Weight Training Advice
Chest Weight Training Exercises and Workouts
exercise. If you've been weight training, you'll inevitably hear the question "How much can ya bench?". The chest, or pectoral muscles are also enjoyable to work out because you can get a good pump quickly while training them and chest exercises are easy to perform.
The chest muscles consist of the lower pectorals and upper pectorals. The lower pectoral muscles work harder while performing flat and decline bench exercises like bench presses and dumbbell flyes. The upper pectorals work harder on incline bench exercises like incline bench presses and incline flyes.
The staple exercise of any chest weight training routine is the bench press. Many people think the bench press is just lying on a bench, lowering the weight to your chest and pushing it up. There's a lot more to bench pressing than that. You should aim to contract your upper back muscles inward while lying on the bench to pop out the pectorals so you're working your chest more than your shoulders and triceps.
Many people also cheat on the bench press by lifting their butts off the bench to decrease the distance they have to push the weight. This isn't going to make you any stronger and can be bad for your lower back. Keep your butt on the bench and your back will have a natural arch to help you bench press more weight. Many people also practically drop the weight on their chests to get it to bounce off their chests and make that part of the movement easier. This can be dangerous and won't help your strength at the lower part of the movement. You also want to take advantage of the negative part of the bench press so make sure you lower the weight under control.
For the upper pecs the best chest exercise is the incline bench press. It's performed pretty much the same way as the flat bench press, just at a different angle. You don't want to neglect the incline bench press if you train your lower pecs too much in relation to your upper pecs you may end with overdeveloped lower pecs which will cause a droopy appearance to your chest. If you have this problem you may want to start your chest weight training workout with incline bench presses instead of flat bench presses.
Using dumbbells for flat and incline bench presses after your barbell exercises is a good idea as well because they'll allow you to get a nice stretch at the bottom of the movement.
Dips can also be a good chest exercise as long as you use your pectorals more than your triceps. Perform dips at an angle, keeping your lower body as far back as possible, to hit the pecs.
Finish your chest weight training routine with dumbbell flyes, machine flyes, cable flyes, or cable cross-overs. Make sure you get a good stretch at the bottom of the movement and contract your chest at the top of the movement. Switch between the flat and incline versions of these chest exercises to keep your body guessing.
Make sure to get plenty of rest between chest workouts. Since chest exercises are so popular to perform you may get overzealous and end up overtraining your chest.
The chest is without a doubt one of the most popular bodyparts to train while following a weight training routine, probably because the bench press is the most popular weight training
Gain 27 pounds of rock hard muscle in 90 days naturally
Top Muscle Building Guides
Build muscle and lose fat at the same time with this top rated online muscle building guide
Learn how to build muscle, lose fat, and get ripped abs fast
