Tier III: upper body

There are many, many exercises for the upper body. The chaos is simplified when you realize that they are just a few basic exercises—each with three variations.

How you grab the weight and in which direction you move your arm, makes all the difference. For example, you can do a simple standard weight lifting exercise. Place the dumbbell in your palm, rotate your elbow and tighten your biceps, move the weight up and down.

But … what if you grab that same dumbbell with reverse grip? Instead of your palm below the dumbbell, it’s now above it? You use a totally different set of muscles. (This exercise is likely much, much tougher. Even though the movement of the dumbbell is identical.)

Remark

This exercise is often called elbow flexion, and can be done with both a weight and resistance band. It’s probably the most well-known. It is actually beneficial and I recommend doing it, both arms at the same time.

Hand positions

And so we distinguish three hand positions.

Palm up: your palm is below the weight. Targets your pectoral muscles (front) and biceps.
Palm side: you hold your hand sideways, your thumb pointing it. The weight ends up more on your triceps and your back muscles.
Palm down: your palm is above the weight, facing the floor. Targets your upper shoulder muscles.

They are in increasing order of difficulty. The “palm up” is how you’d normally grab something. It’s how you lift stuff, it makes use of the strongest muscles for lifting. Sideways is already harder, but still a common way to hold something. The palm down version can be downright impossible the first time you try it.

This doesn’t mean you should ignore the harder ones. Au contraire! They are more important, because they use movements you wouldn’t use in day-to-day activities. You just need to do them with lower weights or less repetitions.

Balanced posture

Upper body exercises either focus on your back or your front (pectoral muscles, or pecs).

Back exercises have the shoulder turned outward or open. You should feel the shoulder blade stuck to your back.
Front exercises have the shoulde turned inward or closed. The shoulder is rotated further forward or in a hunched position.

It’s tempting to focus more on the front. It looks better and more impressive. The results are visual and immediate to you.

But the back is more important. Doing exercises where your shoulders are open, trains your body for good posture. With any upper body exericse, ensure your shoulder stays as open as possible. (Don’t force it. Merely don’t allow your shoulders to close and rotate inward.)

This, again, will be harder than it sounds. Most people aren’t used to that posture or heavily exercising those muscles. If you do it well, you should feel sore in your back after only a few repetitions. If you feel sore at the front, you might be using the wrong muscles and closing your shoulders.

How does this relate to hand position? Palm up leads to open shoulders. Palm down can only be done with closed shoulders. As such, choosing the right grip is the first step to doing an exercise correctly.

Stretching & Relaxing

Similar to legs, the biggest issue is when muscles are too tight and unbalanced. Doing an exercise to strengthen them, will then merely make this difference worse.

As such, the first step is to relax and stretch your shoulders. You can simply roll them and move them up / down.

If that’s not enough,

Place your fingertips on your shoulders. (Left fingertips on left shoulder, right fingertips on right shoulder.)
Now make circles. Make sure your fingertips don’t leave your shoulders!

If your upper body is really tight, this will often already make a huge difference.

If you want more, try shoulder dislocation.

Find a stick somewhere.
Keep it in front of your body, horizontally, with both hands.
Now pull the stick over your head, all thew way until it’s behind your back. (It depends how flexible you are, how far you can take this. Don’t overdo it!)
And move back again

This one did wonders for me. But I have flexible joints, making this easier and less risky.

Think you’re relaxed? Let’s start.

The workhorses

What are the workhorses of the upper back? Which muscles should bear the highest load? Your rhomboid (big muscle between shoulder blades) and the muscles around it.

It seems natural to target those muscles first.

For the rhomboid, any form of rowing exercise is recommended. In other words,

Hold a resistance band in front of you
Now pull it back, in a rowing-like motion, until your elbow is at the back and the resistance band near your body.

Why the vague explanation? Because you can do this in many ways! Change your grip to slightly change the muscles it targets. Change your stance. Look up all the variations of “row resistance band”, and use them to constantly challenge yourself with new movements.

I’d rather you learn the general movement and experiment yourself with different variations, than repeating one identical exercise forever without even knowing what it does.

Another exercise for this that changed my life, is the pull-over. The only issue, is that it might be hard to do at home.

Find a bench or table of some kind.
You should be able to lay on it (with your back), with space behind your head.
Grab a weight.
Simply pull it over your head, until it falls behind your head, in the open space.
Then pull it back up again.

Some key points:

There’s no need to drop the weight all the way down. Just stop at a reasonable point.
Allow your elbows to be angled, it makes the exercise tougher
When coming back up, really focus on compressing your abs. Put your core muscles into getting that weight back up.

After doing this exercise, you might feel something change at the sides of your shoulder blades. For me, this was the start of regaining control of my back. Doing this exercise consistently for a few months made my back more straight and allowed me to use my arms and shoulders better.

The other side

Rowing targets your back. This means there’s an opposite exercise that targets your front. These are usually called a fly. Because the weight moves from close to your body to extended / far away from your body. As such, it’s like you’re spreading wings, or sending the weight flying.

This can, again, be done any way you like. Try different grips. Move the weight forward, or to the side, or upward.

All my exercise routines consisted of a rowing-type exercise first. Over time, these become very easy to execute. (Our back muscles are strong and this movement isn’t that odd.) Still, it’s important to keep doing them, to keep your posture in check.

Then I add one fly-type exercise. These are much harder and lead to soreness all over. They will target muscles around your shoulder you never use.

The key is, again, variation. Try a few exercises. Once they become easy, don’t up the weight or repetitions, just try a new exercise. A different grip, a different stance, a different movement direction for your arms.

The hardest exercises

The absolute toughest exercises are the common ones that use your bodyweight: push-up, pull-up, and more.

These are awesome. You can do them anywhere, anytime, and they are tough enough to be a real workout.

At the same time, as I’ve shown in my examples, this “toughness” can easily make you lose correct form. Doing 10 push-ups with the wrong form is useless. You’re better off doing one with correct form. Doing pull-ups before your body is ready, most likely leads to bad posture while doing so.

I see these exercises as a goal to work towards. Start by doing the simpler exercises. Build that strength and coordination over time. Only once you’re ready, switch your exercises to these heavyhitters.

Why are they awesome? Because they generally target all parts of the upper body. (And the push-up even activates your core.) And you can easily vary them, now that you know about hand positions. For example,

Grabbing the bar with palms facing yourself (when doing a pull-up), targets more of the front
Grabbing the bar with palms facing away (when doing a pull-up), targets more of the back

But always remember

Use your abs! When they are compressed, they help keep proper balance, posture and load distribution. If one of your arms has trouble, if one of your shoulders wants to tighten or compensate, you most likely need to engage your abs more.

If your lower back is flat and strong, the upper back is supported properly.

Lastly, some general tips

Using one object is easier than two separate objects. For example, lifting a single bar is easier than lifting the same weight as two separate objects. The second case adds many extra forces, and thus coordination, to keep the weights together.
Prevent raising your shoulders or using your neck muscles! For any exercise! If you can’t do something without compensating like that, lower the weight, try a simpler exercise first.

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