“Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live.” – Jim Rohn

Fitness is key to our overall health. We all know it, and for those of us who take it seriously, we know how to train our bodies to keep in the best physical shape. Or do we? To truly understand fitness, we must first understand the body. Scientific research and anatomy is paramount to this understanding – we must know we are dealing with on the inside, in order to truly benefit on the outside. And just as an athlete or trainer knows, looking good on the outside means feeling just as good on the inside.

Understanding The Body

Your back is the number one place in the body that overcompensates for all the other areas that are not in proper use. For instance if we are not training our core muscles properly, our back muscles will begin to overwork, thus resulting in pain, or strained muscles. This need not be the case. However there are negatives for any area that we overwork, or over train. When we talk about fitness, and bodybuilding, we are talking about making each part of the body work at its strongest, building the muscles so that they work together and the body works at its full capacity. If we over train any area, we will land in some rather hot water.

Back To Front

It is actually better to overwork your back than your chest. Although the chest seems to be the more difficult part of the body to get into peak condition (we often see a good set of guns, but are less likely to see highly developed pectorals) it is very important to approach a chest workout properly. If you only work on your chest, the muscles do not necessarily grow and grow the way you think they might. In fact when you only develop the chest muscles, they grow tighter and tighter, and this begins to affect your overall posture in a way that likely does not match the desired result you were hoping for.

Excessive development of the chest (and underdevelopment of the back) can lead to a curving of the spine and a condition called ‘Kyphosis’, otherwise known as hunchback. With time the bones can compress, age and crack under the pressure, which is not only very painful, but the complete opposite of what was initially being aimed for. The overall area of the back contains much more muscle than the chest. The two must work with each other in order to develop the chest; unfortunately the back will look fine without the chest being as developed, but the same does not occur vice versa. Working only the chest muscles is non-functional, painful and dangerous. But working the chest and the back muscles, will develop the chest in the way you probably envision. Good posture never fails to look good!

Hot Tips

Don’t bench press too often. It can cause you to lose muscle mass and strength rather than gain it if you do it too often. Know that an overall build will always look better, AND you will have less pain in other areas if all your muscle groups are working together as a team. Good back muscles will actually make your chest look bigger. When you pull those back muscles back and shoulders back, that chest you’ve been working will look even bigger. For this reason, it is important that your back is tighter and more muscled than the rest of your body. It’s very difficult for your back to look “too big” or disproportionate by working it too hard. It is, however, easy to overdo the chest muscles if you are not looking after the rest of your body properly.

Featured photo credit: aboutlifting.com via aboutlifting.com