The upper body is the area that controls your ability to carry out everyday activities such as lifting, reaching, pushing or pulling. Understandably, you must have a strong and fit upper body if you want to perform all activities easily and comfortably. Deteriorating upper body strength makes you susceptible to diseases, injuries and a poor quality of life. Increasing your upper body strength is important if you want to maintain your usual range of reach, mobility, motion and flexibility. Regular exercise is the only way of achieving a strong upper body and you must hire a personal trainer from group fitness in Newtown to show how to do it safely and correctly.

Planning an Upper Body Workout Routine

Selecting upper body workouts will depend on several factors such as you age, gender, present physical condition, fitness goal and the time you can devote to it and so on. While planning the workout sessions, your St Peters personal trainers will try to put equal emphasis on each and every major muscle in the area and select workouts accordingly. He will also calculate the most number of reps and sets that can be safely performed so that you can maximize each session and get the best results within the shortest time.

Types of Workouts your Trainer is Likely to Include

Your upper body is responsible for performing six fundamental actions which are horizontal push and pull, vertical push and pull and elbow flexing and extending. Therefore comprehensive upper body workout must include such exercises that target all muscles and movement patterns involving these fundamental actions.

Horizontal Push Workouts

Any weight training exercise that requires you to push a weight away from you in the forward direction is considered as a horizontal push exercise. The basic movement should be to move the weight away from your torso. Group fitness in Newtown  will confirm that chest workouts such as bench press fall in this category.

Horizontal Pull Workouts

Pulling any weight towards your torso is considered as a horizontal pull exercise. Do remember that the weight must be dragged inwards from your front in a straight motion. Most back rowing exercises such as dumbbell or barbell rowing is an example of such workouts.

Vertical Push Workouts

All weight training workouts that involve lifting a weight vertically vis-à-vis your torso are included in vertical push category. You should aim to lift the weight above your head or at least aim to keep your arms straight in the upward direction. Examples of such workouts include the overhead press and most other shoulder workouts.

Vertical Pull Workouts

Vertical pull workouts are weight training exercises that require you to move a weight in the downward direction vertically vis-à-vis your torso. Lateral pull-downs, pull-ups and most back pulling workouts are examples of this category.

Workouts for Elbow Flexion

Flexing the elbow is an important upper body workout and it involves moving a weight towards your torso by flexing your elbows. Examples of such workouts include bicep curling such as barbell or dumbbell curling workouts.

Workouts for Elbow Extension

Elbow extension workouts include all weight training exercises that require you to move a weight away from the torso region by extending your elbows. You perform such workouts when you do cable press downs, laying barbell extension or other triceps extension exercises.

To read more about the importance of muscle balance when working out your upper body.