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Rear Delt Flys - Upper Back/Shoulder Exercise

By Elliott | April 26, 2008

Main Muscle Worked: Upper Back

Other Muscles Worked: traps,biceps

Equipment: Dumbbells

Mechanics Type:Isolation

Well developed rear delts will help to keep your shoulders balanced and help to prevent a lot of shoulder injuries and rotator cuff problems. Very often the front delts are strong from lots of pressing movements (bench presses, overhead presses, etc.) so they over power the rear delts.

Strong rear delts will also help to improve your strength in exercises such as the bench press. With a strong well developed upper back you will be more solid on the bench and be able to generate more power. They will also help your squat because the bar is placed across your upper back. By having big strong rear delts and traps you will be able to stabilize the bar better and not hunch over in the squat. Just look at anyone who has a big bench press and / or squat and you will see that they also have well developed rear delts and upper back muscles.

Here are are some exercises that will target your rear delts and upper back. You should incorporate these exercises into your workouts. I usually do at least a 3 sets of rear delt work every workout as part of my warm up. I also work my rear delts after chest, shoulder, and back workouts.

Since this is a small muscle group you should train with fairly light weights and do higher reps, between 10-20 reps per set. Focus on feeling the muscles working with each rep.

Lee Hayward.com

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