Lifting 101: The Balance of Push & Pull

By Ross Titza :: More posts in Training and Exercise

Part I – Upper Body

When most people think of training for balance thoughts of standing on a balance board or even hopping on one foot tend to come to mind. Balance can and should also be thought of as training opposing muscles equally to prevent imbalances which would ultimately lead to injurt.  This article specifically discusses balancing the upper body and how to properly mix pushing and pulling movements to do so.

To do this you have to get away from thinking in terms of body part training and instead focusing on training movements.  So instead of training your chest you would instead be training horizontal pushing motions such as pushups and the benchpress.  The oppoiste of this would be horizontal pulling movements like seated rows or horizontal pullups.  In order to train for “balance” you would want to perform equal amounts of exercise for both movements- horizontal pushing and pulling.

Similarly, exercises like pull-ups would be considered a vertical pull and to balance out vertical pulling you would train vertical pushing through movements like overhead dumbbell presses. If you follow principles like this it becomes harder to over-train one area and easier to avoid injuries.

Because of the fact that everything we do in our daily life brings our posture “forward” it may be true in the case of the upper body training that ”balance” may actually be doing more pulling movements than pushing.  Instead of doing more exercises however try and push yourself a little harder on the pulling movements by doing an extra set of each exercise.

Use this simple template to put this idea into action. Perform 8-10 repetitions and 3-4 sets of each exercise. If you feel your posture is not ideal do 3 sets of the pushing movements and 4 sets of the pulling movements for the reasons listed above.  Perform this program for 4 weeks.

Day 1

• A1 Incline Bench Press (Horizontal Push)
• A2 Single Arm Pull-down (Vertical Pull)
• B1 Single Arm Overhead Press (Vertical Push)
• B2 Bent Over Row (Horizontal Pull)
• C1 Hammer Curls
• C2 Push-downs

Day 2

• A1 Pull-ups (Vertical Pull)
• A2 Military Press (Vertical Push)
• B1 Single Arm Cable Row (Horizontal Pull)
• B2 Dips (Horizontal Push)
• C1 Overhead Triceps Extension
• C2 Cable Upright Rows