Difficulty Lifting With Long Limbs
Adding pounds of lean muscle to a thin frame is best accomplished using heavy barbell and dumbbell training, however for many taller or long-limbed guys building muscle requires a lot more effort than others.
Longer limbs tend to give you much more range of motion, which could be a bad thing when it comes to different pressing movements. It can be a great thing for pulling and extension movements.
The most important factor to maintain is proper form, especially when lifting really heavy, which is why it’s beneficial to know alternative exercises that can best serve you. Many of the heavy compound lifts for taller/long-limbed guys are difficult to perform because of the flexibility/mobility required for particular phases of the movement.
By knowing alternative exercises to replace the major lifts, you can save months of wasted effort in the gym and prevent careless mistakes that can cause injury.
Weightlifting Tips for Aesthetics for Taller Guys
As mentioned before, having longer limbs can serve as a disadvantage and advantage at the same time. While pushing movements can prove to be difficult, pulling/extension movements will require the use of a huge lever arm to force more tension over longer distances.
When you have longer limbs the concentric, or shortening of the muscles, can be somewhat dangerous for taller guys because of the stress that can be imposed on your joints and accessory muscles.
An example of this would be the bench press exercise and the stress forces on the deltoids and rotator cuff during the concentric phase of the movement.
To help with some alternative weightlifting tips, I’ll go over each exercise by muscle group:
Chest:
To prevent heavy stress on the shoulder muscles and joints, an alternative exercise you can perform is the pin press. The pin press allows you perform the standard bench press in a Smith rack with two rods that prevent your elbows from going too deep on the pushing movement.
Another movement that you can perform is the standard incline bench press. The incline bench press doesn’t have an emphasis on the barbell touching your chest since your torso is elevated at a 45-degree angle.
Back/Biceps:
One of my favorite exercises to perform is the chin-ups, and more specifically weighted chin-ups for back and biceps development. If you have long arms, you’ll have a long distance to carry your body weight, which will automatically give you more time under tension for the concentric phase of the exercise.
For more muscle activation, you can hold at the top of the exercise and lower your body weight for 2-3 seconds for the eccentric phase.
This exercise provides much better ROM over the lat pulldowns since individuals with longer arms have limited ROM when squeezing the latissimus muscle at the bottom of the movement.
Legs:
While the barbell squat is unanimously argued as the best exercise for hamstring/quadriceps development, they are often difficult for taller guys to perform with good form. This is because the long femurs create a disbalance that pushes your upper body forward when lowering the weight to the ground.
As an alternative, leg extensions and leg curls are your friend since your long legs will serve as a great lever to move less weight for more tension during extension and contraction of the leg muscles. Instead of doing a limited amount of proper leg squats, you can make up for this additional reps.
The Wrap Up
Being tall or having long limbs can serve as both a disadvantage and advantage depending on how effectively you train. By using alternative exercises you can focus on your weak areas without having to unnecessarily risk injury to your joints and accessory muscles. Apply the principles of high-intensity training and progressive overload to your alternative exercises to continue building muscle at a steady pace.
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