Chest Workouts | Pectoral Workouts | Weight Training Advice

Chest Workouts

Weight Training Advice

The chest is easily one of the most popular muscle groups to weight train. Because of this it's also one of the easiest to overtrain, especially for beginning weight trainers who think they must do an insane amount of sets when they work out the chest muscles. Keep your chest workouts simple without doing too much, get enough rest and recovery between workouts, and you will build a bigger chest.

Here's a great sample chest workout if you follow a 3 day weight training split routine and have 4 or 5 days to rest and recover each muscle group. This chest - pectoral workout calls for light, medium, and heavy days.

Light chest workout (all sets done for 15-20 reps)

1-2 sets of bench presses

1-2 sets of incline bench presses

1-2 sets of decline bench presses or dips

1-2 sets of dumbbell benches

1-2 sets of dumbbell inclines

1-2 drop sets of flyes or cable crossovers.

Medium chest workout (all sets done for 8-12 or 10-15 reps)

2-3 sets of bench press

2-3 sets of incline bench presses

2-3 sets of decline benches or dips

2-3 total sets of flat and/or incline dumbbell bench presses

2 drop sets of flyes or cable crossovers.

Heavy chest workout (all sets done for 3-7 or 5-10 reps)

3-4 sets of bench presses

3-4 sets of incline bench presses

2-3 sets of dips or decline bench presses

3-4 total sets of flat and incline dumbbell presses

2-3 drop sets of cable crossovers or flyes.

While the total sets per chest workout may not seem that high, you will get enough work done if you do all of your sets to failure. Of course you'll want to warm up before you do your working sets. Doing 15-20 reps per set on the "light" day will take a lot out of you so you won't need to do many total sets for your chest. You should be able to do more sets on your medium and light days because you won't have as much lactic acid build up as you will on the light chest workout. The word "light" only means that you'll be using lighter weight because you're trying to get more repititions per sets than on the medium and heavy days.

Keep a workout log and always strive to do a little bit more as far as reps or weight goes to increase strength and build more pectoral muscle. If you can, try to do weighted dips rather than decline bench presses for a change of pace. The drop sets at the end of these workouts will ensure that you finish them off with a nice pump. You also don't want to spend too much time per workout - try to keep them between 45 minutes to a little over an hour. Of course these are just sample chest workouts, you can experiment wth the amount of sets, reps, and exercises you do to see what works best for you. If you aren't completely recovered before your next pectoral workout you should take an extra day off or drop the amount of sets you do a bit.

These workouts are for natural weight trainers and you'll be surprised at how much this few sets can take out of you. If you know your body, use good form, and go to positive failure on every set you may even want to do less total sets per chest workout.