Upper Body Strength Training: Exercises, Sets, and Reps

I received an email recently from a coach asking me to clarify my recommendations for upper body strength training for softball players. Specifically, he wanted to know how many sets and repetitions of exercises like push ups, pull ups, and rows his athletes should be completing. Here is my response:

The Exercises

First, it is important to lay out the context and reasoning for my exercise selection and programming philosophy. My upper body exercise catalog for softball players includes primarily: push ups, overhead pressing, pull ups, and row variations.

There are 2 important reasons I use exercises like these. In each exercise:

• The shoulder complex (arm, shoulder blade, collar bone, ribs, spine) is able to move freely.
• The core must fire to support proper shoulder mechanics throughout the movement.

Exercises like the bench press can compromise movement-freedom around the shoulder as the shoulder blade is pinned between the bench and the rib cage.

Will bench pressing hurt your shoulder? I can’t say it will. Are there better options for softball players based on the reasons I mention above? I believe so.

Second, once you sit down at a machine or lay down on a bench, your core does not have to reflexively work as hard as it does during push ups, pressing, and exercises like TRX Rows. What do I mean by reflexively? I mean, you don’t want to have to remind it to do its job. Just like when you’re in the pitching circle or batter’s box, you shouldn’t be thinking about firing your core or tightening your abs.

I mean your core is either on, or the exercise is going to look like crap. You can bench with a weak core and it will stay weak. You can’t do 10 push ups with a weak core. They’ll turn into nose-dips.

A moment on overhead lifting: The overhead press I’m referring to is a controlled movement with a barbell, dumbbells, or kettlebells. I’m not referring to explosive, Olympic lifting iterations such as the jerk or snatch. To me, progressing to full overhead pressing should be a goal for any athlete. It is, in my opinion, the best indicator for shoulder health on the field, but that’s for another article.

The overhead press is as much of a core exercise as it is a “shoulder” exercise. Similar to the push up, if the core is weak, or the weight is too heavy, the athlete will not be able to perform the exercise correctly. This comes down to having high, rigid, technical standards as the coach.

Sets and Reps

Long story short: 3-5 sets of 5-10 repetitions.

Got it? Ok, good.

So if you held a gun to my head, that is what I’d tell you. Honestly, that’s what my programs most often come down to. Why?

Multiple sets of more than 10 reps actually improves endurance more than strength. It may also cause a lot of soreness for 1-3 days.

Sets of fewer than 5 reps focus more on maximum strength. This is where things get tricky. I just said we wanted strength, yet I’m telling you to do more than 5 reps.

Doing a set of 3 or 4 reps means you must use a weight that you could NOT lift for 5, 6, 7, or more reps. It must be HEAVY.

This means for someone who can do 10 push ups, you need to add resistance to those push ups by adding weight on their back (plates, chains, sandbags, people), until you challenge the athlete enough.

This means trying to press a weight overhead you can only lift 1-5 times. If you haven’t tried that, I’m telling you it gets ugly real fast.

It is my opinion, that training the upper body for maximum strength poses more risk than it yields reward for most softball players.

The exception to my stance is the instance when an athlete can only perform 1-5 push ups or pull ups, which is common. To be clear, body weight-only exercises, irrespective of repetitions performed, do not pose the risk I’m referring to. It is only when you need to begin to find ways to add challenge, resistance, load that you need to use caution. Is that clear?

Body weight pull ups never hurt nobody.

Sample Programming

Push Ups
Level 1: Modified Push Up (from knees) 4 x AMAP (as many as possible)
Level 2: Push Up 4 x AMAP up to 10
Level 3: Push Up w/:02 Pause at Bottom 4 x 5+
Level 4: Push Up w/10lb Plate on Back 4 x AMAP

Pull Ups
Level 1: Pull Up w/ 2 Medium Band Assistance 3 x AMAP
Level 2: Pull Up w/ 1 Medium Band Assistance 3 x AMAP
Level 3: Pull Up 3 x AMAP
Level 4: Pull Up w/10lb weight vest 3 x AMAP

Press
Level 1: Press w/15 lb bar 3×8
Level 2: Press w/25 lb bar 3×8
Level 3: Press w/25 lb bar 2×8, w/35 lb bar 2×6
Level 4: Press w/35 lb bar 2×6, w/45 lb bar 2×5

TRX Row
Level 1: 4×8
Level 2: 4×8 w/pause at top
Level 3: 4×10
Level 4: 4×10 w/10lb weight vest

Push Up

Pull Up

TRX