If you are new to your local gym you may have noticed that most people tend to focus on training their upper body.
Having bulging biceps and pecs is no easy feat and you are more than likely to spend a tremendous amount of time lifting weights. But it is one thing to spend time lifting weights to improve your upper body and it is another thing doing the right workouts and/or engaging in upper-body training with proper form to prevent and/or minimise the risk of injuries.
If you are one of those gym newbies that is unsure of how to proceed with the right upper-body training routine to build a bigger, stronger, and more aesthetic looking upper body without wasting your time engaging in the wrong upper-body workout and/or performing lifts with poor form, then you are in the right place, as you simply have to follow this seven (7) step structured program to optimise your workouts and gain impressive results.
Step #1. Start with Compound Exercises
You should start your workout sessions by first engaging in compound exercises. These are basically movements that task multiple muscle groups and joints. Common compound exercises that you can adopt today include pull-ups, rows, overhead presses, and bench presses.
Whenever you perform compound lifts, you tend to recruit multiple muscle fibers to produce a great number of neural and hormonal stimuli for improved muscle strength and growth.
For a more balanced workout session, you should pair compound exercises that put significant tension on your body with opposing movement patterns.
We break down these opposing movement patterns into two primary pushes and pulls, namely; a horizontal push and pull and a vertical push and pull.
For your horizontal push you can perform push-ups and bench presses while the chest-supported row and a barbell row are perfect horizontal pull compound movements.
An overhead press is a great vertical push compound movement while lat pulldown and pull-up exercises are perfect vertical pull compound exercises you can try out.
By performing these pull and push compound exercises, you will significantly minimise the imbalance responsible for improper form, poor posture, and the resultant stress, strain, pain, and injury that may occur during your training sessions.
Step #2: Proceed to Progressive Overload
If you want to promote muscle growth, you will need to take progressive overload seriously. For most people that hear progressive overload, the first and possibly the only thing that comes to mind is increased weights.
The truth is, increasing your weights periodically is just a part of progressive overload. You can also stimulate muscle growth by increasing your sets, reps, having shorter rest times, improving your range of motion, and even altering your lifting tempo with slower eccentricities.
Whenever you run a training session, you should endeavour to keep track of your weights, sets, reps, and/or tempo. This way you will be able to decide on where to implement a progressive overload. Aim for small weekly progressive overload on any of the parameters that you decide to track during your sessions for visible gains.
Step #3: Focus on Quality over Quantity (Accessory Volume)
Once you are done with your compound movements, for each major muscle group you should aim at selecting 1 or 2 accessory movements.
For example,
For your chest muscles you can perform controlled and slow dumbbell or cable flyes and/or incline/decline bench presses while for your arms you can execute triceps dips and extensions, and/or controlled curls.
To train your back muscles, you can perform straight-arm pulldowns, face pulls, and/or single-arm rows while for your shoulder muscles, you can try out band pull-aparts, rear-delt flyes, and/or lateral raises.
Try to maintain a weekly volume of between 8 and 12 hard sets for each muscle group if you are a beginner. But if you are an intermediate level gym-goer then you can aim for a greater number of weekly hard sets for each muscle group. Make sure your focus is on performing quality reps towards the end of a range of motion in order to stimulate muscle growth.
Step #4: Improve Scapular Control and Shoulder Health
If you experience occasional or frequent shoulder pain, it may mean that your scapular stabilizers are weak. In order to enhance your scapular control and improve your shoulder health by strengthening your mid-back and rotator cuff, you need to include workouts like face pulls, banded external rotations, and scapular wall slides to your workout session preferably as a part of your warm-up and finisher routines.
Step #5: Maintain an Ideal Upper-body Training Session Frequency and Recovery
An upper-body strength training session for 2 to 3 times a week is generally deemed to be the most ideal routine for most people. It is also great to split your workout sessions with push/pull splits or full upper-body sessions. When training a particular muscle group, try to maintain a 48 hour break between your heavy sessions and make sure you take your recovery seriously by eating enough protein, staying hydrated at all times, and getting sufficient rest and sleep to recover properly.
Step #6: Examples of Upper-body Training Routines
For Beginners:
As a beginner aim to perform upper-body training for two (2) times per week. Have a full upper-body training session that focuses on a single compound pull and a single compound press with three (3) accessory movements.
For Intermediate:
Intermediate gym-goers can aim for upper-body sessions three (3) times per week performing a mix of push, pull, upper hybrid training with emphasis on heavy lifts, volume lifts, speed, and technique.
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Step #7: Mindset and Nutrition
Before you start your upper-body training sessions you need to get your mindset right. As mentioned before, you have to track your progress by way of performance with increased reps, and stronger lifts being clear indicators of growth. You have to stay disciplined and be consistent with your workout, recovery and nutrition. Speaking of nutrition, you need a calorie surplus to build muscle mass (if this is your goal). So, try to aim for between 1.6 and 2.2 g of protein per kg of bodyweight. The old saying of “you are what you eat” is true, especially when you are trying to build muscle. To this end, make sure you DO NOT compromise on your diet and nutrition.
On a final note, you should know that having a well-defined and strong upper-body is achieved when you perform the right workout in the right order. Therefore, whenever you plan to perform an upper-body session, you should prioritize compound lifts, and balance push/pull while including focused accessory movements.
Always aim to protect your shoulders from injury and don’t forget that consistent progressive overload will help stimulate muscle hypertrophy. Ultimately, you should train smart, eat well, recover properly and you will witness impressive upper-body gains.
