What it means to build upper body strength for women
When was the last time you wished you were stronger and had more fitness? How did your shoulders and arms feel the last time you hung curtains, carried a bag of dog food or a toddler, rearranged the furniture, weeded the garden or tried to hold your dog back from chasing a squirrel? What is upper body strength?
I often hear from my female clients: “I need to work on my upper body strength!” When I ask them what makes them feel that way or think that, I hear about how quickly they feel fatigued when doing push ups or arm circles, or how tired they get raking leaves, weeding the garden or lifting their kids or grandkids. I also hear concern about whether or how they will achieve muscle building or maintain muscle mass as they age.
Common Misconceptions About Strength Training for Women
You will get too bulky. Getting stronger doesn’t mean growing your muscles to a larger size. It means balancing all of your muscles to work together as a unit.
I need to lose weight first. Or I need to get in shape before working out with you. All levels are welcome and you will go at your pace. We are the place to get started and will keep you completely safe and feeling good.
I’m too old. Total myth. You can start strength training and build strength at any age. We see it all the time. Client get stronger as they age when they workout with Spears Strong.
Most of us think of upper body strength as strong arms and shoulders that can pick up heavy things. But is just working arms and shoulders enough to get better at that? When it comes to building and maintaining upper body strength, arms and shoulders are, of course, relevant to those actions. But I see a variety of patterns in my clients that show it’s not just arms and shoulders that hold them back from performing as they want to. What more does it take?
A concept introduced early in kinesiology 101 is that muscles never push, muscles only pull. But where do they pull from? As with any pulley system, where they pull from has to be a stable point and I’ve yet to meet anyone that can detach one end of a muscle and attach it somewhere outside of themselves. This means anytime we want to move, we have to create a stable place within ourselves for the muscles creating the action to pull from. Which means anytime you want your arm to pick up a bag of groceries, your shoulder has to become very stable so the muscles that move your arm can pull from that stable point. What does that mean? That means your shoulder blade has to become stabilized against your ribcage. The muscles that stabilize your shoulder blade are in your upper back and chest. Now we’ve gone from just moving our arm to engaging muscles in our chest, back, shoulder and arm.
What muscles do we need for a bigger movement, like pull-starting the lawn mower or picking up a toddler to put them in a car seat? Those actions are helped by strong arms, but where is our anchor point for them? It’s in our lower body! We move our arms, our entire torso and bend our knees to reach the pull start/toddler that are closer to the ground. Our feet stabilize against the ground for our legs to straighten, thighs and hips are the stable point to pull our torso upright, and our shoulders and upper back create a stabilizing platform for our arms to pull that toddler or string toward us. We could even get into how our abs on one side are stabilizing for the opposite side to create the twisting motion for that pull start or to put the toddler in the carseat. And all of that applies to weeding, hanging curtains and carrying groceries, too.
“In our Strength for Women series, we focus not just on getting stronger in the body area we’re focusing on, but in training our body to work as a unit so that we can maximize our strength potential in that area of focus, be it in the upper body, lower body or core. ”
When we can’t stabilize our body while we move, we risk injury and we miss out on reaching our full strength potential.
In our Strength for Women series, we focus not just on getting stronger in the body area we’re focusing on, but in training our body to work as a unit so that we can maximize our strength potential in that area of focus, be it in the upper body, lower body or core.
Five weeks will fly by before you know it, but within just 2-3 weeks of introducing new movements or a new approach to movement and strength training you’ll find yourself feeling stronger and more coordinated, able to do more in each workout session. Tough movements will feel a little easier and day to day activities will start taking less out of you, leaving you with more energy at the end of the day. Don’t be surprised if a quick 5 weeks of training leave you excited for more!
