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I started doing more leg workouts like squats two months ago and it has improved my upper body strength quickly. Today, I benched 2 reps of 225 lbs. Haven't done that since I was 20. It's also helped improve things like pull ups and deadlift.
Anyways, I recommend doing exercises like squats to improve your overall strength.
Years ago, reading a weightlifting book from the fifties, the author recommended doing squats just before bench presses. His reasoning was the deep breathing expanded your chest and prepared you for the bench press. I don't know if that's true or not, but I was doing the typical beginners/intermediate 3 full body workouts a week, it didn't hurt.
That happened because lower body dominant lifts force your nervous system to recruit a ton of muscle fibers thereby making your nervous system a lot more efficient. The new-found nervous system efficiency translates into stronger upper body lifts as well.
1. Putting serious amounts of weight on your back and squatting it recruits muscle fibers, which makes your nervous system adapt. When your nervous system adapts it works more efficiently. When you do squats, the legs, core and entire body's nervous system is stressed and adapts.
Compare a simple arm curl or a barbell squat. Which one do you think will make you stronger? Using an isolation exercise with 35 lbs or compound exercise with 300 pounds?
2. Naturally, your legs are stronger than your upper body. If you don't train your legs, eventually your upper body will stall -- until your legs start to catch up.
Oh yes, a strong lower body equals a strong upper body. The bulk of your overall strength comes from your lower body. 2 sets of heavy squats prepare me for a massive bench workout.
" I squat to make my arms grow"
-Tom "Mr Legs" Platz-1989
500 lbs--23 reps!
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