Information on Loughborough

4-Day Upper Body Blast - Men - Turn Heads As You Fill Out Your Shirt With Your Muscles

Health Clubs and Fitness Centres

4-Day Upper Body Blast - Men - Turn Heads As You Fill Out Your Shirt With Your MusclesBy Mark Bojovic

When I was training for bodybuilding, working out twice a day and six days a week was business as usual. Now that I'm a missionary in Africa and don't have all the time to commit to the weight room as I did before, I need to focus on what's important. There's no room for wasting time.

So what is important? I'm a married man who likes to look good in what he wears. Being on the endomorphic side of the spectrum, my lower body doesn't need to grow any more - it's got enough size. So that leaves me with the upper body. I'm not going to be walking around topless in public any time soon, so I don't need that chiseled chest or six-pack abs look, either. What I do need is to fill out my shirts and sweaters in all of the right places: chest, shoulders, arms, and upper back.

With that said, here is the workout that I've adapted to fit my busy lifestyle and yet still produce great results.

This is a four-day workout, focusing on one body-part per day, ending with a rest day. Each workout shouldn't last more than 15-20 minutes.

First, start with a warm-up of some kind of cardiovascular activity (jogging, jump rope, etc) for 5-10 minutes, per ACSM recommendations. Then you will perform 4-6 sets in order to flood your muscle with blood and really work it out.

Chest Day: Start with light weights on the bench press for 12-15 reps. Immediately follow this set with light weight dumbbell fly's for 12-15 reps. Add more weight to your second set. Add more weight to your third set. You should complete 4-6 sets in all, depending on how you feel or how hard you want to push it. After your first two sets of 12-15 reps, your rep target should be 6-10. Cool down with some stretches.

Biceps Day: Start with light weights on the barbell straight bar for some reverse curls for 12-15 reps. Immediately after each set you should lie on an incline bench and do regular palm-up curls with dumbbells. Increase your weight for a second set of reverse curls for 12-15 reps and incline bench dumbbell curls. Your final sets should target 6-10 reps of regular palm-up curls, each set followed by incline bench dumbbell curls for 6-10 reps, too. Cool down with some stretching.

Triceps Day: Start by lying on your back and performing some triceps extensions with light weights for 12-15 reps (commonly known as "skullies"). Immediately follow this first set by kneeling on your bench and performing triceps kick-backs, where you extend the weight up behind you, with your back parallel to the floor. Add more weight for your second set of skullies and triceps kick-backs. Your final sets should target 6-10 reps of heavier weights, completing a total of 4-6 sets. Cool down with some stretching.

Shoulder Day: Start with the seated or standing barbell shoulder press (i.e. military press) with light weights for 12-15 reps. Immediately follow this with slightly bent-over dumbbell lateral raises for 12-15 reps. Increase your weight for the second set for 12-15 reps. Your final sets should target 6-10 reps of heavier weights, completing a total of 4-6 sets. Cool down with some stretching.

The goal of each workout is to completely flood each muscle group with a lot of blood and tear down as much muscle fiber as you can (for greater future muscle repair and growth). This extreme focus on one muscle group at a time has helped me maintain the upper body musculature that I desire. I hope you motivate yourself enough to stick with this quick and simple workout of upper body super-sets (back-to-back differing exercises on the same muscle). Thank you!

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Exercise Your Way to Weight Loss

Health Clubs and Fitness Centres

Exercise Your Way to Weight LossBy Michael C Podlesny

Ok so the headline suggests nothing new or groundbreaking that you haven't heard somewhere in your life before. But do you know which exercises to do? How often should you exercise? How many reps should you do for each exercise? What is a rep in your exercise routine? How many sets and what is set? What body parts do include in my exercise routine? Ugh, the insanity of needing to know so much exercising just to lose some weight!

Let me break it down for you to be as simple as possible. I have found in my own experiences that the more complicated you make something the less likely it will be followed. Nothing holds truer than exercising and losing weight.

To start lets identify the muscle groups that you need to workout in your exercise program. They are the chest, triceps (back of the upper arm), back, biceps (front of the upper arm), legs and abdominals. Keeping it simple these are the muscle groups that I will focus on this article. You can make it more complicated however you really don't need to unless you are training for the Olympics. If you are training for the Olympics than I recommend hiring a personal trainer as the training and exercise routine you will need is beyond the scope of this article.

Now that you know the muscle groups to work, you need to know the basics of the routine you are going to put together. Let's start with a rep. A rep is short for repetition. It means the number of times you will perform a specific exercise. For example for biceps you could do dumbbell curls. This is where you grab a dumbbell in your hand and starting with your arm full extended at your side you lift the weight up until the dumbbell touches your chest or your arm is full bent upwards. That would be considered one rep. So if you have a routine that says do ten reps of dumbbell curls, you would repeat what you just did ten times.

A set is a grouping of reps. If you have a routine that says to do one set of ten reps of dumbbell curls then you would do just ten reps and the exercise routine would be done. If it calls for three sets of ten reps you do ten reps, followed by a minute rest, then another ten reps followed by a minute rest and then the final ten reps which would complete three sets.

Since we have already determined you are not training for the Olympics then we can keep your routine simple, yet challenging. All you need todo is work each muscle group 3 days a week. I do Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. The days off in between give your muscles time to recuperate and rebuild.

So here is what you learned thus far. You know the muscle groups that need to be worked; you know all of the terminology about your exercise routine and when to exercise. Now all you need to know is how much you should do.

If you are starting out with weights for the first time or first time in a long time, then start off slow. Choose a low weight performing one set of ten to twelve reps. If you can't get up ten reps then the weight is too heavy. You are not trying to hurt yourself here. You are trying to get in shape and lose weight.

If you can do more than twelve reps than the weight is too light in your routine. Increase the weight you are using. Your first couple of weeks will be a feeling out period. During this time you are establishing the correct weight you need and reps you should do.

Once that feeling out period ends, you should continue to challenge yourself by adding sets to your exercises. There is no need to do more than 3 sets of 10 to 12 reps for an exercise. Any more than that and it is overkill.

If you do not have the time to do all of those sets and all of those reps for each body part than that is fine, simply increment your weight. In order for your muscles to grow you must change what you are doing every 6 weeks or so. You can do this by upping the weights on your routine. This also continually challenges you keeping your routines fresh.

Sure this information won't make you the next Mr. Universe or Miss America however it will put you on the right track to a healthy lifestyle through proper exercise.