Why You Shouldn’t Neglect Training Your Upper Body
25 February 2022
- Posture
A strong back is essential for good posture. A large percentage of the population live very sedentary lives, hunched over a laptop, sat behind a desk or behind the wheel of a car. As a result, most people suffer from posterior imbalances. Where the chest muscles tighten and the back muscles weaken, with the shoulders rounding forward. Strengthening the muscles in the back encourages you to hold your shoulders back. It also improves your core strength, forcing the body to sit up tall. - Get the most out of your workouts
Improving your upper-body strength can also help your ability to perform workouts. The majority of HIIT workouts and circuit classes contain upper-body exercises, such as planks, press-ups or mountain climbers, which require a good base level of upper-body strength. By strengthening your upper body, you will be able to get the most out of these workouts without having to regress the movements. - You won’t get “BULKY”
The belief that you’ll look masculine & bulky if you train your upper body is one of the biggest myths in fitness. Women’s hormones and physiology are what determines your muscular development, and women don’t possess anywhere near the same sized muscle fibres or amount of lean muscle tissue as men. - Muscle growth and fat loss
Embrace upper body training, and you’ll burn more calories! By increasing your lean body mass, you’ll increase your daily caloric burn. A metabolically active body will have an increased metabolic rate, fat oxidation and ultimately consume more energy in the form of calories. This means that by gaining some extra muscle in the upper body, you’ll burn more calories and fat throughout the day! - It feels bloody good!
There’s nothing quite like reaching a new fitness goal, whether it be upping the amount of push-ups you can accomplish or graduating to a heavier set of weights. Getting strong feels good in the body and the mind. How many of you have said you’d love to be able to perform one pull up? But then proceed to prioritise another leg day…
