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Have you ever done a heavy set of bicep curls and noticed a nagging pain in your wrists when you’re done? Maybe you’ve even felt enough pain that you’ve had to cut your workout short.

This pain can affect some people more than others. The good news is that just like anything else, your bones and cartilage can grow stronger with time as they respond to resistance.

Causes

You may have noticed that doing bicep curls using a straight bar or dumbbells will especially give you some wrist pain. We’ll get to how to reduce this pain in just a moment, but first, let’s understand what’s leading to it.

There are two major factors of bicep curls that affect your wrist pain; the first is the angle of your wrists, and the second factor is the torque force on your wrists.

1. Your wrist angle – In order to help you understand why the angle of your wrist is part of the equation, I’d like you to think about one of those karate guys who breaks a stack of wooden boards or bricks. Think about what you would do if you were trying to break a few boards with your bare hands. How would you stack the boards to make them break most easily?

Well, obviously, you would lay to boards down flat, one on top of the other, and then you would strike the flat face of the board. Now, imagine what would happen if you stood the boards on their sides and then you hit the side of them. Chances are, you would have a broken hand and no broken boards.

I hope this is making sense to you.

Your wrists are similar to the board. When the force is placed on the flat inside of your wrists (as it is in a straight bar bicep curl with the palms facing up), your wrist feels more pain. When you point your thumbs towards the ceiling, as you would with hammer curls, the force is placed on the stronger side of your wrist.

That is why the EZ curl bar was invented, to reduce the pain on your wrists. It places your wrists at an angle where the palms aren’t facing straight up. Unfortunately, although the straight bar causes more wrist pain, the straight bar is also better for your biceps.

If you are feeling wrist pain, use the EZ curl bar for a while and ease up on the weight a little bit. Once your wrists have healed up, we’ll use a simple hack to make the straight bar easier on your wrists.

2. Reduce the torque on your wrists – Once you’re ready to begin using the straight bar or dumbbells again, you can use this simple tweak to your form to reduce the torque on your wrists.

It’s pretty simple, really. All you have to do is curl your wrists so that the bar you are holding in your hand is nearly directly over your wrist.

This works because your wrist is basically a hinge. More force is placed on that hinge when it has to move a weight that is further away from the hinge. Think of the concept of leverage… if you want to lift up a heavy rock using your body weight and a long stick, the longer the stick is, the more leverage you will have to help you lift the rock up.

Or maybe think of when you’re working on a car to loosen a tight bolt. If you use a very short wrench, you might have a pretty tough time getting that bolt loose. But, if you use a very long wrench, you’ll have a much easier time getting the bolt loose because you have more force.

Ok, now that you understand that placing the force (weight) further away increases the torque, you can understand why I am telling you to curl your wrists toward you. By curling your wrists in, you bring the weight closer to the wrist and the decreased force of the weight in your hands results in less torque or pressure on your wrists.

For me, I have approximately 3 inches if distance between my wrist and the weight in my hands. When I curl my wrists in, that distance becomes a little less than an inch, resulting in significantly less torque on my wrists.

As an added benefit, this flexes your forearms more, keeps them tight throughout the movement, and gives them a bit better workout.

But doesn’t all of this make curls easier?

Yes, curling your wrists in makes your curls easier to do. It reduces the force on your wrists, and it also shortens the overall length of your arm, making the curls easier on your muscles.

This is pretty easy to compensate for, though. Just add a little more weight to your exercise.

Now, since I can read your mind, I know what you are probably thinking. If I curl my wrists in to reduce the pressure on my wrists, then adding more weight will just put the pressure back on my wrists… right?

Well, the answer is yes, it does put some pressure back on your wrists, but not as much as you had to begin with. You see, you are able to lift more weight because your entire arm has been shortened maybe 10-15% (or somewhere close to that). So this will make the curls easier.

But the distance to your wrists has been reduced maybe somewhere around 60-70%. That means that your wrists are getting proportionately a much greater reduction in torque pressure than your arm as a whole gets.

Conclusion: Your wrists, just like anything else can become stronger through resistance training. The wrists need rest to heal, and using these small changes to your form can make a big difference in the amount of wrist pain that you’re feeling.

The bench press is one of the best exercises we have for training the chest muscles and triceps. We use the bench press because we can easily add weight to the bar or grab a heavier dumbbell for increased resistance. Probably the biggest drawback to the bench press, however, is that only your arms are moving.

Technically (and I hate getting too technical), pushups are a better movement in terms of total body mass trained. But you already know that trying to increase the resistance on pushups can be a real pain. And let’s be honest, even if pushups are better than nothing when you’re out of town, doing a few sets of 30 pushups won’t have the same mass-building effect as heavy benches will.

The dip

The weighted dip is an excellent movement because it allows for the training of the chest and triceps together in a way that uses a greater mass of muscle from more muscle groups. You’ll notice that you should be able to dip more weight than you are able to bench press for a given number of reps. That should indicate that more muscles are working together to move your body through the full range of motion.

Dips place greatest stress on your “lower chest” and triceps. When I say “lower chest” I’m not referring to the mythical lower pectoral muscle that doesn’t exist, but rather meaning that the upper chest is less involved in this movement for some pretty obvious reasons if you think about how the exercise is performed.

Also, don’t confuse the dips as being a variation of the decline press. The decline press has a decreased range of motion when compared to dips, and dips are generally a superior exercise when compared to the decline press.

When it compares to the bench press, however, dips can really make a great addition chest/triceps routine, and they make a decent replacement for the bench press if you’re not able to bench press for whatever reason.

Proper execution

The first thing you’ll probably notice when you come up to a dipping station is that the grip bars are not parallel to each other, but increase in distance the farther away they are from the base. This is so that you can choose a grip width that suits you best.

• Grip width: In general, a wider grip will place somewhat more emphasis on your chest muscles. A narrower grip will hit your triceps somewhat more.
• Leaning: You can adjust your form slightly depending on how much you bend your knees. Bending your knees more places the weight of your feet further behind your body and requires you to lean forward to compensate. Leaning forward involves the chest muscles in the movement more. On the flip side, keeping your legs straight below you and keeping your body more upright will use less chest muscle and involve the triceps more.
• Recommended form: The form that I recommend the most is to take a grip that’s slightly wider than shoulder width (don’t go too crazy here) with the knees bent. This forward lean involves the larger chest muscles and allows you to get more reps with a heavier weight. Working more muscles overall means building more muscles overall.

Range of motion: All the way. Go down as far down as you can comfortably and safely go. Increasing the range of motion on your dips will increase the amount of muscles fibers that are recruited to complete the movement. Your chest muscles are more heavily involved in the bottom portion of the movement, and so are your shoulders to a certain extent.

So, in this way, doing full dips is important for the same reason that doing full squats is important. They simply work more muscles mass. And as you know by now, working more muscle mass means building more muscle mass (yes, I’m repeating myself on purpose here).

Adding weight

Ok, so we already established earlier that pushups are technically a great movement but that they don’t always get the job done for us because it’s tough to add weight. Well, that’s the nice thing about dips… adding weight is easy with the right equipment.

A special weight belt with a chain that attaches in front is all that is needed. You can buy your own and some gyms will have one available. Simply use the chain to secure a weight plate or a dumbbell in front you and proceed to do your dips as usual. Apply the same principles of resistance progression just as you would to any other exercise by adding weight to your dips once you’re able to do full sets at body weight.

Also, be careful when setting up the weight in front of you. The weight belt sits on your hips and the chain runs downward in front of you, and it comes close to a very sensitive area for guys. I’d hate to hear about any of you getting something important caught in the chains, if you know what I mean…

Getting a good warm up before you attempt any heavy lifting is an absolute necessity. The purpose of a warm up should be pretty obvious from its name. You need to get your body warm and the blood pumping before you start lifting heavy.

Another fact that should be pretty obvious is that your ability to get your body warm will depend on the temperature the place you’re exercising in. If it’s winter time, a cool evening, or if you life in a cold place, then your body will probably require more warm up than it would on a hot summer afternoon.

Why warm up:

Why you need to warm up is a matter of safety. Just to help you visualize what’s going on, I’d like you to think about a rubber band. This will represent your muscles and other tissues. What happens if you stretch a rubber band that has been sitting in the freezer?

The rubber band probably snaps before you are able to stretch it very far. A warm rubber band, on the other hand, can probably be stretched a long ways before it breaks. This is what rubber bands were designed to do, after all. They are designed to stretch, but they can’t do that job very well cold.

The same is true for your muscles. They can’t do their job nearly as well when they are cold, and starting out with a heavy weight before your muscles are nice and warm can lead to injury and muscle tears. Trust me, you don’t want to be like that rubber band that snaps when it’s cold.

Warm ups are even more important for the bigger exercises such as the squat, deadlift, and the bench press. These will require a more extensive warm up, while other exercises will likely only need a a set or two with a light weight to get warmed up.

How to warm up

1. Clothing: Let’s start off with the right clothing. Wearing a sweater or workout pants is a good idea in cold weather until you’re able to raise you body temperature. Consider wearing several small layers instead of one heavy layer. Smaller layers can be peeled off one at a time until your body temperature is high enough.

2. Do static stretches at the end: In case you don’t know what this means, static stretches are those done without movement. The traditional stretches that you are familiar with are probably mostly all static stretches, such as touching your toes.

Static stretches have not been shown to do anything to help prevent injuries when you lift. In fact, many believe that static stretches increase the number of injuries you have when you lift weights. This may be because weight lifting requires you to keep your muscles tight, and loose muscles holding heavy weights can sometimes move beyond their normal range of motion.

Again, think of the rubber band analogy. The best time to stretch your muscles is when they are already nice and warm after you are finished lifting weights. Take a few minutes at the end of your workout to do your static stretches and lengthen your tightened muscles back out.

3. General warm up: Do some running for five minutes just to warm up your body temperature. You can really pick which type of activity you’d like to do to get your temperature up. Five minutes on the treadmill works fine, so does 5 minutes on an exercise bike. Doing a set or two of fairly light weight squats will also warm up your body very quickly.

4. Dynamic warm ups: The word static means staying still, and dynamic basically means with movement, or motion. Do dynamic warmups and stretches before your workout instead of static stretches. You can check out a decent list of dynamic warm ups here. You don’t have to do all of these, but a few leg kicks, butt kicks, and maybe some high knees should be done before squats/deadlifts at the very least.

If you don’t want to look silly by marching around the gym doing your leg kicks, go ahead and hold onto something and just do one leg at a time as you swing your leg in front of you for 10-15 reps or more. If you’re ever in doubt about your warm ups, make the mistake of doing too much warm up instead of too little.

5. Exercise-specific warm ups: You will need to do 1-2 sets or more of warm ups specific to the muscle group you are about to start working. For example, if you’re going to do the bench press, you might start off with a light warm up set (or more) of 12 reps. Choose a weight that is light enough that you can easily get 12 reps.

Pyramid sets: The idea behind pyramid sets is that you start with a lighter weight doing more reps. Maybe you start with 12 reps on the first set. The second set uses a heavier weight for 10 reps, the next 8 reps, and then 6.

Pyramid rep schemes work best for compound movements like the bench press. They don’t work quite as well for single-joint movements like bicep curls. The point here is that pyramid sets help you to ease into a heavy weight more safely.

That doesn’t mean you have to use them all the time for every single workout you ever do, as sets across (the same number of reps on each set) are useful as well, but pyramid reps are good to keep in mind.

Stretching between sets: There is some disagreement out there as to whether this is helpful or not. If you feel like your muscle is getting a little bit too tight after a heavy set and you’d like to loosen it out a little bit, I see nothing wrong with doing a light stretch for a moment between sets. Others may disagree with me on that, but just don’t go crazy with a deep stretch between sets, and you should be just fine.

We’ve talked before about how lifting more weight isn’t always the best for creating more muscle mass. You could always go a little heavier on your set and do less reps… train more like a powerlifter to get more weight up.

Here at World Fitness Network, our number one goal is not to put as much weight on the bar as possible, but to build muscle and lose fat. But gaaawsh, it still feels pretty great to put that bigger plate on the bar and hammer out a set with a little more weight. Being able to put more weight on the bar is also great feedback that you are making progress with your training.

Unfortunately, sometimes that great ego trip comes with a price on our training. If you’re not careful, that extra ten pounds on the bar can often come at the expense of your form. The incline bench press is one exercise where it happens all the time.

Excessive Arching

The benefit of doing the incline bench press is that it places stress on the upper chest muscles and helps to give you a more round, full look. Great for how your chest looks under a T-shirt.

In order to effectively hit your upper chest muscles, the incline bench press is best when set to an angle of somewhere between 30-45 degrees or only slightly higher. You can experiment with slightly different angles to see which one you feel is best for your upper chest.

The problem comes when you start trying to put up more weight than you can do with good form. You can’t get the weight up, so you start to take other measures to press that extra weight. The most common mistake is to arch your back more than you should and lift your hips up from the bench.

What this does: When you begin lifting your hips up on the incline press, you essentially bend your lower back and your shoulders move a bit lower down on the bench. This changes the angle of your chest.

Your chest begins to level out and is no longer at the same angle as when you started. Arching your back places your chest so that it is at a flatter angle, similar to the flat bench press. The stress is taken off your upper chest, but of course, the flatter angle allows you to press more weight.

Now, this defeats the purpose of doing the incline bench press in the first place. If you’re going to do the flat bench press, do it on the flat bench that gives you more stability.

Chest up:

Anytime you do any sort of bench press movement, you should always pull your chest up. This gives you greater leverage to press and allows for a more complete range of motion.

• How to do it: Pulling your chest up is accomplished by pulling your shoulder blades together and keeping them tight. This will also help to reduce your nagging shoulder injuries.
• How not to do it: Arching your lower back is not the way to pull your chest up.
• How much arch: To know how much arch your back should have, stand up straight, pull your chest up with the shoulder blades back. Your back should have a slight natural arch. This is the same amount of arch you should use when bench pressing.

Now, I know just as well as you do that all of these ideas sound really great until you get underneath a heavy bar to do a heavy set on the incline, and then your back suddenly starts arching to get the weight up at the end of a set.

I know. It happens. But there are a few things that you can be doing that will help you to eliminate that arch when your form would otherwise start breaking down.

1. Use the foot stand in front of you: Many of the incline barbell bench presses will have a foot stand in front of the bench that you can put your feet on. When doing the flat bench press, you are always best to have your feet flat on the ground, but the incline bench press is slightly different.

Elevating your feet slightly makes arching your back more difficult. Placing your feet on the ground below you will increase the temptation to push off the ground, raise your hips up, and arch the lower back. Take the widest stance that the foot stand will allow. Of course, this might not work well for people of every size, but it can help for many people.

2. Keep adjustable benches at a 90 degree angle: If you’re doing the dumbbell incline press, chances are that you will be on a bench that has an adjustable angle. Some benches can be adjusted to be either a flat bench or an incline bench.

On these benches, you can adjust the angle of the back support and the seat portion. Set the seat portion and the back support to about a 90 degree angle. This will help to keep your hips from traveling forward. If you use the incline without adjusting the seat (leaving it flat), it is very difficult to keep your hips in place on the bench.

3. Tighten your abs: Your abs function opposite of an arching lower back. Keeping the abs tight keeps the rib cage in place and helps to prevent hyperextension of the lower back. Also, tighten up the posterior chain, including the spinal erectors, glutes, and hamstrings.

4. Get a spotter: A good spotter will help you to keep good form throughout the entire movement. Instead of having to throw your lower back out of whack, a spotter can lift just enough of the weight for you to help you crank out those final reps so that you don’t have to look like a monkey to get the weight up.

Have you ever seen those different curling bars at the gym and wondered what they were good for? Yeah, you know what I’m talking about, one of the bars is straight and one of them has several angled grips, called the EZ Curl bar.

So which of these should you be using? Well, each of the bars has its own advantages. Let’s take a look at the biceps muscle group to understand what the advantages are.

Attachments:

Your biceps muscle group, as the name implies, is composed of muscles with two separate heads, or bundles of muscle. Your biceps attach to your scapula around your shoulders, run down your upper arm, and then attach to something called the radial tuberosity near your elbow.

The radial tuberosity is a bone that can rotate. That means that your biceps not only work to bend your arm at the elbow, but your biceps also work to supinate your forearm.

Supination: When we’re talking about the biceps, supination means moving your forearm so that your palm is facing you.

Pronation: The pronated position points your palms away from you.

Take a look at the picture on the left and notice where the bottom of your biceps attaches to your forearm. Your biceps attach to the portion of your forearm that is on top when your palms are facing up, in the fully supinated position.

That means that when your biceps are fully supinated with the palms facing you, your biceps are able to be involved most fully in your workout.

To get a feel for how this works, bend your elbow so that your forearm and upper arm form a 90 degree angle. Point your palm away from you and flex your bicep muscles. Then place your other hand on your bicep so you can feel it flexing.

Now, starting with your palm facing away from you, slowly rotate your palm until it is in the fully supinated position and facing you. As you rotated your palm toward you, you should have felt your biceps becoming increasingly more tense throughout the movement.

Ok, I think you get it now. Facing your palms all the way toward you is the best position for fully involving your biceps and getting the most out of your arm workouts. It allows you biceps to fully contract at the peak of each movement.

Positioning:

The standard position for bicep curls is about shoulder width. Let your arms hang down directly to either side. With your hands at that width, take the bar directly in front of you and begin your set.

Wrist pain:

The straight bar isn’t going to get a perfect review here… it does have certain drawbacks. Doing bicep curls with a straight bar is much more tough on your wrists. Beginners especially will notice pain in the wrists after doing a few sets.

If you are feeling wrist pain, go ahead and use the EZ curl bar for the rest of your workout. The EZ curl bar was specifically designed to be easier on your wrists, but as we discussed before, it’s not as effective for bicep training as the straight bar or dumbbells.

Don’t baby yourself though. Your bones can become stronger just like your muscles, but only if you use them. The wrist pain you’re feeling with the straight bar will lessen over time.

Don’t just ignore the pain and work through it either. That pain in your bones is your body trying to tell you something. Switch to the other EZ curl bar for the rest of your workout if it starts to hurt, and slowly continue to transition to the straight bar as your wrists become stronger.

We’ll talk more about wrist pain and using dumbbells for curls another day. Also, keep in mind that the discussion here applies to the biceps only… the EZ curl can actually be quite useful for your tricep workouts.

Image Credit: roguefitnessphotos

The overhead press is one of the most basic movements available for working the upper body. It’s so good, in fact, that it is touted by many to be the most useful movement for working your upper body.

Overhead presses place primary stress on the anterior deltoids (front shoulder muscles), the medial deltoids (middle shoulder), and the triceps. Secondary stress is also placed on the upper chest, the stabilizing abs and lower back, and the upper back muscles involved in the rotational movement of the scapulae.

This exercise is very efficient for building overall body mass simply because of the shear number of muscles groups involved in the movement. Any well designed training program should include an overhead pressing movement, and the overhead press is a premier movement to strengthen your shoulders and upper body.

Set-Up:

• Get in position: Take a firm grip on an Olympic bar and clean the bar up to your shoulders.
• Grip width: Your hands should grip so that your index finger is placed at approximately one inch wider than the nearest part of your shoulder. The width may be just slightly more or less depending on your size.
• Elbows up: Start with your elbows up high enough that your arms and shoulders are in the correct position to press the weight upward. Your elbows should begin more forward than the bar.
• Start on the shoulders: Bar begins on the shoulders with your chest up.
• Deep breath: Take a deep breath to fill up your lungs before you lift. This will help to increase the abdominal pressure.

Once you’re in place and all set to go, begin to press the bar upward with the following in mind:

1. Directly upward: Press the bar upward in a nearly straight line from your shoulders. This will mean that the bar should pass very close to your nose on the way up.

2. Stay centered: As the bar presses upward, keep your center of gravity over the middle of your feet. This means you will start the movement leaning back slightly as the bar is pressed upward and clears your forehead.

3. Move under the bar: As soon as the bar clears your forehead, begin to move your body forward under the bar. Again, the bar is traveling directly upward, and your body must move back slightly as the bar passes your face and forward again under the bar in the second part of the movement.

4. Lockout: This is completed as the triceps straighten the elbows and the trapezius muscles of your upper back pull to hold the shoulders in that position. Finish the movement with the bar directly above the back of your neck.

As always, there are a few common errors to watch out for and make sure to avoid. Proper form is key to your safety and making this into an effective exercise.

Common problems:

• Not keeping your chest up: This can cause your back to round and bend forward. Keeping your chest up will start the bar on your shoulders and give you a solid starting place for the movement.
• Elbows to your sides: Starting in this position will often place your elbows behind or directly under the bar and move your shoulders out from under the bar.
• Excessive hyperextension of the back: Some backward lean is necessary during this movement. But leaning too far back on the overhead press is unsafe for your lower back and shifts much of the stress of the movement to your chest muscles.
• Turning the movement into a push press: This means that you are using a thrust from your legs to help get the bar up. Your goal is to work your upper body in this movement, not your legs. A push press can be useful to eek out that last rep or two at the end, but you should generally do all of your exercise with good form.

Bicep curls seem like such a simple exercise, but one frequent mistake exists that often leads people to transfer the stress of this movement away from the bicep muscles and to the shoulders.

In his Encyclopedia or Modern Bodybuilding, Arnold Schwarzenegger describes that bringing the elbows forward during this movement creates a lower quality stress on the biceps and can potentially hinder their growth.

Are You Really Using Your Biceps?

Let’s take a look at a common mistake that could be holding your biceps back from having stellar growth.

For purposes of illustration, we’ll take a look at standing bicep curls using a straight bar. We begin this exercise with the bar resting just in front of the thighs.

The beginning of the motion is fairly easy. The biceps and forearms contract to bring the weight up until the arm is slightly bent.

This is the point where the exercise becomes difficult. As the elbows bend, greater stress is placed on the biceps. There is a strong temptation to move the bar upward by bringing the elbows forward in front of the body.

The problem with this method is that your shoulders are being used to push your elbows forward and raise the curl bar, while your elbows stay bent at approximately the same angle.

FYI- The more you shoulders work to move the bar upward, the less your biceps need to work through the full range of motion. Less work for your biceps means less growth for your biceps. This essentially shifts your curls from being a good bicep workout to a lame shoulder workout.

Once your shoulders have assisted you in bringing your elbows forward, your forearm is much closer to vertical and it becomes much easier for your biceps to move the weight the remaining distance to complete the contraction.

In addition, the weight of the bar is no longer being supported by your biceps at the end of the movement. Your forearms are now vertical and the weight is supported by the bones of your forearms with little assistance from the biceps. Your shoulders do most of the work to hold your arms up.

Keeping the focus

Let’s start over with the elbow in the correct position. This correct position usually begins with the elbow directly below your shoulder socket, or just slightly forward from that position.

Keep it right in that spot throughout the entire movement. Your elbow is only the hinge while your bicep is the pump that will power the weight upward.

Allow the bar to travel in a semi-circular arc until it stops in front of your chest and shoulders. Notice that the stress stays on your biceps at the top of the movement because the weight is not being supported by your forearm or shoulders. Lower the weight back down by following the same arc to the resting position.

There are always exceptions

Sometimes you may find it beneficial to use your shoulders in your bicep curls. It can be a good cheat movement to help your biceps eek out that last rep or two at the end of your workout.

The same goes for a small cheat movement with the back at the end of a set. It’s generally not considered to be good form, but can be beneficial for that last rep or two when your arms are otherwise spent.

What has your experience been?

World Fitness Network reader A.J. asked left the following comment on a recent article about squats:

I find it very hard to do a “good” squat because I can’t go down too much. I find that I can’t go down even if I’m not using any weight. I don’t know why, maybe its because of the way that I am built? Is it still okay if I do 1/2 squats?
I find that I can go lower if I have a wider stance…so should I increase my stance?

A.J. asks a great question that most people struggle with as they begin squatting. It’s a common experience to realize that squatting all the way down is difficult at first. Half squats won’t necessarily hurt you (if you do them with good form), but they won’t help as much as full squats either.

Why squat all the way:

• Full involvement: The bottom of the squatting movement is where the glute and hamstrings come into play.
• Rebound: The elasticity in the muscles and other tissues helps you to get a slight rebound in the bottom of the movement.
• Knowing your gains: If you always go all the way down, you’ll know that a 10 pound increase is due to strength gains and not from squatting less deeply.
• Look strong: You look like more of a man when you go all the way down. If you’re a girl, you look like one of those tough (but not too tough) girls that guys love.

The bottom of the squatting movement is where the glutes and hamstrings really come into play. As you lower into the bottom of the movement, those muscles will lengthen and prepare for contraction. Once at the bottom of the movement, you forcefully reverse this stretch and the posterior chain (hams, glutes, spinal erectors) contracts and shortens.

For illustration, here’s a picture of the squat movement when the thighs are parallel to the floor. The contraction can be seen as the muscles shorten on the ascent.

Translation: You work a lot more muscles by going through the full range of motion. Working more muscles means more benefit.

Becoming able to squat:

Squat Stance: The right squat stance for you is a highly individual thing. A person with long legs compared to the rest of the body will need a wider stance. A person with a longer body will probably need a narrower stance. Read this article about getting the right squat stance. Here are the standard tips:

• Foot Placement: Place your heels at about shoulder width. Note that your shoulders are wider than your hips.
• Point the toes out: About 30 degrees will work for most people.
• Knees out: Don’t let them point straight forward. Keep the knees pointed out at the angle of your feet.

Flexibility: Even with a perfect stance, lack of flexibility will keep you from getting the full range of motion on your squats. Stretching which will increase your range motion, and your range of motion will increase muscle involvement, which will then increase muscles built in the legs, which will increase the body’s ability to have more muscle overall. So get stretching.

• Stretch when your workout is over. This is the safest way and also the most effective. You’ll lengthen your muscles back out for greater volume.
• Calves: Stretch the calves so that the heels can stay flat throughout the movement.
• Hamstrings: Lie on your back and pull your knees into your chest.
• Groin Muscles: Sit on the floor. Touch the bottoms of your feet together in front of you so that your knees are pointing out on either side. Use your elbows to slowly press the knees down.
• Thighs: Lie on your left side. Grab your right ankle with your right hand and slowly pull the ankle upward behind your leg while your knee is bent and pointing away from your body. Switch sides.

Practice: Go through the squat motion without any weight and look yourself in the mirror. You can do this in the gym with an empty bar, or you can get in front of a full-length mirror with a broomstick at home.

Look at yourself at yourself from the front and the sides so that you can check your form. Go through the movement without any weight enough times that you get it down solid. This is one of the best things you can do to improve your form and truly get a feel for whether you’re squatting right.

Once your form is down, go ahead and start piling the weight on, and never accept anything less than the full range of motion. Don’t count the rep if you don’t go the full way down.

A squat done half way is a squat that’s not quite done.

Have you had the same experience before? What helped you to improve your range of motion? Share your experience with others- click here.

As with all rowing movements, seated cable rows focus mainly on working the lat muscles, as well as working the biceps, traps, and the deltoids (shoulders). When compared to bent-over barbell rows, it has some advantages and disadvantages.

Bent-over barbell rows:

• More muscles involved: This exercise involves more muscles for stabilization and is therefore a more compound movement, and it’s is more slightly more efficient for overall muscle mass. You must stand on your feet, maintain your balance, and the spinal erectors are involved in holding the body parallel.
• Good form is tough: Keeping good form for this exercise is a bit more difficult, especially for newer trainees.

Pulley Rows:

• Slightly fewer muscles involved: Not as many muscles involved as bent over rows, but this is still not an isolation movement. This is very much a YWWASWT exercise.
• Back alignment: Easier to do without swinging the upper body or pulling excessively at the hips. Keeping your back in the proper alignment throughout the movement is easier. This can be both an advantage and a disadvantage.
• Variation: Multiple attachments are available so that you can change your grip. Pointing your palms inward towards each other isn’t possible with a barbell.

The standard attachment for seated pulley rows that seems to be most popular in gyms will place your hands close together with the palms facing inward toward each other. A narrow grip isn’t necessarily bad, but the standard grip that you should use the most for rows will typically be about shoulder width. Dumbbell rows will be just about shoulder width, and barbell rows are often shoulder width or slightly wider.

A better attachment for pulley rows places the grip closer to shoulder width. This will do a couple of things:

• It places your lats into a more optimal pulling position.
• Allows for a greater range of motion.

To get a feel for this, go ahead place your fists about 2 inches apart and then touch them to your ribcage as if you were using the narrow attachment. Squeeze your lats in this position.

Notice that with the wider grip, the elbows can travel further back than with the narrow grip shown in the picture at the top of this post.

Now, with your fists in that position, rotate your elbows so that your forearms are pointing straight forward and your hands are at shoulder width. You’ll probably notice that if you didn’t move your elbows back, your hands are now further forward than they started. Pull your elbows back as far as you can in this new position.

• Your lats get a more complete range of motion and will probably feel tighter at the peak of this movement.
• You’re able to pull your shoulders blades together more, which involves the traps more.

Squeeze the lats and pull the shoulder blades together slightly.

Again, you may be able to bring your elbows back further and get a more complete range of motion with the wider grip. But since your forearms are pointing forward instead of being angled inward, your hands might not be able to come back as close to your chest as they can with the narrow grip.

Don’t get down on yourself if you switch to the wider grip and aren’t able to pull your hands in as close to your chest as you can with the narrow grip. Measure your range of motion based on your elbows and how far back they move, not on your hands.

This is tough because your hands are in front of you and tend to be the mental focus of this exercise. Try to change the focus mentally so that your mind connects to the position of your elbows, and you should pull with the lat muscles instead of with the arms only.

Remember, the elbows and the lats are the focus, and the hands will only act as hooks that connect your arms to the weight.

Think of the shoulder-width grip as the standard grip for pulley rows. The attachment that uses the narrower grip is still useful as a variation of the standard, but you should spend more time with the wider grip.

Image Credit: physicsman

Squatting is the best way you can build overall muscle mass. Period.

There are a lot of people out there who fear the squat. They think that doing the leg press machines or squats on a smith machine will somehow be safer. Using these machines is just like using any other machine in the gym.

The advantage of using a machine is that you really don’t have to know what you are doing. The machine forces you to do an exercise in a certain way and along the machine’s motion path.

While machines might be easier to use, you simply get less benefit out of them. Using free weights is the key to building your base of muscle, no matter what muscles you’re working. The bench press is better than a bench press machine, and doing real squats beats the squat machine or the leg press machine. That’s all there is to it.

Doing squats properly will work about 75% of the muscles on your body either directly or indirectly. And regardless of what others will tell you, squats are a safe exercise as long as you do them right.

In fact, squatting correctly will strengthen your knees and back muscles in a way that makes future injuries less likely. Let’s walk through the squatting movement in detail:

1. Start with the bar: Yes, just the bar. Practice for a while and get a feeling for how this movement should work. Pay special attention to your squat stance, keeping your knees out, keeping the back alignment, and going all the way to the bottom. Once you get this movement down, start adding the weight on a little bit with each set.

2. Get ready: Set up the squat power rack first. Make sure the catch bars are set low enough so that you can squat all the way down. Also be sure that the catch bars are not too low so that you can set a heavy weight down on them if you get stuck at the bottom.

You should also adjust the rack so that the bar is held at about the level of your chest. The bar should not be higher than your sternum to start out, and shoulder level is too high. You don’t want to have to go up on your toes to set the bar down when you’re done with a heavy set.

Set the bar so that you get under it with bent knees, and can easily lift it out of the rack by straightening your legs.

3. Place the bar: The best place to put the bar is on your rear deltoids (the back of your shoulder muscle). You should feel the bar just above the top of your shoulder blades. You don’t need to use pads or anything like that as a beginner. Placing padding on the bar can make balance more difficult. Your shoulders will strengthen and squatting will become more comfortable as you find the right spot for the bar without any padding.

4. Take the right stance: Lift the bar out of racks and take one step back. You’ll get the right stance for squats by placing the knees at about shoulder width and pointing the toes outward at about 30 degrees.

5. Lower yourself with form: Keep your form as you start to lower yourself downward. You’ll have to pay attention to your knees so that they stay pointing outward as you lower yourself and press back upward. Don’t let them collapse inward with your knees pointing straight forward.

Keep the bar in place so that it is directly above the middle of your foot throughout the entire range of motion. Don’t lean forward.

6. Go all the way down: Go all the way to the rock-bottom of your squat. Don’t be one of those sissies who want to look tough by doing more weight and only going half way down. Going to the bottom will involve your hamstrings and buttocks in the movement much more than a half squat will.

Getting the full range of motion is not dangerous if you keep good form. Some Powerlifters are living proof of this, as they do literally thousands of squats all the way to the bottom with very heavy weights.

7. Keep your feet flat: You shouldn’t be pressing the weight through the toes, the front of foot, or from the inside edge of your foot. If you are placing more weight on the insides of your foot, it probably means that your knees aren’t pointing out as much as they should be. Push the weight upwards through your heels.

8. Align your back: Do not lean forward with a heavy weight on your back. Letting your lower back round or bend forward is dangerous for your lower back muscles. Your back should have an arch to it. The best way to get this arch is to pull your chest up and let your butt come out a bit (not too much).

You won’t be leaning forward, but your back won’t be vertical either.

9. Rise at the hips: Press your tailbone upward as you complete the movement. Be careful not to let your hips rise up faster than your shoulders, as this will make your back more horizontal and can lead to injury.

Learn to squat the right way, and your whole body will see the benefits. It’s one of the best movements for changing your body type in the least amount of time. With a little practice, squatting properly will keep you safe and also help you to avoid future injuries.