Help! No upper body strength
cherriegh
Posts: 196 Member
I'm a 5'2 lady at 147 lbs trying to get leaner and around 128 lbs, MFP has set my goals to 1200 but I ate at 1600 and dint lose any weight or inches but body has tightened and less cellulite.
So I've decided to lower calories now to decrease bf. Problem I'm not progressing or gaining any strength on my upper body workouts OHP and BP. I'm stuck at the bar plus 2.5kilos plates on either side and end up doing lat pulls and other upper body accessory workouts. But I'm gaining strength on squats and deadlift.
What can I do to progress?
So I've decided to lower calories now to decrease bf. Problem I'm not progressing or gaining any strength on my upper body workouts OHP and BP. I'm stuck at the bar plus 2.5kilos plates on either side and end up doing lat pulls and other upper body accessory workouts. But I'm gaining strength on squats and deadlift.
What can I do to progress?
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Replies
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The upper body ones tend to be tough for a lot of people, especially women. I've even seen guys complain that they stall far sooner on OHP than any other lift but in particular much quicker than squats or deadlifts. So, there is the good news, you are not alone. There are some accessories that work the muscles involved that you could do, though I don't know them off hand. Or you can work on a little bit different rep scheme, but it's going to probably be slow and I wouldn't compare the progress in them to other lifts.
For me, I've managed to get at or above body weight on both deadlift and squat but any upper body lift has had much smaller progress. Though the numbers I need are getting smaller, so that helps cause when I did the deadlift I had to get to 185 to be just above body weight and for squat I did it around 165. Now I weigh in the 150's. My max bench press though for just three reps is only 100 and it was tough to get. And I know there are some who after months are still doing OHP with the bar or not much more.
MFP was going to set my calories at 1200 for losing 1.5 a week and I said screw that. I may be only 4'11.5" but I'm trying to avoid eating that little. But I also am not sedentary because of my job so that helps and I have it at 1 lb per week even though I have over 30 to lose still, but it gives me just over 1400 before exercise that way. I also do cardio 3 times a week because I have a 5k goal that I want to accomplish, so those are nice days. mmm food.
Hope that helps a little.0 -
MFP's numbers are too aggressive, I like IIFYM's better. The extra protein I find helps fuel me better and less feeling like crap on rest days. Or at least calculate your BMR and TDEE.
If you aren't already, use plates smaller than 2.5lbs so you are going up slower. Study form most importantly. Both lifts if you are doing it wrong you will gas out sooner. For OHP if you aren't getting the bar straight up, you are wasting energy leading to a fail later on.0 -
My progress with upper-body stuff is excruciatingly slow, especially with OHP, but with bench, too. When adding weight is just too daunting, I add reps instead, so I'll do 3 sets of 6, then 3 sets of 7, and so on. When I get to 3 sets of 12 at one weight, I know I can add 5 pounds. (My gym doesn't have smaller plates.)0
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^^^ i think the best progress i ever made with ohp was when i did that. added one set and one rep to all sets, each time around, and then by the time i was doing 8x8 at a given weight i'd let myself try to move up. i think i got up to 60lbs like that a year ago. but on the other hand my form was appalling so really i was cheating too much the whole time for it to count.
what i'm doing this year is much more focused on form and the progress has been really slow by comparison. but it's making me hopeful as well. i do go as heavy as i can (hah) on the workout b days, but then on the in-between days i also do 3 sets of 8-12 at a much lighter weight. basically, i press as a 'real' lift but also as an accessory to itself. so currently on workout b days i use the 'big' bar and on a days it's the medium-sized 'womens' bar.
i like it because ohp form is so hard to get down, and it's even harder for me when the weight is any kind of a challenge for me. with a light bar that i can hoist easily, i feel like i'm giving myself time to really 'feel' the right form, and this lift has been such a struggle for me that i'm loving that feeling just in its own right. it's still early for me to know whether it'll let me progress more quickly, but at least i'm having fun instead of hating the lift and dreading the days when it's time to do it. fwiw, i do feel like those 'real' workout sets are getting much smoother and starting to be fun as well.0 -
Yes, I also started with the "women's" bar, which I believe is 35 pounds (but maybe I'm just making myself feel better and it's less!) I still use it to warm up, and I may steal this idea of doing lighter OHP as an accessory on A days. You can also press with dumbbells. I actually find the dumbbells more difficult, because you've got two of them flailing around up there rather than just one thing to keep track of with the bar.0
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I made a tiny bit of progress with the OHP when I invested in fractional plates. The increments with the normal plates were too big for me. However, I still found it really difficult to get anywhere with it. After stalling forever, I ended up mixing it up with a different OHP workout which included push presses - still didn't make much progress, but the the push presses were satisfying! I've also used dumbbells, and tried adding another rep at the end of the set instead of adding weight, but it's just a really, really hard lift.0
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Other than adding reps to sets, does anyone add any shoulder isolation work to their routines?0
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Some of those require gym equipment..but some I can do at home.
Do you limit the number of isolation exercises in one routine? I’m sure some combinations work better together, do you combine the exercises? Would you attach them to Workout A vs Workout B?
Having difficulty formatting my question….I have *very* small shoulders (and some other issues), would like to strengthen my shoulders, but don’t know where to start…I’m currently doing arnold presses at the end of WA & WB, but noticed I fatigue faster on WB. I’m also hoping that this will help with my OhP since I’m still trying to work up from my fail.0 -
Some of those require gym equipment..but some I can do at home.
Do you limit the number of isolation exercises in one routine? I’m sure some combinations work better together, do you combine the exercises? Would you attach them to Workout A vs Workout B?
Having difficulty formatting my question….I have *very* small shoulders (and some other issues), would like to strengthen my shoulders, but don’t know where to start…I’m currently doing arnold presses at the end of WA & WB, but noticed I fatigue faster on WB. I’m also hoping that this will help with my OhP since I’m still trying to work up from my fail.
Some of the ones that require gym equipment can be modified to not need gym equipment. (i.e. cable front lifts can be done with dumbbells. About the only one you wouldn't be able to do is the cable rows.)
It all depends on what I have going on. Some days I do a pretty extensive isolation routine, other times I do none. For instance, if I lift on the weekend or my Monday off, I do a lot more than I will after working all day. Also, what day I do them depends on how I feel.
I almost always do upright rows after Workout A.
I do cable front and side lifts when I feel like it.
Arnold presses I usually only do after WB.
I'll usually do cable rows and lat pulldowns (not mentioned before) after WA.
I try to pick stuff that'll "smoke me" to follow up after whichever SL I'm doing. By that, I mean I wouldn't do Arnold presses after WA because my shoulders won't be very tired like they are after WB. My reasoning is that I get the strength aspect out of the way, then I can work on hypertrophy stuff.
I think your best bet is to do SL as it is written, then add in some additional lifts. Choose what you enjoy and stick with those. When I do my accessories, I do 3-5 sets of 8-10 reps with slightly lighter weight but overall higher volume.0 -
Having difficulty formatting my question….I have *very* small shoulders (and some other issues), would like to strengthen my shoulders, but don’t know where to start…
i started sl a year ago, but i only saw a physio for my own shoulder issue and got freed up to get serious in the past six weeks or so. so, for what it's worth my own experience has been a massive improvement in my comfort and form with the overhead press as soon as i became able to work properly on my rear rotator muscles. it's still been slow progress in terms of literal weight on the bar, but my shoulders themselves are way stronger since i did that.
i do external rotation exercises with the cable and really light weights - like, 2.5 pounds - to warm up and loosen those muscles for every workout and even between sets / exercises if i still don't feel like i've got the joint settled quite right. also, i do my rows on workout-a days, but i also do them at 50-60% of my serious weight as an accessory on my wb days. i used to hate them so much, but they honestly, really have made a major difference for me just terms of how comfortable my shoulders feel all the time now.
for me, it seems to work well to do these things as warmup or even in between exercises or sets just to settle the muscles down and/or turn them on. i'm not really going for strength as a primary goal though. more just to support them and help them remember to help themselves during the lifts.
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Fractional plates help, cause adding 5lbs every workout gets unrealistic at a certain point lol. Also make sure your form is good. I added 15 lbs to my bench easy just by correcting my form.0
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