Posted on December 06, 2017 by Jenny Cromack
There is absolutely nothing wrong with smashing a good upper body muscle building workout. We know the ‘don’t skip leg day joke’ but there are lots of reasons for doing an upper body focused training session.
Reasons For…
– It could simply be part of an upper and lower body split programme.
– 50% of strength comes from muscles cross-sectional area (CSA) so can be used for improving upper body strength.
– May helping wrapping and opening all those present over Christmas.
– Injury of the lower extremity
– Not going to lie, I sometimes use an upper body session for slight vanity reasons -but shhhh!! (looking strong is important for job, or at least that is what I keep telling myself).
– Sport specific training
– Improving athlete/client robustness.
Any many more…
This upper body muscle building workout is a hypertrophy workout, let me remind you of the keys to any hypertrophy workout:
– Between 4 – 8 different exercises (18 -24 sets is a good marker)
– Reps between 8-12
– No more than 90s rest between exercises.
– 67.5%-85% of 1 Rep maximum.
– Compound movement pattern and isolation exercises.
The Workout
The workout itself shouldn’t take more than 45-60minutes. It will be tough, but hopefully will get your working to a high intensity so you will get a metabolic effect as well – burning calories and increasing muscle mass. What more would you want from a workout!?
To get warm-up follow the RAMP protocol as per my blog here. As this workout is focused on the upper body make sure your shoulders and spine (specifically thoracic and lumbar regions) are activated and mobilised.
The exercises are performed as supersets so perform exercises 1 & 2 from the pair back to back.
A1) DB Bench Press × 12 × 4
A2) Chins / Lat pull down × 12 × 4
B1) SA DB Row × 12 × 3
B2) Military press (barbell) × 12 × 3
C1) TRX Row × 12 × 4
C2) Press-up (loaded if necessary) × 12 × 4
D1) Tricep dips (from bench if necessary) × 12 × 3
D2) TRX bicep curls × 12 × 3
This upper body muscle building workout should be enough to get your upper body feeling full of lactic acid and burning like crazy!