What Upper-body Workouts Should You Try?
Often when you’re exercising, you’ll read or hear about people doing upper-body workouts (or “arm day”) and lower-body workouts (a.k.a. “leg day). Upper-lower split workouts let you focus on one part of the body while the other muscles rest.
Today, we’ll focus on upper-body workouts (and save lower-body ones for a follow-up post). These workouts focus on the muscles in your arms, shoulders, chest, and upper back.
Benefits of Upper-Body Workouts
My upper-body strength has never been great, but after toning down my workouts while pregnant and then stopping altogether for a few weeks after the baby was born, I could barely push myself through a yoga class. I knew I wanted to specifically work on improving my upper-body strength.
Upper-body workouts have a variety of benefits. The most obvious is that you’ll strengthen the muscles in your shoulders, arms, chest, and upper back. You might also be working your abs at the same time (core muscles link the upper and lower body). Upper-body workouts are often something people do to look good in a t-shirt or swimsuit.
Building muscles also improves overall health. It can help you stave off losing muscle mass as you get older. You’ll also enjoy improved flexibility, posture, and mobility alongside stronger muscles. And for women, strength training can help prevent osteoporosis.
Good Upper-body Exercises
There are a variety of upper-body exercises you can try. They fit into the basic categories of vertical pushes and pulls, horizontal pushes and pulls, and weighted carries. Putting these types of movements together helps you work the whole upper body and build muscles. Upper-body exercises include:
- Bench press
- Biceps curl
- Farmer’s carry
- Overhead press
- Pull up
- Pushup
- Triceps kickback
- Wide-grip chest press
- Weighted rows
Before you start your weighted workout, do some dynamic stretches to warm up your body and raise your heart rate. This includes movements like jumping jacks, arm circles, and arm swings.
Hit the Gym!
You don’t need a gym to work out your upper body, but it sure does help. Here at Extreme Studio Performance, we have all the weights you’ll need to work your upper body as well as exercise machines to support your workouts. For example, you can use a cable crossover machine to work your pecs or a lat pulldown machine to work your biceps and back.
Working out at a gym can also help improve motivation. Plus, if you’re working with a personal trainer or join a group class, it can help prevent injury. Trainers can also answer any questions you have about which workouts to try or how to use a new exercise machine. Contact us to set up a free gym tour and fitness evaluation, and see how Extreme Studio Performance can help support your fitness journey.