercise but that’s normal and will wear off soon.

Chest Exercises

Chest Exercises

            Chest

The chest is one of the most stubborn muscles to try to gain on, it takes a lot of energy and a lot of weight to get results from it.  Your chest is not going to grow if you don’t make it grow.  Unlike most muscle groups you need to constantly use HEAVY weight and a lot of reps to see results. 

Chest has three parts, they all have scientific names to them but we’re just going to call them your outer chest, inner chest, and upper chest.  Your outer chest is just a thin little sliver of muscle on the outside of your chest next to the sides of you lats (back), although it is a very important part of your chest cause it helps push your chest out and make it look bigger.

Your inner chest is the biggest part of your chest, it helps with to overall inflation of your chest. It is not worked on very much because working the outside of your chest usually helps the inside of your chest also.

Your upper chest is of course at the top of your chest and it helps your chest actually look like you have chest (instead of just man boobs).  It is a harder muscle to concentrate on but it is about as important as your outer chest.

Outer Chest

·         Butterfly Presses- this can either be done with dumbbells or a machine, you use grab dumbbells and lay flat on a bench, then lift the dumbbells from your sides in a neutral grip and without bending your elbow raise them up above your chest making a circle as you do.

·         Dumbbell Bench Push Presses- for this your can also use a machine or dumbbells, also lay on a flat bench but you hold the dumbbells to your sides in a regular grip, then push up like you would on a bench press and as you’re pressing make the dumbbells almost touch at the top.

·         Wide Grip Bench Press- Exactly how it sounds, you can do this on a flat bench or some machines have an option for wide grip presses.  Use a grip that is about a half a foot wider than your shoulder width on each side.  On most Olympic sized bars that is the outer ring that has a space of no textured grip on it.  The wide grip on the bar forces more pressure on your outer chest.

·         Wide Push Ups- Resting your hands on a surface wider than your shoulders will do about the same effect as the wide grip bench press except you are using your body weight.  Keep your butt down and your back straight when doing pushups and for the best results go down to the ground slowly, about two seconds going down and then rest in the down position for about a second, then take two more seconds returning to the up position.

Inner Chest (not a lot of exercises for this)

·         Diamond Pushups- Bring your hands together and make the tips of your thumbs and index fingers touch to form sort of a diamond shape with your hands.  Doing pushups with your arms and hands this close together will put pressure and focus on your inner chest.

·         Close Grip Bench Press- Just like a regular bench press except this time you have the inner part of your hands only a few inches from each other as you press.  You may need to use less weight with this lift and it may cause you to lose balance of the bar but it is a great exercise for the inside of your chest muscle.

Upper Chest

·         Inclined Bench Press- The inclined bench press focused a lot on your upper chest and is probably the best exercise for it.  You can do different variations of this press like wide grip or narrow grip but regular shoulder width grip is probably the best at focusing on the upper portion of the chest.  30-45 degree incline on the bench is the best for this exercise.  It may feel awkward at first if you’re not used to it but it does work well.

·         Elevated Pushups- Do regular width pushups but keep your feet and legs resting on an elevated area, if there isn’t a specific area for this you could put your feet on a bench or chair, or ottoman.

·         Dumbbell Pull Over- This is an exercise that was very popular in the 50’s and 60’s but still works great today.  Lay on a flat bench, grabbing one dumbbell and holding one side of it with both hands.  Have the dumbbell hanging over the side of the bench, past where your head sits (like you would for tricep pull overs).  Without bending your arms pull the dumbbell up and over the bench till its straight in your arms and above your head.  Repeat.

·         Upper Chest Dumbbell Exercise X- I have no idea what the actual name of this exercise is.  I found it on a youtube video from the username AthleanX.  He gets all the credit for this exercise I just saw it and found it very useful.  You take two dumbbells (helps if they have flat sides on them) and you lay on an inclined bench, holding the dumbbells together.  You then push the dumbbells up while together, but as you are pushing up you are also pushing the dumbbells into each as hard as you possibly can, while also pushing them slowly up.  This is supposed to put extreme pressure on your upper chest.   

Getting Yo-self Motivated

Get Yourself Motivated

             

            Constantly I feel and see from others the lack of motivation to work out and exercise.  It seems like there is always a reason to not workout and I’ve heard tons of excuses on it, none of them good.  I myself get the feeling to not workout for that day, but it is always best if you push through these excuses and exercise because in the long run you will be glad you did.  Here’s a list of excuses I hear all the time and if you are using these they don’t count and you need to quit being lazy and just do it:

·        

           I don’t feel like it today- OK this is the worst one EVER!  ‘“I don’t feel like it” well you sure “felt like” stuffing your face with cake earlier today’.  This is obviously my least favorite excuse to not workout but it’s the one I hear the most.  It’s like your too lazy to even come up with a real excuse to not workout so you just throw out this pile of crap, STOP IT PEOPLE!

·         But I had to work today- yeah, I went to work today too, don’t see me complaining about it

·         I went pretty hard yesterday I better rest and pace myself- you can “rest” the day you are scheduled to rest on your workout routine, today you lift.

·         I don’t need to work out today anyway- Have you looked at yourself recently, yeah, you do

·         I’ll just work out twice as hard tomorrow- Oh REALLY, tomorrow, and what will your excuse be for tomorrow

·         The gym is so far away, I don’t want to waste gas driving their- That’s fine you can do tons of bodywork exercises at your house anyway

·         It’s a bit late to be working out don’t you think- OH, so now there’s a set time you have to work out, most gyms are 24/7 anyway

·         I don’t wanna embarrass myself at the gym- Why do you care about the guys at the gym, shouldn’t you be more embarrassed about the guys at the pool staring at you back fat

·         I don’t really know what I’m doing at the gym- There are tons of staff members at the gym that would be delighted to help you, or you could ask one of the less threatening bodybuilders that for some reason seem to be there all day

·         I don’t wanna get sweaty- That’s what showers are for

·         I’m kind of busy today- You don’t have to pumping it for two whole hours just get as much in as you can

·         Fat runs in my family, I’d be wasting my time trying to change genetics- OK, that’s about impossible, you’re not genetically fat, your “too many donuts” fat

·         I’m happy with the way my body looks- LIAR!!!

·         I don’t wanna look like one of those guys who can barely put their arms at their sides cause they have so much muscle- That would only happen with steroids, and I doubt going to the gym one time would cause you to look like that

·         I don’t wanna get too strong- That’s fine there are tons of exercises that focus on body fat control, athleticism, and figure

·         What if everyone else is stronger than me and makes me feel bad for it- The whole reason your at the gym is to get stronger and as long as your focused and not trying to show off, everyone will respect you for trying to change your life

So, these are about all of the excuses I hear all the time to get out of exercising, if you catch yourself using one of these excuses, or any excuse at all, you should stop and just do it anyway.