There are three essential exercises that will improve your posture and make your shoulders look better. This is because they work the posterior deltoid. Muscle that is in a region that will make your shoulder more voluminous and will also bring that shoulder back.
This makes your posture more aligned and even your chest appears to be bigger. And the first essential exercise is the reverse pec deck. This machine works the posterior deltoid in an isolated manner.
This is due to the position your body is in. There are some things you may be doing in this exercise that are causing you to not get the most out of it. One of them is not adjusting the seat optimally.
You can make the bench very low. And if this happens, you will be straining your joint and this, in the near future, will cause you discomfort in your shoulder. But it can cause a serious problem, even leading to the rupture of some of the muscles that stabilize this joint.
Therefore, adjusting the bench in the ideal way is essential to avoid injuring yourself and to get the most out of the exercise. And you will do it exactly as follows. Trial and error really.
The idea is that the bench is at a height where your arm will be in line with your shoulder or even a little lower. And when you position the bench at that height, you will be directing its vector against the posterior deltoid. And that's exactly what we want.
But there is another big mistake that people make and it will simply make the work less, which is leaving the torso leaning on the bench. I see some people supporting the upper part of the chest even, and this causes the force vector that the machine delivers to you to be projected to other muscles. The deltoid ends up working, but much less.
So the tip I give you here is to keep your body as straight as possible. To give you an idea, when I do this, I only support my abdomen on the bench. And this causes all of the machine's capacity to generate muscular work to be directed to your posterior deltoid.
But if you don't have this machine in your gym, don't worry, the second exercise on the list will save you and you'll be able to find it in any gym. Here we are talking about the reverse fly, but on the handle. You know that big device called a crossover?
That's exactly where you're going to do it. And I'm going to ask you to do this reverse fly with a crossover, with a cable, and not with dumbbells, for some very specific reasons that I'm going to explain to you. First of all, you can adjust this pulley, making it higher or lower.
I want you to place the pulleys at shoulder height. You might even remember what I said about the reverse fly machine just now, right? I want you to leave your arm at shoulder height.
Then you will adjust the cables exactly to make this happen. You will take these cables in a crisscross fashion. Your right arm grabs the left side and your left arm grabs the right side.
With this, you will be exerting force to move your arm away. And that's exactly the movement your rear deltoid produces. Whenever I think about an exercise, I will be analyzing which muscle I want to work and what movement that muscle produces.
Here comes something that many people do and lose muscle work. This makes the exercise positioned between the two pulleys. And why is this bad?
When you move your arms away, the cables even touch your chest. This is within a more biomechanical analysis, of vectors, etc. At the end of the exercise there is little resistance for this muscle.
And that's terrible for us. So I'm going to give you a tip here that will greatly intensify the work of the posterior deltoid in this exercise. After you grab the cables, you step back.
When you do this, you will exactly increase the lever arm throughout the entire range of motion. This will give you a much better job. But you can't make another big mistake that people usually make in this exercise, which is losing your posture.
It's quite common for me to see this happening. Sometimes it even arches forward and then arches back. As the exercise gets harder, you are dissipating the work.
You are stealing and making the muscle work less. So, when you are going to do the exercise, always keep your posture as straight as possible. This will give you a much better workout.
The next essential exercise is my favorite and I see in it the greatest potential for developing the posterior deltoid. But first, I want to invite you to become my student at Muscle 60D and get to know all this expertise, this training intelligence applied in a periodization that delivers an entire year's evolution in just two months. I will put my team of nutritionists, personal trainers and physiotherapists on your WhatsApp.
Have you ever thought about having this entire team accompanying you and helping you step by step throughout the entire process? There is a link below for you to learn about this work, how it works and it will be a pleasure to have you as our student. And this exercise that I like so much for the posterior deltoid is the single-arm cable rear delt fly.
Now you will only need one side of the crossover. You need to place the cable at shoulder height or even slightly lower. Remember that this will make the muscle work greater and you will keep your joint out of any risk of injury.
You will be an arm's length away from the machine. After that, you will pull the cable and bring it here, to the front of your body. If you simply move your arm away, you'll already have a great hamstring exercise.
But, there is a small problem. If you do this, when you reach the end of the movement, the cable will touch your chest. And when this happens, the working lever decreases.
And this way, there is less tension in the muscles we want to work. You will also apply that tip I gave you here. You will take a step back.
When you bring your arm back and your hand is in front of your body, the cable that will be going to the machine will be creating a 90 degree angle from your hand. This is the optimal movement for you to do this exercise. You will notice a huge difference.
And obviously with this, this muscle will develop more and your posture will improve. But here too some people make the mistake of losing their posture during exercise. Always keep in mind the idea of keeping your posture as straight as possible.
This will make a huge difference. And there's a tip that I'm sure you've never seen. When you bring the cable all the way to the end, I want you to not only press as hard as you can, but also to bring your chest in the opposite direction.
This will cause the fiber to shorten more and the work will also follow the same pattern. What you will realize at this point is that it is a completely counterintuitive move. Your body will want to rotate in the direction your hand is going, because this will make the movement easier, it will make it easier for you to do the exercise.
And what we are doing is the opposite. So keep this information in mind, as it will make a huge difference when exercising. I want to give you another great strategy to improve your posture and overall aesthetics, both of your shoulders and your back.
This video here contains essential back exercises. You will have more beautiful shoulders, a more beautiful back and a more correct posture. Dude, you need this video.
