With so many muscles on your body, it can sometimes be difficult to choose which ones to prioritize. Depending on your goals, some may be more important than others, and many muscles serve a variety of purposes. If you're looking to improve your arm aesthetics, focusing on your triceps can help because that muscle comprises two-thirds of the muscle mass of your upper arm. Meanwhile, training your back muscles will support overall strength, rowing performance and even punch recovery speed, a primary concern for boxers. You can train both muscle groups effectively with cable exercise machines.
Triceps Isolation
If you want to make sure you're giving your triceps the attention they need to develop into strong and sexy upper arms, isolation exercises can help. As the name suggests, such exercises target just one muscle or group, challenging it to work hard to provide all of the force needed to move the resistance. Isolation exercises can be beneficial for improving a lagging muscle group as well as recovering strength during injury rehab programs. Cable exercises that isolate your triceps include the triceps pushdown, forward triceps extension and side triceps extension. You can add variety to your routine by alternating between single- and double-arm varieties of the exercises.
Triceps Compound Exercises
If you're a fan of efficiency and intensity, compound exercises may be a better choice for you. Such exercises engage multiple muscle groups in addition to the prime mover and help you burn calories more quickly, get a full-body workout in less time, and are more reflective of real world movements. You can target your triceps as well as some collateral muscles with exercises such as the cable fly, cable chest press and cable overhead press.
Back Isolation Exercises
Training your back muscles can help you strike a sexy silhouette and will also help you stay strong, whether you're lifting a barbell or a baby. Many cable exercises feature the muscles of your back as primary targets; you can isolate your back muscles with lifts such as the lat pull-down, seated cable row and bent-over standing cable row. Your back is made up of several muscles, so varying your exercise selections is important to guarantee overall strength.
Back Compound Exercises
While your back is a large muscle group in and of itself, you can enhance the calorie-burning potential and efficiency of your workouts with compound back exercises. Some examples of compound, back-focused exercises include the cable reverse fly, cable deadlift, cable incline row and single-arm cable standing row.
