The Best Lifting Accessory Work for Women

By Dena Mellick, Coach, Atlanta Women’s Barbell Club

We’ve talked about the Big Four compound lifts and why we do them in AWBC. Now let’s talk about the accessories that female lifters need! Women generally need to develop their upper back, their lat muscles, and their triceps. Those can be developed with the following:

Chin-ups: There are all types of variations for chin-ups and even pre-chin-up work you can do! Lat pull-downs and inverted rows are a good place to start. Banded chin-ups and chin-up negatives are good stepping stones while working on strength to get to a full chin-up!

Rows: Seated cable rows, barbell rows, dumbbell rows are all good ways to develop upper back strength.

Lat pull-downs develop the lats or the latissimus dorsi, the largest muscle in the upper body, which occupies the majority of the posterior thorax.

For the triceps: Lying tricep extensions, dumbbell tricep extensions, cable tricep push-downs, and tricep dips are all great accessories to develop your triceps, which will aid your bench press and other lifts!

Pectoralis accessory work is also helpful – the dumbbell bench press is a good accessory to the barbell bench press. Pec flies are also helpful for this muscular development.

And finally, abs and core work in general are great additions to assist your main lifts.

What about lower body accessories? Usually upper body accessories are a priority for women, but some great lower body accessories include step-ups, lunges, and split squats. We also love to utilize leg press and the leg extension/hamstring curl.

The main thing with accessories is to keep it simple and to still apply the principle of progressive overload to them – meaning it’s best to choose a few and stick with it. If you’re constantly changing what you’re doing, it will be difficult to gauge improvement. That applies to both accessories and the main lifts!