Body Building Workout Routines, Back Training

By Ricardo d Argence

Increasing muscle mass and functional strength constitute the two main motivations for adopting a bodybuilding program. Building abdominal muscles, specifically the muscles of the upper, middle and lower back is the key to both of these.

The muscles in your back are primary stabilizing, but can easily be injured when lifting weights. From a biomechanical perspective, your back consists of the spine, the ribs, the scapula and the ligaments that string them all together, like parts of a mobile or kinetic motion structure.

Compression or rotation injuries are the ones that happens to the back most of the time when the soft tissues that provides flexibility to to the back get damaged. You should always be careful when lifting weights and you should always focus on isolating the muscle so you wont get injured, as a lot of injuries wont show up for years.

There are some muscle groups that you need to work on slowly in the back. They are your traps, lats and deltoids. Sure, your back will be ripped by overworking it, though, you should concentrate more on your everyday look than having a muscular back.

The trapezius muscles are the ones that form the bulk of your back. In Traps, the fundamental exercise is the shrug where you lift the dumbbells in both hands, shrug and hold then release.

Another workout that mostly works on your deltoids, but helps the traps a bit, is a straight-arm lift. Hold a dumbbell in your hand with your elbow at your side, and your forearm out level with the map. Extend your arm until it's at shoulder height, in one fluid motion, and look down your arm at the dumbbell, like you're sitting on a pistol range. Then bring it down slowly. This is a common exercise in martial arts groups that emphasize punching.

When you do any kind of exercise to build up a muscle you should always start out slow and build your way up to more and more resistance. If you start to fast and do to much at once, you can end up hurting yourself before you even get started. This is better than a straight pull up because it isolates the muscle thoroughly.

If you are targeting your back, specifically your lower back, one exercise that is important in helping you gain strength in your back is shoulder arches. By doing shoulder arches you will not only gain strength (this is the most important thing), but you will also work on definition of your back as well. Hold a light dumb-bell over the back of your neck and lay down on your front. Clasp your hands, then arch your back, lift, count to three, then lower slowly. It's very easy to overdo them, so, do these sparingly.

Like all the exercises which help with muscle building, stretching and cardio exercise before and after are a must for maintaining flexibility. - 29951

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