Balancing Your Upper And Lower Body For Enormous Strength, a guest post by Douglass Hameldon To have power, you must have alignment and balance. Alignment between the upper and lower body is necessary, and comes from training the core areas such as the musculature of the spine, the pelvic region, legs and shoulders. To fully acquire power and stability in these areas, they should be trained in as many positions and angles (frontal, lateral, diagonal and rotational) as possible. In this article, we will mainly focus on legs and shoulder workout as they are key to a good balance between the upper and lower body. Lets begin with the shoulder workout routines and below are three shoulder workouts to help you get that upper body strength. Shoulder Workout sport, bodybuilding, weightlifting, exercising and people concept – young man with dumbbells flexing muscles in gym over virtual charts 1. Seated shoulder presses. You need a chair and two dumbbells. Make sure your back is straight when you are seated. Hold your dumbbells horizontally and extend your arms so that the dumbbells are overhead and arms are parallel. Lower your dumbbells slowly making sure your upper arms are aligned to your shoulders creating a right angle with your lower arms. Once the arms form a right angle, extend your arms so that the dumbbells are above again. 2.Lateral Raises. Dumbbell Lateral Raise. Studio composite over white. Get two dumbbells. Stand upright with legs apart and knees slightly bent. Lean your chest forward but not beyond your knees. Keep your arms and dumbbells on your sides, and elbows slightly bent. Extend your arms to the side to lift the weights until upper and lower arms are aligned and parallel to the ground. Slowly lower your arms so that your dumbbells are on your sides again. You will need two dumbbells for this. Stand upright with legs apart and knees slightly bent. Hold your dumbbells at your sides with your forearms facing the front and your palms facing the back. Lift a dumbbell forward until arm is parallel to the floor. Slowly lower your arm when it is already parallel to the ground. Do the same with the other arm and alternate between the two. You can perform these exercises in two to three sets of 10 to 12 repetitions, or as you desire. You only need to feel a burning sensation when you are through so as to know if your muscles have been worked out. On the other hand, when it comes to legs workout for a good lower body strength, we mainly focus on the thighs and calves. As such, below are two routines you can try for a good legs workout. 3. Front Raises. You will need two dumbbells for this. Stand upright with legs apart and knees slightly bent. Hold your dumbbells at your sides with your forearms facing the front and your palms facing the back. Lift a dumbbell forward until arm is parallel to the floor. Slowly lower your arm when it is already parallel to the ground. Do the same with the other arm and alternate between the two. Legs Workouts: 1. Exercising Thighs With The Leg Workouts There are various of workouts that can be easily performed for the thighs. Following are just some of them. *Between a bare wall and the small of the back, a stability ball should be placed. The ball should be allowed to go up the back while squatting as far as possible. After returning back to the original standing position it should be repeated for a total of 10 times. *Drawing circle in the air is another easy exercise. It can be performed while lying on the floor and keeping both legs pointed towards the ceiling. A good choice is to do plies, which helps in creating leaned and long leg muscles. Fitness woman with her legs up practising yoga. For better plies, one needs to stand with the toes pointing outwards while the legs are kept just over shoulder-width apart. Then, in front of the torso both arms should be put out straight while lowering into a squat position. Next, the person should return back to the standing position. A total of twenty repetitions should be performed for this. 2. Calves exercise for the Leg Workouts: There are several exercises for the calves. By holding some light weights on both sides of the body while performing squats, one can easily build strong calves. Because calf muscles are used in the vertical jumping, the fitness, sport, people, exercising and lifestyle concept – woman skipping with jump rope outdoors Conclusion Both legs and shoulders workouts can be done with a personal trainer at the fitness center. However, if you feel that you can do it yourself, you can still go for it. Bio: Douglass Hameldon. CEO/Editor in Chief of FitnessPurity®. (Use attached image in mail) Hi, I’m Doug. My job is to help people reach their fitness goals with easy-to-follow guides, and to overcome any obstacles along the way. Visit my site for more information.