Lee Boyce

One of the finest dumbbell back exercises is the classic dumbbell row. But its also a tricky culprit to perfect form-wise. You have to read carefully around lower back issues and technical errors, and, very often, that can result in sub-par results.

The standard dumbbell row can start from a rough position in itself, with your feet staggered in a position that invites positional errors. Thats largely why <a href="https://www.menshealth.com/fitness/a32757684/single-arm-dumbbell-rows/" id="c0ef6e1f-25f2-38a0-a4a8-04cb2ed6d0ed"> we at MH teach it differently </a> , but just for as a refresher course in the row, lets look at a typical setup.

Youre on a flat bench, one leg on the bench, one leg on the floor, feet staggered and leg on the ground bent to attain a flat spine. You start with the dumbbell on the floor underneath your shoulder and, without twisting, you row to waist level using your upper back muscles.

We dont teach that method here, instead pushing for a more balanced lower-body stance that doesnt have a knee on the bench. But youll still see plenty of people rowing the wrong way. That invites them to rotate too much through the mid-back and lumbar regions, and it stops the upper back from being the prime mover of the lift. For lifters with a history of lumbar issues, the last thing they need is a one-sided load combined with an uneven hip position.

Theres another way to juice this row, and thats called the Fisherman Row. The fisherman row makes a technique change thatll fire up your abs a bit, too: Both knees are on the bench, not just one.

Heres your game plan on the Fisherman Row.

<ol><li> Use any flat bench. Set it in an open area along with one dumbbell. </li><li> Place the dumbbell on the floor near the bench, and kneel across the bench diagonally. Both knees should be on the bench, and one hand, supporting your torso, also on the bench. </li><li> Mildly arch the lower back by pushing the chest and butt up simultaneously. It helps to slightly sit back toward the heels while doing this. </li><li> With the free hand, reach down for the dumbbell. Maintain a flat back and row the weight in the same fashion you would with a classic single arm DB row. Its okay to really stretch at the bottom of each rep too, as long as the spine stays neutral. Remember to keep the chin packed, to ensure your neck stays in line with the mid and lower back. </li><li> Focus on sets of 12-15 reps per side. Do 3 sets. </li></ol>

It seems like a small adjustment right? But its the key to keeping your hips level and avoiding any unwanted lumbar rotation. Plus it keeps your shoulder square. And even when you do fatigue, the fisherman row helps; youll feel your obliques kick in to help protect the spine from a stable, bilateral base.

And a little extra ab work never hurt anyone.

Lee Boyce is a Toronto-based strength coach who helps clients and athletes reach strength and conditioning, sports performance, and hypertrophy goals. In his new column, Basics Made Better, he'll help you tweak classic exercises to squeeze out even more muscle gain. Follow him on Instagram .

Why You Should Learn the Fisherman Row

Because, yes, thats important too. The art of spotting is an underrated one, but its one that can help everyone in the gym. Having a bunch of good spotters in your gym can help you make serious gains, because they allow you to lift heavier weights with confidence, and they allow you to push your body closer to its limits.

And if you expect other people to spot you correctly, you need to know how to spot them, too. You need to understand how and where to grab the weights, and how to keep the fellas in your gym safe. And its not always as easy as just picking up the bar.

Why? Because a spotters job is far more complex. Yes, if your partner loses complete control of the weight, you have to pick it up. But you also have to find a way to spot them, to be ready for that moment, without robbing the weight and taking away all the resistance and keeping your partner from working. Get ahead of all that by learning how to spot key lifts right now.

Before we dive into the lifts, lets understand the role of the spotter. When youre spotting somebody, you arent just lifting the weight off of them. And you shouldnt rob them of the chance to complete their reps by themselves.

And if you ask for a spot, you should do so cautiously, too. The spotter shouldnt be tasked with actively aiding you during every single rep. If you simply cant budge the barbell on the way up during a single rep of a set of bench press reps, you just might be going too heavy.

Long story short, if you cant almost nail the lift on your own, you dont need a spotter. You need an ego check. Decrease the weight if you feel like you dont have a chance of budging the weight without a spotter.

Few lifts are more commonly spotted than the bench press. But its very very often spotted poorly. That can not only injure the person benching, but it can injure the spotter if you dont do it right.

Sorry guys. Its going to get a bit up close and personal, but thats what you signed up for when you asked for pecs and a big bench. A good spotter will make sure he has the proper leverage over the weight by getting his chest right over top. And that means he cant watch from a few feet behind your head. Instead, if youre spotting the bench press, step very close to the person youre spotting, getting your hips close to the bar. That will set you up to deadlift the bar upwards; remember, the deadlift is your most powerful position, and you want your whole body to pull the bar up if a spot is needed.

More often than not, spotters will assist the bench press on its path with a double underhand grip, biceps curl style. Thing is, your biceps arent equipped to carry even lighter bench press loads, like 135 pounds. If you want to give yourself and your lifter a fighting chance, its a smart idea to access your larger and stronger back muscles when spotting by assuming a double overhand grip, or at the very least, a mixed grip. Itll give you a lot more strength in case things go terribly wrong. The mixed grip should be your go-to.

Dont touch the bar until you have to

As long as the bar is moving, stay off of it. If youre in the habit of screaming its all you!, let your words be true. You should be shadowing the bar on its way up and down, hands near it, so youre ready to react if it stops moving. But dont actually touch it until your services are needed.

Yes, you can spot the squat. But its a tricky lift to spot just right. Do you spot the bar? Do you spot the lifters body? Its sometimes hard to know, and its tricky to find the right position.

No, you dont need to wrap your body around their torso. Instead, just hold your hands close to their waist. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, for a failing lifter, the tactile cue of adding pressure around the waist will unfailingly create instant tension and stability through the trunk thanks to the feedback from that assistance. Regardless of whether or not it gets the lifter out of the hole, itll help the most out of the above spotting options to make the squatter feel stronger and supported.

Second, its just less invasive. Wrapping your arms around a lifters body, like a harness, is destined to break the lifters concentration and focus, and its too easy to instantly offer help. And theres no value to really spotting around the chest anyway.

Personal trainer explaining how to exercise with dumbbells at the gym

With dumbbell presses increasingly popular, more and more lifters are training the movement heavy. That means you need a spotting technique for dumbbell presses too.

There are generally two trains of thought here. Some people spot the wrists, staying close to the dumbbells. Some people spot the elbows, and when the time comes to spot, they apply upward pressure to the elbows to help drive the weight up.

But if you belong to the spot at the elbows camp, consider this. A lifter whos moving some heavy dumbbells may be able to get a bit more assistance on the way up when being given a spot under the elbows, but that leaves the entire lower arm free of lateral or medial support. If a spotter mistakenly applies pressure or force in an improper angle rather than straight up, chances are the heavy dumbbells will crash right inward and endanger the lifters face.

Thats why you should spot at the wrists. This creates better control over the direction of the help being administered, and can also help stabilize the wrist itself when a strong, firm grip is applied while spotting. Its that simple. It makes it basically impossible for a weight to stray laterally or medially during dumbbell bench or seated presses.

<h1> The Deadlift, The Lift You Don't Spot </h1>

Simply put, you dont. The deadlift comprises of the shortest list of steps for a successful execution: Pick up the bar to stand tall. Theres no room for help with this one; you can either do it or you cant.

You may know how to lift weights. But do you know how to properly help your lifting partner (or anyone else in the gym, for that matter) lift weights?

How To Be The Ultimate Gym Spotter

But the weight room? Thats another story. If you have long limbs or you stand over 6-foot-5 you face challenges that other people dont. You wont fit all gym machines naturally. And a lot of traditional free weight exercises simply never took into consideration your long levers.

And when you miss a rep on a heavy exercises, your joints and ligaments could easily pay more of a price than somebody with shorter limbs might. Why? Because those long levers magnify poor joint angles under load.

How do you deal with this? By making subtle adjustments to your training, switching out equipment at times, and tweaking exercises to accommodate your longer levers. Here are five things you should do in your workouts if youre a tall guy (and in many cases, these hacks will work for shorter people with long limbs, too.

The face pull is one of the best exercises for shoulder health, and people frequently do it with a cable machine. In those situations, they grab the traditional pulldown cable rope to do their face pulls.

Our suggestion: attach two ropes to the cable hook, and grasp each rope with one hand. Why? Because if youre a lifter with a long reach and youre grasping a small cable rope, you never really get to pull your arms apart.

The face pull has two parts to it: First, youre pulling the rope apart, and second, youre external-rotating at the shoulder joint. If you cant truly pull the rope apart, you miss the rotary aspect of the rear deltoids that helps to bulletproof your body against impingement and shoulder glide. With two ropes attached, you can open your chest more easily.

Your other option: Use a light resistance band. This lets you focus on the movement even better. Just make sure the resistance band is light enough. Learn the basic face pull here.

Muscular man during his weightlifting workout in the gym

If you want healthy shoulders, you need to avoid something called shoulder glide. What is shoulder glide? Its a fancy way of saying that the shoulder bone has shifted out of optimal position in the socket. When this happens under load, it can easily lead to chronic shoulder pain and shoulder injuries.

And in taller lifters with longer limbs, theres more chance of it happening. On a bench press, for example, your upper arm has to travel that much further below your torso and the bench to get the bar to your chest, increasing the chance that the head of the humerus (your upper arm bone) glides upward. Similar things can also happen when you're doing shoulder presses.

The easiest way to counter this? Limit the range of motion. Touching your chest on a bench press is a useful competitive standard, but youre not competing; youre training. This is where the pin press comes in. When you do the pin press, youll lit how far below your torso your upper arms travel when benching. This shorter range of motion protects your shoulders from that potentially vulnerable bottom position. You may not need to do this with lighter weights, but as you start to add resistance and push closer to your max, this is your best tactic. Want to make it harder? Let the bar settle on the pins and come to a dead stop, killing momentum. Then drive it upwards on every rep.

<h1> Pullups: Focus On Feeling Your Lats </h1>

The pullup is a move thats often driven by its standards: You must get your chin above the bar or you must get the bar to touch your torso. But as a back exercise for training, its not that simple, especially if you have long arms.

If thats your situation, consider how your arm length affects a lat contraction. The longer your arms, the more likely that your elbow will be farther from the body when your lats are fully contracted. And depending on your build, that may very well mean that your chest or entire head isnt over the bar.

Could you push that farther? Sure, and if youre doing the pullup as a competitive move with a standard, youre probably going to have to. But if youre here for lats, its better to avoid the potential for (once again) shoulder glide. Focus instead on chasing a full lat contraction. Once you feel that, squeeze, and lower to the bottom. Aside from the height to which you pull, youll want to maintain strict form to get the most out of this, but long-term, itll safeguard your shoulders and help you pack on muscle.

<h1> Ab Wheel Rollouts: Do Hand Walkouts Instead </h1>

Longer or heavier lifters will run into a major problem when it comes to abdominal training, especially when it comes to moves like the ab-wheel rollout. The ab wheel rollout is an anti-extension move thats been around for awhile, and it really hammers your whole core.

But if you have long arms, things are instantly much harderand this goes for anyone with long arms, even if youre 5-foot-4. Longer arm levers instantly increase the demand that your core must brace against. If your abs arent strong enough to handle that, this winds up challenging the lower back more than anything.

For some, dropping to their knees for rollouts is an easy fix, instantly removing some of the load. But the best modification may be ditching equipment altogether and simply performing hand walkouts. In this situation, you step out at your own pace and with more control over your shoulder position, and you also get to own the ending position more, learning to bear load that much more efficiently.

<h1> Barbell Deadlifts: Ditch Conventional Deadlifts </h1>

Yes, the conventional deadlift, with your feet inside your arms, is a supreme standard. But if you have long legs, its not your best option. (Long arms, on the other hand, are great for deadlifting, cutting the distance you have to hinge to grasp the bar.)

The best fix is simple: Simply dont use the barbell for deadlifts. Opt for the trap bar, which does a better job of mirroring your center of gravity so you can hinge more easily. Or use whats called a medium sumo stance. To do this, youd simply place your legs just outside your arms, so your legs are no longer blocked by your forearms. This might mean more quad activation and a shallower hinge. But your spine will thank you.

Throughout your life, there are many instances in which being tall can help. The basketball court is one of them. Grabbing things off the top shelf or painting the topmost corners of your house is another one.

The Tall Guy's Guide to Weight Training

Those are the traditional methods to push your biggest exercises to bigger heights, but there's another hidden weight room weapon that can teach you to produce the force you need for big lifts: The isometric rep.

Isometrics aren't new, and overall, <a href="https://www.menshealth.com/fitness/a25384017/isometric-exercises/" id="267db2a1-d134-3d75-a8ab-09e532257cd0"> they're a more versatile training tool than you think </a> . but now you're going to use them in a new way. Your goal here: Use several isometric contracts to "prime" your body for bigger traditional lifts. Do this right, and moves like your bench press, deadlift, and squat can take major leaps.

What's an isometric contraction? It essentially has you applying as much force as possible to a resistance that you simply cant move at all. Think of pushing against a wall, or trying to pull an airplane. If you put your all into each one, youll have to strain your muscles and your entire body, even break a sweat. But the object that youre trying to move simply wont go anywhere.

You will, however, be challenging your body using one of the most underrated methods of training in the gym. And once you incorporate this into your program, youll be moving bigger weights and dominating your workouts in ways youd never expected.

<h1> How Isometrics Prep Your Body To Move Big Weight </h1>

Isometric training has several useful strengths that can aid your traditional workouts. When you apply force to a force you cant move, your muscles also dont move even though theyre clearly straining. That means your muscles wont change in length. It also means your skeleton and bone structure is never moving under load.

Your muscles, however, are trying to apply maximal force, getting a lesson in the force they need to produce in order to work past "sticking points". You can use this to your advantage by using isometrics as primers before a traditional lift or using them as mid-workout supplements in classic workouts. You'll do this by doing a few sets of isometric reps before doing, say, your heavy deadlift work. Or use an isometric midway through your workout to focus in on your middle-back muscles before some heavy rowing.

Theres carryover to both strength work and athleticism, and research agrees with that. One small study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research found exactly that, showing that isometric contractions before certain vertical jump drills enhanced performance in those jump drills.

This works because isometrics force you to create maximal effort during key moments of an exercises range of motion. Take a bench press rep, for example. You may have a sticking point midway through the rep. But when youre using a weight you can control, you generate enough kinetic energy before that moment to push through that sticking point. Move up in weight, however, and you cant generate as much kinetic energy before that moment, so you struggle to get past your sticking point.

Remove that kinetic energy from the mix, however, and work only at that sticking point, and you get to work on creating max output at that point in the force curve. You can work isometrics from any point, allowing you to work on creating max output at every moment in the force curve.

Such levels of force cant be duplicated with a moving bar, not even when youre performing your one-rep max.

<h1> The Rules of Isometric Training for A Bigger Max </h1>

Before you start up with isometric training, make sure you understand how to do it both safely and effectively. You want to create a situation that forces your muscles to generate maximum force, which requires using a challenging load. Its also going to tax your muscles and require a lot of mental focus, so you want to make sure you do it safely, too.

So keep these principles in mind whenever youre incorporating isometric work into your workouts.

Be sure you use a weight that you cant budge by yourself. So if your one-rep max in the bench is, say, 225 pounds, youll want to use a weight thats a good bit heavier than that. To do that safely, youll also want to make sure youre using a Smith machine or other machine that essentially provides you with a built-in spot.

For an isometric to work, you have to be willing to hold it for awhile. Focus on 10- to 20-second contractions, and make sure you give each one everything youve got. Dont let yourself relax during the period of each rep. And know that itll be harder to exert yourself than you think on these. Ten seconds doesnt sound like much when you read it here, but your typical standard set of an exercise sometimes lasts only a little longer. And youre doing multiple reps of that, giving your muscles time to lengthen, contract, and relax. You heard it here first: These 10- to 20-second will be more than enough time to make your muscles quiver and zap your nervous system.

Limit your isometric training work to 2 to 3 sets

Thats more than enough volume. The goal isnt to take your nervous system down to zero, at least not the way youre trying to use them in this story. Youre working to amp and prime your body so that itll perform better on standard reps. Rest 30 to 60 seconds between each set of iso work.

Not all exercises are ideal for this brand of isometric priming training. Youre not doing this with, say, power cleans or snatches, and you also dont want to challenge yourself in situations that could lead to injury (say, an overhead squat). So stick with these bang-for-your-buck moves, smart exercises that use conventional gym equipment and can really enhance your performance at basic gym moves.

Pump Up Your Deadlift: Iso Deadlift

Set up an empty bar in a squat cage, with the bar on the ground and the safety pins positioned over the bar, not under it. Position your body as if youre going to do a standard deadlift (and you can check out the video below to learn the basics of how to set up for the deadlift).

Now, pull the bar up, as if deadlifting. Youll eventually hit the pins. Pull straight into them and continue pulling up; now youre holding your isometric. Try to pick the entire machine off the ground (unless youre the Hulk, you shouldnt be able to). Pull with everything youve got, but never let your hips rise higher than your shoulders at any point.

Play with pin position on this, hitting different portions of the deadlift force curve. A few good pin positions to work with: Positioning the pins level with your upper shin, lower shin, and lower thigh.

Max Out Your Bench Press: Iso Chest Press

Set up in a Smith machine, with your seat or the bench positioned just under the a bar set to the correct starting point. Make sure you overload the weight here (if your max on the bench is 200 pounds, load up 350).

Dont unrack the weight from its position in the machine; leave it locked. Now, try to move the bar. You shouldnt be able to. But keep pressing against it for your 10 to 20 seconds. Focus on keeping your form tight as you press against it, working on total-body tension as you press up and thinking about keeping your elbows tight and pinching your shoulder blades as you drive the bar as hard as you can.

Dont use a starting point thats too low on this one; the bar should be about 6 inches from your chest and shoulders.

Strengthen Your Squat: Wall Hip Abduction

This is a great way to prime your glutes and lumbar region before squats, deadlifts and lunges - and it doesnt even require any weight. To do this, simply stand with your side to a wall, spacing yourself about two feet from it, toes facing forward. With your leg closest to the wall, drive your heel into the wall, making sure not to bend either knee. Drive outward against the wall as hard as you can, aiming for the glutes to do most of the work on both sides.

Pump Up Your Back: Shoulder Extension

Stand with your back to a wall, and step one foot away from it. Assume a quarter-squat position, and extend your arms straight back behind you with clenched fists until the hands contact the wall. Your elbows should be locked right out, and you should be maintaining good posture with a proud chest. Apply maximum force behind you, and keep the rear deltoids and triceps fully engaged the entire time.

Dominate Your Pullup: Flexed Arm Hang

Find a pull up bar and choose your desired hand position (neutral, overhand or underhand grip are all fine). Using the best pullup form possible, perform one rep, and hold that top position, avoiding swinging. Tighten your abs while doing this. Be sure to keep the shoulder blades pulled back and down, so the ribcage remains highest up when holding position.

Use Isometrics To Boost All Your Max Lifts

If you want to push yourself to bigger gains on big lifts like the bench press and deadlift, you have several tried-and-true methods. You could add more weight to whatever exercise youre doing, or you could do more reps. You could reduce your rest time between sets, or you could slow the pace of every rep, increasing time-under-tension.

How To Use Isometrics To Supercharge Your Biggest Lifts

Thats right. When you start training, its absolutely critical to use proper, perfect form, and to make serious muscle gains, youll want to use that more often than not. But if youve been hitting the gym for years now and have already have some solid muscular development to show for it, then the perfect cheat just might be what you need to bust through your latest training plateau.

Mastery of the basics comes first, but if your bench press max just wont budge or you cant seem to gain that extra-half-inch you want on your guns, smartly employing cheat reps just may be the route through your current gym wall. Smartly utilized cheat reps let you overload your muscles in ways that promote growth. Will the for police on Instagram crush you? Sure, but youll be on your way to the muscle and strength you badly want.

Cheat reps are all about really overloading the muscles youre intending to train. When you do flawless reps, youre generally isolating and focusing on the muscles youre training, and not letting other muscles assist with the lift. Cheat reps, on the other hand, are all about letting other muscles contribute to the basic lift.

Getting other muscles involved allows you to lift more weight, which means youre exposing the muscle youre training to more weight, period. Granted, the target muscle (say, your biceps) is getting plenty of help from other muscle groups (say, your shoulders and back), so its not doing all the work. But it still has to shoulder a greater load than usual.

And the greatest benefit to cheat reps comes as you lower the weight back down to the starting point. Known as the eccentric phase of an exercise, this lowering process is often done mostly by the target muscle, with limited help from those other muscle groups. So your entire body may have helped you, say, do a heavy barbell biceps curl. But if you take your time lowering that heavy bar down to the start of the curl, trying to take, say, 3 seconds to lower it, your biceps bear the brunt of that load.

To truly push their limits, youre going to need to deal with an overload to the eccentric, and the only way to get there is to cheat with weight thats a few percent higher than your rep range max.

And you shouldnt be doing cheater reps in every workout-or at every stage of your muscle-building journey. You have to be an experienced lifter whos already seen serious gains, understand their body, and understands how to perform a perfect rep of the exercise youre trying to cheat on. Youre not really cheating if you dont know the basics of the exercise first.

<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/Bsv7qNRhpSh/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_medium=loading" id="1be453a9-81f8-33f8-a98f-602c63f00720"> View this post on Instagram </a> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/Bsv7qNRhpSh/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_medium=loading" id="1796f906-1282-3b0e-a4b7-cc6d8b338d98"> A post shared by @coachleeboyce </a> on Jan 17, 2019 at 12:31pm PST

Lifting starts with a mind-muscle connection, which you establish with perfect form. Once you have that perfect form covered, you can consider applying cheat principles. There are two ways to do this.

Your first option: Load up a weight thats heavier than normal right from the beginning. Youll need to start cheating with every rep then, probably doing fewer reps than usual. This will expose your muscles to a heavier load than usual; use this method smartly and eventually, theyll adapt. Your other option: Use your normal weight. Do as many reps as you can, then cheat your way to a few more reps.

However you do it, dont use it in every workout, or on every exercise-and dont use it when youre tired at the end of a workout. Cheat reps gain results when theyre used smartly; when theyre not, they invite injury. Consider the Rule of 1 when employing cheater reps. Never use them for more than one exercise in a workout. Never use them more than once a week. And always use them on your first exercise of a workout; the last thing you want to do is try to cheat your way to bench press reps with more weight than youve ever used after your chest fibers are tired out from incline bench reps and cable flies and pushups.

Not every exercise is ideal for cheating. Here are four motions you can cheat with-and how to pull them off cheater-style.

For Powerful Biceps: Barbell Curls

Stand holding a barbell loaded with a weight thats 10 or 15 pounds above your normal training weight. Bend your arms slightly, then hinge forward just a little bit at the waist. Mildly rock back; this will help the curl get started. Then finish the curl by curling the barbell up with your biceps. Slowly lower the weights to take advantage of the negative contraction.

<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BsszEF5gRU6/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_medium=loading" id="37510198-4964-3583-a6fa-dd9f83660f5d"> View this post on Instagram </a> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BsszEF5gRU6/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_medium=loading" id="0e37690f-0d13-3273-a944-e6a8ffdfaad6"> A post shared by (@c__s__y0522) </a> on Jan 16, 2019 at 7:10am PST

Pause for a second after youve returned to the start position, then begin the next rep. Stringing together too many cheat reps often leads to less-than-stellar eccentric contractions (which defeats the purpose of the cheat in this exercise).

Think of doing 3 sets of 4 to 6 reps.

Theres a misconception that your trunk and spine must remain rigid when youre doing a cable row. Your arms will only be able to row so much, even with good form, and your upper and lower back, in real life, often work together to help you lift things. So its OK to rock a little when doing seated rows.

<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/Bs33PbUgpsS/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_medium=loading" id="b84876bf-e214-333c-aba3-56af19750b9f"> View this post on Instagram </a> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/Bs33PbUgpsS/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_medium=loading" id="f00da8c8-dd70-381d-a301-52601101d290"> A post shared by Frank Fata (@frank_fata1) </a> on Jan 20, 2019 at 2:23pm PST

The key is how and when youre rocking backwards. Set up as if performing a regular row, with your hands gripping the bar of the cable attachment, arms fully extended. Only after that do you let your torso shift forward. However, you keep your core tight as your torso shifts forward; think about maintaining a rigid spine, or even arching your back just slightly. Make sure you are pivoting from your hip, not your lower back.

Then rock backwards from the hip; use that momentum to start the row motion. Squeeze your shoulder blades, then row the weight back. Make sure you squeeze your shoulder blades before starting the row to protect your shoulders.

Aim to do 3 sets of 6 to 10 reps.

For Powerful Shoulders: Standing Overhead Press

The overhead press pattern can be carefully spiced up if you learn to involve your legs. This turns the motion into a push press, and if you use a controlled eccentric contraction, that can help grow serious shoulders.

A traditional standing overhead press has you standing with a barbell or dumbbells at your shoulders, core tight and glutes squeezed, then pressing up, focusing on moving only at the shoulder and elbow joints. To make this a push press, simply bend at the knees and hips just slightly, essentially doing a quarter squat. Explode from that position, then use the momentum to drive the weight up and overhead. Lower the weight slowly, then reset for another rep.

The key here: Make sure your core stays tight even in the push press. If it doesnt, you could harm your lower back, or do more harm than good for your shoulders. Limit the reps to 3 sets of 3 to 5.

<h1> Exercises You Should Never Cheat </h1>

Not every exercise works well when you cheat it; in some cases, you only create a mechanism for injury. Avoid cheating on these movements.

Young man doing bench presses while working out with friends in gym in garage

Youll see plenty of guys lifting their hips and lower back off the bench to cheat the weight upwards, but thats a risky proposition. Bench-pressing without proper form can cause long-term shoulder trouble, so its not worth the risk.

And exercises like them. A concentration curl is a focused exercise thats meant to isolate the biceps. Cheating and involving other muscle groups takes away the isolation qualities of the movement. Suddenly, youre not concentrating on proper form -- or on your biceps.

The further the arm moves away from the body, the more vulnerable it becomes to injuries at the shoulder joint. In the case of lateral raises, your arm is as far from the body as it could possibly get. Adding weight to overload the muscle is a risky proposition, especially since the shoulder joint is already the vulnerable to injury.

When it comes to packing on muscle, cheaters can prosper. As long as they cheat the right way.

How to Cheat Your Way to More Muscle

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