Keep your feet as wide as your hips, and your arms as wide as your shoulders. Lying down on your stomach, pull your naval in towards your spine and reach your arms in front of you. This is an excellent way to engage the posterior chain. You’ve probably seen or done a Superman on the floor in a group fitness class. When you stand up at the top of these moves, press down through your heels to fire up the posterior chain starting with your legs up into your glutes. You can also focus more on engaging your glutes and hamstrings in your lower body strength training moves, like lunges and squats. For example, lat pull downs, cobras and planks interspersed throughout your workout are a great way to start. The Fix: Make sure that you’re doing exercises to strengthen the back of your body. It’s important to train the upper and lower body equally along with balancing out pushing and pulling movements.” In fact, Becca Capell, a trainer at iFit, says poor posture and possibly blowing out your ACL are risks that come with not training the back of your body, too. Eric Owens, co-founder of Delos Therapy, says, “Only training upper body and no legs will lead to an imbalance. The Risk: Not only will your body be imbalanced, but according to Tylicki, this can also leave other muscles weak and de-conditioned. Jonathan Tylicki, director of education for AKT and certified personal trainer, says that with strength training, “People commonly only train large muscles that they see (chest, abs, quads) and end up neglecting their posterior chain and smaller muscle groups.” It makes sense then that we need to strengthen the back of our bodies to help correct this positioning, but often times it’s the exact part of our bodies that gets neglected. Sitting at a desk at work, texting on the phone, playing with kids, etc. Many of our daily positions encourage us to hunch forward. ![]() Keep your form in check by exhaling on the exertion (as you curl the weight up) and inhaling on the release (as you lower the weight back to the starting position.) Often times with too heavy of weights, you can begin thrashing the arms and pulling the elbows away from the sides because the weight is too heavy to properly control. When doing a bicep curl, it’s important to keep the elbows hugging in towards your sides. For example, instead of grabbing a 10-pound dumbbell for bicep curls and doing 10 repetitions, grab the 5-pound dumbbells and do 15 reps. Start with lower weight (like 3- or 5-pound dumbbells) and focus on doing more reps at less weight. If planks or other body weight exercises for your upper body seem too challenging, then start out with light weights and arm exercises. ![]() ![]() Ideally, Alai recommends a balanced combination of weights and body weight as the optimal way to get stronger. Although, this is the one scenario where beginners may want to start with weights. For your upper body, practice holding planks instead of using dumbbells to work your arms and back.
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