Built for the beach

To help you look great for summer, this workout builds total-body strength and muscle. The secret formula: a heavy dose of exercises that focus on your upper- and middle-back muscles – your trapezius, rear deltoids, teres major and rhomboids. Why? Because these muscles are key to stabilising your shoulder joints. And strong, stable shoulders allow you to lift heavier weights in just about every upper-body exercise, from the bench press to the arm curl.
Remember this when you’re doing moves like the cable row, cable face-pull, standing supported single-arm dumbbell row and sumo deadlift – you may not be able to see all the muscles you’re working in the mirror, but you’ll experience faster gains all over.

DIRECTIONS

Do each workout once a week (A on Monday, B on Wednesday, C on Friday, for example), starting with a 10-minute warm-up. Add one or more core exercise (plank, crunches, bridge, etc) to the start or end of each workout. Do the exercises in the order shown, resting just long enough so you can repeat each set at nearly the same performance level. That’ll be about two minutes for the heaviest sets (3-6 reps), and 60-90 seconds for sets of eight reps or more.

Photo by Steve Baccon Dec 16, 2011