Using a barbell to workout is one of the traditional forms of exercising your muscles. This exercise with its many variations offers a lot of stability to your body and also focuses on major and minor muscle groups that are quite often neglected in many modern gyms today.
Barbell Exercises – Benefits and Techniques
There are several benefits you can derive by doing barbell exercises. Firstly, these exercises need few and inexpensive equipments. Installing a home gym is quite an expensive affair simply because of the number of costly equipments you may need to purchase. But barbell exercises and its variations only need a simple barbell, workout bench and a set of weights. They can be done in a small room and at the convenience of any location. More importantly, these exercises work very well to exercise your stabilizing muscles over the main muscle groups. This indicates their significance in ensuring that all little muscles are included to keep up with the larger ones. Gym exercises, on the contrary, do not offer this benefit. There are certain important tips to consider for understanding the techniques of exercising. While exercising, it is important to maintain good posture since there are many chances for your body to sway to different angles thereby making it difficult for you to accomplish results.
Barbell Curls – Variations for Biceps
The quintessential bicep workout that helps to build stronger and shapely biceps is the barbell curls. There are several variations to this workout for constantly challenging your bicep muscles. The medium grip works your biceps on the inside and outside equally and is the most common position. Arms should be pinned to your sides and permitting movement of forearms and a little of elbows for contraction purposes. The close grip variation of barbell curls works outer part of your biceps for getting a better peak. Light weights are used in such cases but squeezing during contraction is necessary. The wide grip works out the inside of your biceps and helps to develop shape and roundness of these muscles. Maintaining tension on your biceps is important to achieve desired results.
Standing Barbell – Tips and Instructions
While doing the standing barbell, it is extremely important to follow specific instructions. Hold a barbell at shoulder width in an underhand grip. Put your feet together and stand straight. Make sure your back is straight and your arms are fully extended. Taking one foot back may give you more stability. The bar must not touch your body. Face forward, keep elbows tucked in and gradually curl barbell upwards. Squeeze biceps as hard as possible while at the top and gradually lower to starting position. Repeat as many times as possible. Lifters generally have the tendency to swing body back to support lifting of weights. This is often the temptation any lifter must refrain against. Yet another mistake is not keeping elbows fixed at the sides. These are costly mistakes that may set you back from your desired goal.