Sunday, January 4, 2009

Muscle Building Workouts, Back Training

By Ricardo d Argence

Increase muscle mass and functional strength are the two reasons of primary importance to get into bodybuilding. Most important in both cases is the development of core strength; the muscles of the abdomen, upper, middle and lower back.

Your back are the primary stabilizing muscles in your body, and the ones easiest to injure 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.

Muscle groups that you need to work on in the back are your traps, lats and deltoids, and you need to take them slowly. Yes, you can get a ripped looking back by overdoing it, but it's better to focus on practical strength increases over physical appearance and muscle building when dealing with your back.

The trapezius muscles (traps) are the ones that form the bulk of your back. The basic exercise for Traps is a shrug motion, where you take a pair of dumbbells, one in each hand, and shrug your shoulders as high as they will go and hold them for a breath, then let them down slowly.

Another movement that helps the traps a bit (but mostly works on your deltoids) 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 will work on your deltoids and the yoke of muscle linking your shoulders.

You will want to to complete a sitting down "V-bar pull down" in order to build up the lower trapezius muscle, in which you are pulling down against resistance. 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. - 16650

About the Author: