Keep Your Chest High

On most exercises, keeping your chest out, shoulders back and chin up, almost always puts you in a good mechanical position. Good mechanical position is important for avoiding injuries and for getting the most benefit from the exercise you are doing. Good mechanical position is just a fancy way of saying good posture.  Keeping the chest out is especially important on back exercises.

With the chest out and shoulders back on the lat pull-down, you get a peak contraction in the lats. While you do this exercise, puff out your chest, throw the shoulders back, look upwards and see if that doesn't make a positive difference for you.

Chest exercises also favor good form and good posture. Keep your chest out on a dumbbell fly or peck-deck fly. Focus on that and you will find it a great way to isolate the pectoral muscles. On a bench press, you will find keeping the chest up and out with your shoulders back is more comfortable on your spine and allows you to lift heavier.

Chest out and back straight on triceps push-downs helps to isolate the triceps. The primary rule for triceps (and biceps) work is to keep the elbows stationary. However, keeping the chest out, chin up and shoulders back makes it easier to keep perfect form on triceps and biceps exercises.

Focus

This has been brought up on other pages, but lifting weights can be a dangerous sport. It is so important, for safety's sake and for getting the maximum benefit from your efforts to focus, focus, focus on the task at hand.

Besides safety, the other reason to always focus on what you're doing is to get the most benefit from what you're doing. Simply put, concentrating on the task of building muscle will help you to build muscle.

As you begin any exercise, pick a spot on the wall or the ceiling and focus on that spot like a laser beam for the duration of the set. Try and do this during every rep of every set of every exercise in every workout. This laser-like focus keeps your mind and body working together, keeps you concentrating on the task at hand and is a form of mental discipline as well.

Work "In" to "Get Wide"

This is an old-school trick taught to me by a professional bodybuilder from the seventies, but his advice is supported today by studies in exercise physiology and kinesiology.

On the lat pull-down, as shown above, use an underhand grip with your hands spaced shoulder width or less. Bring the bar down to the chin or slightly below. Going lower does nothing as the lat is completely contracted by the time the elbows go below parallel. Like all exercises, do this one in a slow and controlled manner. This technique and form will isolate the latissimus dorsi. If you want more motivation for working lats this way, this is the way Dorian Yates did this exercise.

On a bicep curl, using a narrow grip will work the outer head of the muscle more intensely than the inner head. Again, experience has taught me this, but people who study this for a living confirm that the bio-mechanical stresses of curling a weight with a narrow grip will put the forces involved in-line with the outer part of the muscle.

On a triceps push down, a narrow grip works the outer head of the triceps a little more than the inner head

Push From the Heels

This single tip greatly improved my squat. Whether you're doing a hack squat, or a dumbbell squat or a Smith machine squat or a barbell squat - As you come up, concentrate on pushing from your heels. Don't push with your toes or from the arch of the foot. Push from the heels. Try it. What it does is put the weight more directly in line with your spine and lets you lift heavier with better balance.

Pushing from the heels also works on dead lifts. By concentrating on feeling the weight over your heels, you have shifted your center of gravity back in that direction making you more stable and centered.

This technique works on the leg press machine too. You will feel deep stimulation in the thigh if you think about pushing from the heels while pressing.