Posts tagged exercise
Using Resistance Bands to Strengthen the Rotator Cuff Muscles
Sep 28th
Shoulder injuries are very common in people who lift weights and exercise regularly, and in an attempt to prevent shoulder problems, many physical therapists recommend rotator cuff strengthening. You can use resistance bands to strengthen the muscles of the rotator cuff.
There are 2 main motions to perform in order to strengthen the rotators of the shoulder, and those 2 motions are internal rotation and external rotation. Internal rotation refers to turning the shoulder inwards towards the center of the body, and external rotation refers to turning the shoulder outwards away from the center of the body.
In addition to 2 main motions, there are 2 main positions you can strengthen the rotator cuff in. You can perform internal and external rotation from a neutral position or from an abducted position. The neutral position is when the arm is right next to your side and the abducted position is when your arm is out to the side at 90 degrees. There is less pressure on the shoulder in the neutral position, but it is important to progress to the abducted position once you’ve mastered the neutral position.
With 2 directions and 2 positions you can use resistance bands to strengthen the rotator cuff muscles with 4 simple exercises. The first exercise is neutral position external rotation. With a resistance band secured around a stable service at waist level, simply rotate your arm out to the side away from your body. The second exercise is neutral position internal rotation. Perform 10-15 repetitions rotating your shoulder inwards toward the center of your body.
The third and fourth exercises are done from the abducted position and these can be tougher to master. For external rotation, you can stand on the resistance band, and start with your arm out to the side at 90 degrees. Then, from that position, rotate your arm up towards the ceiling. For internal rotation, you have to secure a resistance band over your head, and then you would rotate your arm down towards the floor.
If you want to strengthen your rotator cuff, you can use resistance bands. Work on both directions and try to exercise your shoulder in different positions also. These simple exercises can help to strengthen your shoulder and prevent injury.
Getting The Best Out Of Your Arm Workout
Sep 27th
Many people seem to struggle with their arm workout in the gym for one reason or another. I can see this as not only are they performing poor exercises, they may also be performing them using the incorrect form, and as a result, they seem to make no gains week after week. Some people have even flat out come and asked me how I’ve managed to get my arms so big. In this article I’d like to suggest the best ways in which to workout your arms, so as to get the best gains possible, naturally.
Firstly, I wish to state that unless you have a good clean diet, and adequate rest, you won’t gain muscle mass on your arms easily. I won’t be going into these two issues too much, but suffice to say you should aim for roughly 8 hours of sleep each night, and try and have a protein rich diet. These two issues aren’t what this article is about, so I suggest you research into these two issues if you require a better understanding.
The exercises I use in which to gain enormous success with my arm workouts are bicep curls using dumbbells, tricep pull downs and dips, that’s it. Seriously, the number of people I see doing a large variety of arm exercises is scary, it’s simply not needed. As long as you do these three exercises with good form and with enough intensity, you will experience phenomenal growth.
I aim to do 10 reps of every exercise, and I do 5 sets of each. The first thing you need to do is to discover what a good starting weight is for you. For example, with the dumbbell bicep curls, you should be able to do 10 reps with ease on each arm. Once you’ve done this initial 10 reps, we’ll then increase the weight, I normally increase it by 2KG, so if for example my first set was 10 reps of 20KG’s for each arm, my second set will be 10 reps of 22KG for each arm.
We’ll increase the weight with each set, so for my workout, my first set maybe 20KG, my second 22KG, my third 24KG, fourth 26KG, and my final set it 28KG. It’s important to work each arm independently, hence be recommended dumbbell curls over barbell curls, as we won’t to work each arm to full exertion. When bicep curling, you want to keep your back as vertical as possible, we want little movement in the back when lifting and lowering the weight. All movement is in the arms only. It’s amazing how many people swing forward and backwards when bicep curling, this is very poor form, and it’s no wonder there arms are the same size wee after week. When bicep curling, we want to raise the weight slowly, and lower it slowly, everything must be in a controlled motion.
With tricep curls, it’s the same principle as when bicep curling. We’ll be doing 5 sets of 10 reps, and each set has an increase in weight. Again, we want to keep the back as horizontal as possible, no forward or backwards motion to compensate. The only movement should be in your arms, you should really feel your triceps’s burning during this exercise when done correctly. Again, this is to be done in a slow, controlled motion. Some people prefer to keep their legs side by side when performing this exercise, but I find I can get a better depth of the lowering motion if I stand in a stance with one leg in front of the other.
Finally, with dips, again, you want this to be in a controlled motion, but this time, not necessarily slow. I don’t want you to shoot up and down, but it doesn’t have to be as slow as mentioned previously with the bicep curls or tricep pull downs. You can do 3 sets of this exercise, reason being, we’re going till failure with each set. What this means is that for the first set, we’ll do our dips for as many as we can. There is no pre-determined stopping point. If you can only do 15, fine. If you can do 40, fine. Whatever you can do, make sure you’re pushing yourself as much as you can, and that you can’t physically do any more dips during that set. Once the set is finished, we’ll have a 30 second breather, and being the next set where we’ll be going till failure again. Once this set is done, another 30 second rest, before we being the final set where we’ll once again be going till failure.
The three exercises mentioned in this article are a great way to really gain muscle on your arms, as long as their performed in the steps mentioned above, and as long as you have your diet and sleep arrangement in check. I hope you’ve found this article of use, and that it helps you to achieve your goals in the gym.
