Welcome back peeps to another installment of Workout Wednesday. Last week we kicked off the month with our inaugural Firm Butt Society lower body workout. To continue, we are going to get you going with a great upper body workout with an emphasis on strengthening the back.
Since most of us spend a good portion of our time hunched forward in front of a laptop or sitting in a car, our chest and shoulders tend to take a beating and our back tends to get neglected which can lead to all sorts of postural and muscular imbalances. Hello forward head and rounded shoulders.
As a trainer, I take this into consideration with my clients, and will focus more on developing a stronger back through rowing and pulling type of exercises as well as exercises that focus on thoracic extension. On average, I will general tend to do a ratio of 2:1 or even 3:1 pulling to pushing exercises. Meaning for every 1 pushing based movement like a push up, I will do 2 or even 3 pulling, rowing or extension focused exercises.
In today’s workout you will find a great combination of mobility, strength and pilates exercises that focuses on rowing, pulling, extension, and spinal rotation to help bring more strength and mobility to our back. Oh and as an added little treat, I throw in a little jump roping to kick up the heart rate a bit.
To make it easy for you to follow along, I’ve also included a downloadable PDF that you can print out and take to your gym to follow along. As the weeks go by, you’ll soon have a file of workouts that you can use and then rotate when it’s time to progress.
Take a stab at the workout, and let me know how it goes.
If you’d like more workouts and downloads like this, leave me a comment below so that I can keep you up to date!