Building your Shoulders, safely

It's actually quite easy to hurt your shoulders since its the smallest muscle on your body. When training shoulders a lot of guys get tempted to lift heavy weights because they want a strong rounded broad shoulders, but thats not an easy task. By overtraining your muscle and pressing hard can lead a long term painful shoulder injury, so you guys better watch out and take it easy on the shoulder workouts! try to do the weights you are able to do and then increase it once you find yourself lifting the weight more than 6 reps easily. Also, take into consideration of all the other shoulder exercises you guys did during the week. If you're shoulders feel sore then try to limit your workouts and weights because you can injure them easily. Remember to ALWAYS stretch before you start working out because believe it or not, stretching for 10 mins before every workout helps in preventing your muscles to get injured and you won't feel the muscles stiffness. Now that I discussed to always stay aware of the risks shoulder workouts might bring, I'm going to mention a few a workouts that you guys can do for building a stronger, rounder and broader shoulders.

This exercise is called Bent Over Low Pulley Side Lateral,  it focuses on your rear deltoids, which is the back shoulder muscles. To perform this workout, get a cable and hook it to the rope or find a cable pulley machine. Contract your glutes and keep your spine in a neutral position and then stand with your knees slightly bent and your upper body bent parallel to the floor. Do a lateral raise by lifting the cable up and out to the side.

This workout is called Reverse Flyes With External Rotations. To do this workout, you need to put the incline bench in 60 degree position and then grab a pair of light dumbbells because this exercise is difficult to preform with heavy weights. After you've done that, lie your chest down on the incline bench so it can act as a support to lift the weights. With your chest supporting you, raise the dumbbells up and out to the sides.

The name of this workout is Standing Low Pulley Deltoids Raise, this exercise focuses on your side deltoids. To preform this workout,  stand up with your left side facing a low pulley with a single handle held with your right hand and always keep your back straight and your head up otherwise you won't get the real effect of the exercise. Raise the pulley with the elbows a bit bent, keep your arm straight, lock your elbows when you bend them a little. When your arm is above parallel to your right shoulder, lower to the starting position but slowly. 

Personally, this is my favorite exercise to start with because it targets the whole shoulder muscle, so its a great workout to start with. Start with a weight you can do 8-10 reps and increase your weight by every set, which is a total of 5 sets. The more you increase your weights the less reps you do. To do this workout, you need to find yourself a chair as shown in the picture or a bench and sit on it with your back fully supported on the chair. Hold the dumbbells at shoulder height with the palms facing forward and once you lift the dumbbells only go half way up to keep the tension on your shoulders making the workout  harder and more effective. 

I like to finish up my shoulder workout with this exercise, its called Dumbbell Shrugs, it focuses on your Traps. To perform this workout, stand with your feet a bit greater than shoulder width apart and arms to your sides. Hold dumbbells at thigh level and shrug the shoulders straight up. DONT roll your shoulders because you might end up hurting your traps and we don't want that, so just shrug them up and down. You can also do this workout with a barbell or the smith machine. 

Problems With Getting A Bigger Back?

Have you ever wondered why you're back isn't getting bigger since you've been working it out and is considered a large muscle group? well, today i will be discussing a little bit about Back muscles , afterwards i will be following it up with a few of the exercises I think are useful. They certainly we're useful to me because the more I did those exercises the more my back started to shape up. If you haven't been getting a bigger Back then you need to rethink your training techniques. Whether the workout you're performing is done correctly or not. Im going to explain a little about the Back muscle groups, it consists of two major muscles, the Latissimus Dorsi and your Mid Back, which is connected to your Trapezuis. The Latissimus Dorsi's mission is to move the arms down to the sides and bring the body towards the arm when the arm is fixed.

Here are 5 workouts that will definitely help out if performed correctly:

The most important thing to focus on in this workout is to squeeze the muscle when you pull down the bar. To perform this exercise, you need to pull the bar down and hold it at your chest and pull from your elbows to hold it down and remember, SQUEEZE!

Deadlifts is probably one of the most important exercises. It targets almost every muscle group in your body. To perform this workout, grip the bar where its leveled with your shoulder widths. With your feet about hip width level, take a step back and take deep breath and then lower your hips and bend your knees until it touches the bar. After the bar passes your knees pull the bar back and go back to the starting position.

Bent Over Barbell Row is one of my favorite exercises, it targets the middle back and its also pretty difficult to lift a lot of weights on this workouts, so keep it light! but not too light. To do this workout properly, hold the barbell with your palms facing down, bend your knees a little bit and lean your body forward. Maintain that position and pull the bar to your mid section and remember to always keep your head up, otherwise you won't get the proper effect of the exercise.

Seated Cable Rows is a good workout to follow up after Bent over Barbell Row because it targets the same muscle. The objective is to give a bigger shock to the middle back which allows the muscle to grow. To perform this workout, you'll need to use a V-bar and a low row machine. Once you get that, hold the V-bar with your arms extended and pull back until your body is at 90 degree and remember to bend your back a little bit. By doing that your chest is going to be sticking out. Keep this in mind, if your chest isn't sticking out then you're doing the exercise improperly. 

Since we're done focusing on exercises targeting the middle back muscle, now we go back to focusing on lats again. The V-bar Pulldowns is a good exercise to end your workout with because it targets the whole lats muscle group. To do this exercise correctly, sit down on chair and put your knees under the pad and get into a comfortable position. Grab the V-bar, stick your chest out and lean

 your back a little bit. That will be your starting point. Once your in that position, pull down the bar as you squeeze on your lats. and keep pulling until the V-bar hits your chest, then rest for 45 mins and go back to your starting position.

Mass For Triceps

Previous Thursday I discussed how to get a bigger and more curled biceps. Today, I will be talking about how to get the perfect triceps. A lot of guys always complain "why aren't my arms getting bigger or why they're not big enough?". Even though triceps is one of the most important muscle group for bigger arms, it's relatively forgotten when looking to build massive arms. Too many people want massive biceps, but in reality the biceps are a smaller muscle group compared to triceps. The muscle that makes your arms look big are the triceps not biceps. There are many things you can use to build that mass you're looking for, such as, dumbbells, cables, barbells, and even your own weight by doing pushups that target your triceps. Some people will find out that the workout isn't always effective or just don't feel that pump in your triceps. The best thing you can do in any situation like this is to try out as many exercises as you can and see what specifically works for you. I'm going to elaborate a little more on triceps now. Triceps has three heads, the lateral head, which is located on the outward facing side of the humerus. The second one is the medial head, which is located towards the midline of the body. The third head is the long head, it goes along the bottom side of the humerus and is the largest of the three heads.

Here, I'm going to mention the 4 main tricep exercises for mass. Pulley Pushdowns is good to start with because the basic movement stresses the entire triceps muscle group, especially the outer and medial heads. Grab the bar with your index fingers no more than 3-5 inches apart in the middle of the handle. Fully bend your arms, pressing your upper arms against your sides, where they should stay through the duration of the set. Move your forearms down, and slowly straighten your arms. Hold the straight arm position for one second, while flexing your triceps intensely and the slowly return to the starting point.

Lying Barbell Triceps Extensions is a good workout to follow up, it's an exercise that has an intense stress on the triceps, particularly the medial and outer heads. To perform this workout you need to lie on your back on an exercise bench, while keeping your feet on the sides to provide balance. Extend your arms straight up above your head, bend your elbows allowing the barbell to travel downward until it slightly touches your forehead. Reverse the direction of the movement of the bar using only triceps strength to slowly straighten your arms.

The third exercise is the One-Dumbbell Triceps Extension, this workout focuses on the entire triceps muscle group, especially the inner and medial heads. Grab a dumbbell with your palm facing the inner-top plate and the dumbbell hanging straight down. To keep the weight from slipping, put your thumbs around the dumbbell handle for a better grip. Lift the dumbbell straight up above your head and lower the weight slowly behind your head until your arms are fully bent, then slowly raise the dumbbell back to the start position.

Lastly, standing Barbell Triceps Extension, this exercise concentrates on stressing the inner and medial heads of the triceps. Take a narrow overripe in the middle of a weighted barbell of your choice. With feet about shoulder width apart, extend your arms straight up from your shoulders. Keep your upper arms in the same position, while you lower the weight slowly behind your head until your arms are completely bent and then slowly raise the bar back to the starting position.

Remember, if you find these workouts not effective you can always find alternative workouts that are effective to you and enjoyable. 

Tips to bigger biceps

Last Thursday, I talked about tips and ways to get better chest mass. Today I will be discussing the best exercises for bigger biceps. Now, I know many people, especially guys workout their biceps more than twice a week because having bigger and stronger arms feel good but here's a word of advice, never overtrain your biceps. Overtraining your biceps will not only hurt it but also it won't grow any bigger. Therefore, given that biceps is one of the smaller muscle groups, it's wise to limit the training sessions to no more than twice per week. There's a major misunderstanding in bodybuilding is that biceps shape can be specifically trained for. I've had a lot of people at the gym ask me how i did get my biceps to be really curled and what workouts did I do in order to get it in that shape. I'm answering this questions for everyone out there, unfortunately there are no workouts for shape. Shape is determined by genetics depending on ones genes. Now that i got that out of the way, i suggest train for size with basic movements and stay away from the idea of shaping workouts. By training biceps on their own is a great idea because it will make the person focus in the exercise more with maximal intensity, and it will allow a faster recovery time since the workouts will be shorter.

Here I'm going to mention my favorite workouts for bigger biceps. First is my personal favorite exercise, Barbell Curls, to perform this workout get a weight that you're able to lift, hold the bar with a shoulder-width grip, with arms straight towards the floor and elbows to the sides, lift the bar all the way to your chest, as you lower the weight do it slowly for resistance.

Second, One-Arm Dumbbell Preacher Curl, this workout focuses the stress on the peak which is the bicep. To perform this workout, use a regular preacher bench, hold dumbbell with an underhand grip while closing your elbows in, allowing your arm to be extended on the bench, slowly curl the dumbbell trying to touch the shoulder of the arm being worked out.

Another good exercise in my opinion is the Incline Dumbbell Curls. I honestly believe this is one of the hardest exercises i've ever performed. It allows you to achieve a full range of motion while getting a full stretch on the biceps. Get less weight on this exercise because it's pretty difficult to get a good pump if you're not preforming the workout correctly. The way to do this workout is to lye down on an incline bench, hold two dumbbells with arms extended down and back, curl the dumbbells up and out with both and slowly keep doing that and you will feel the pump for sure!

Last but not least, Hammer Curls will help in developing your brachial, that's the muscle located on the side of your bicep. This muscle helps in the size of the biceps area making your arms look bigger. Performing this exercise is pretty simple, get two dumbbells and put your elbows to the side of the body, have your palms face each other and curl the dumbbells up the sane way you would do for a regular dumbbells curl.