“Chest Muscle Workout”Today, I’d like to pass on a workout that I know will blast you through any barriers, plateaus or anything else that’s not causing your chest to grow. The chest workout is designed by yours truly and will give your chest a monster pump.
The following workout will hit your chest at all angles in order to help provide you with a full, balanced chest development. Now, I’m going to say that this chest workout is not for beginners. If you’re at the beginner level or even early intermediate levels, this chest muscle workout may be a bit too much. There are drop sets and something I like to call, constant tension sets which will be performed at the end of the workout. However, if you feel your past the beginner, early intermediate stages of training (generally after 4 to 6 months of steady training), than you are probably ready for this kind of workout. To get the absolute most from this chest muscle workout, here’s what I suggest you do. Firstly, have a meal about 2 hours prior consisting of a lean protein source (such as a 4 to 5 ounce chicken breast), 3/4 cup of organic brown rice with raisins mixed in, and 1 cup of steamed broccoli. This is an example of a clean meal that will fuel your body up with grade A building material. What you want to do is prime your body and get it ready for the big chest workout. This is very important, don’t overeat. Have one serving of this kind of meal and you shouldn’t feel stuffed. After the meal, you should feel somewhat satisfied but not bloated. This is very important for any meal, especially the meal prior to workout out. Secondly, about 45 minutes prior to your workout, have a creatine drink such as Dymatize’s Xpand or Nutrabolics NOZ. You can also use SAN V12 or something similar. I feel these make the best pre workout drinks to really help give you a huge pump. Thirdly, if you can afford it, try taking one Endothil CR tab about 20 prior to workout out. I’ve used this product and it works pretty good. However, I’m not saying you have to go out to buy this product because you don’t. It’s a training aide and may help you with a challenging workout such as the one I’m going to list here. About 10 minutes prior to the workout, have two glasses of water. Very important! At this point, you shouldn’t feel hungry and you shouldn’t feel starved. You should be feeling alert and energized. Ok, once your pre workout ritual is complete, it’s now time for the workout. Now, before I continue, there is a video from Sean Nalewanyj that shows you how to build a big, powerful chest. Sean owns Muscle Gain Truth and he knows what he's talking about. Take a look at the video here.
Here is the chest muscle workout: Warm Up The first thing you need to do is give your body a general warm up. Take 5 minutes and do some light cardio on the exercise bike, elliptical trainer, treadmill, running on the spot or whatever, as long as you give your body a light warm up. There’s nothing worse than trying to workout out in a “cold” state. By warming up your body first, you essentially get the blood flowing which cuts down on injuries and gives you a slight kick start. Don’t skip this because I know that it is very important. Rotator Cuff Warm Up This is very important and I think you should give your cuffs a good warm up because I know what this injury feels like and wouldn’t want this to happen to anyone else. You can read about my injury at: Weight Training And The Rotator Cuffs I suggest you do exercise number two here: And do 3 sets of 20 with a very light weight. This warm up shouldn’t take you anymore than 5 to 10 minutes to do. Chest Muscle Exercise #1 - Bench Press
Alright, the set and rep scheme looks as follows: Set one: Warm up 1 x 20 repetitions - 40% of max For your warm up set, your going to do 20 light repetitions to really give your chest a good warm up. After you’ve completed your set, do some light stretching for the chest and rest for about 1 minute. For your first set, your going to do 8 repetitions with a light weight. You are still in the warm up stage and want to get your body ready for the heavier weights without tiring your chest muscles out. Use about 50% of your max. Perform these reps nice and slow. Once you’ve completed the set, make sure you do some stretching. Rest for about 1 minute. For your second set, your going to be doing 8 repetitions with a moderate weight. You should be using 65% of your max. I still consider this set a warm up and you should not be using a challenging weight for this set. The reps should be somewhat easy and you should be able to perform these reps without any difficulty. Remember, your priming your chest, shoulders, and triceps for the heavy weights so don’t tire them out with high reps at this point. Your goal is to get your upper body muscles ready for heavy weight. Once you’ve completed the set, make sure you do some stretching. Rest for about 1 minute to 1 minute and a half. For your third set, your going to using about 70% of your max. This is your work set and one you should have a spotter on. Very important! Make sure you have a spotter to help you, just in case your muscles give out. Now, you should be able to complete 6 reps by yourself. If you can’t, lighten the weight next workout and make sure you can complete 6 reps by yourself. Perform these reps nice and slow. Once you’ve completed the set, make sure you do some stretching. Rest for about a minute and a half. For your fourth set, your going to be using about 80% to 85% of your max. Your going to definitely need a spotter for this set, because what you want to do is get 6 hard reps. You should be nearing your failure mark around the 5th or 6th rep. Remember, if you go to failure at the 3rd or 4th rep, your weight is too heavy. Lighten the load and get 5 solid reps on your own. Now, this is very important for your growth. For your next workout, your going to use the same weight but what you want to do is get 6 repetitions on your own without any help. Once you can do this for the weight that you once went to failure with on your prior workout, you can increase the weight by 10 to 20 pounds on your next workout. This is the key to muscle growth. For your final set, your going to be doing a drop set. This is a high intensity technique and will flush your chest with blood. Here’s what your going to do. First, your going to take a 1 minute break from the previous set. Once you’ve done that, reduce the weight on the bench to about 75% of your max. You will than proceed to do 6 repetitions. Once you’ve completed the set, get up and reduce the weight to 60% of your max and do another 6 repetitions. Once you’ve completed that, reduce the weight to 50% of your max and immediately do another 6 repetitions. Once you’ve completed this set, your chest should be on fire. Alright, take a drink a water and head on over to the incline dumbbell press. Chest Muscle Exercise #2 - Incline Dumbbell Bench Press
Alright, this is a straight up incline dumbbell press with nothing fancy. Your going to do 4 sets of 8 repetitions all the while increasing the weight from sets 1 to 4. The first two sets are going to be your warm up sets while sets 3 and 4 are going to be your work sets. Here’s how the set and rep scheme will look like: Set one: 1 x 8 repetitions: 50% of your max; For sets one to three, you should not be taking your sets to failure. However, for your last set, you want to be able to barely complete the set. If you’re failing at the 4th rep, lighten the load and make sure you can at least get 6 or 7 reps on your own with no assistance. However, it might be a good idea to use a spotter. As I mentioned before, the key to growth is something I like to call “progressive workload”. That is, with each passing workout, you want to increase the weight until you can do 8 reps on your last set without using any assistance. Let’s take a closer look. Let’s say for week one, my set, rep, and weight scheme looks as follows: Set one: 40 pounds x 8 reps - Clean reps with little difficulty completing the set - Unassisted Set two: 55 pounds x 8 reps - Clean reps with some difficulty completing the set - Unassisted Set three: 65 pounds x 8 reps - Clean reps with moderate difficulty completing the set - Unassisted. Set four: 80 pounds x 8 reps - Clean, hard reps with difficulty completing the 7th rep - Assisted at the 7th and 8th rep. Now, for week two, my goal is to complete 8 reps for the final set, keeping everything the same. Let’s say my workout looks as follows: Set one: 40 pounds x 8 reps - Clean reps with little difficulty completing the set - Unassisted Set two: 55 pounds x 8 reps - Clean reps with some difficulty completing the set - Unassisted Set three: 65 pounds x 8 reps - Clean reps with moderate difficulty completing the set - Unassisted. Set four: 80 pounds x 8 reps - Clean, hard reps with difficulty. Completed the entire set without any assistance. As you can see, the last set went unassisted and it is this set that I call the true “growth set”. This is something that you should always be striving for. Never mind about the prior sets because they are not as important as the last set. Your mind should be channelled into the last set only. The first three sets are warming up to that last set. Now, for week three, your going to add more weight to your final set. Here’s how your new rep and weight scheme will look like: Set one: 40 pounds x 8 reps - Clean reps with little difficulty completing the set - Unassisted Set two: 55 pounds x 8 reps - Clean reps with some difficulty completing the set - Unassisted Set three: 65 pounds x 8 reps - Clean reps with moderate difficulty completing the set - Unassisted. Set four: 85 pounds x 8 reps - Clean, hard reps with difficulty completing the 7th rep - Assisted at the 7th and 8th rep. Notice any thing different? Yep, I’ve increased the weight by 5 pounds. Your going to strive for 8 reps again but chances are, your going to give out around 7 reps or so. The following week, your going to strive to complete 8 reps unassisted. Don’t increase the weight until you can do 8 reps on your own for the final set. This is very important and will keep you on the right track for muscle growth. Alright, once you’ve finished that exercise, it’s time to go to our finishing exercise. Chest Muscle Exercise #3 - Incline Dumbbell Fly’s Super Set With Constant Tension
For this exercise, were going to do something a little different. What your going to do is a super set between regular incline dumbbell fly’s with an exercise that puts constant tension on you chest muscles. The constant tension exercise is very simple to do. All your going to do is grab two ten pound plates and your going to squeeze both of them together with your hands, with your arms straight out in front of you (with a little bend). Your going to count to 15 and than put them down. Try it right now. Put your arms straight out in front of you. Now, turn your hands so that your palms are touching each other, sort of like clapping, only your hands are always going to be touching each other. All you want to do is use two 10 pound plates in between each hand. Now, if you can’t perform this with 10 pound plates, use 5 pounds, as long as you get a count of 15 out of it. Here’s the rep and set scheme: Set one: 1 x 12 reps Rest for 30 seconds and do: Set one: 1 x 12 reps Rest for 30 seconds and do: Set one: 1 x 12 reps Ok, your done the workout. I suggest you try this workout for a couple of weeks to see how it suits you. If it feels good, than by all mean, continue with the workout and keep getting the most out of it. This is very, very important. As soon as you head to your change room, have a high protein, high carbohydrate drink. Make sure the drink has at least 40 grams of whey protein, 50 grams of fast acting carbohydrates such as dextrose, and 5 grams of creatine. This drink will kick start your recovery process. About an hour and a half later, have a full muscle building meal. If your serious about your muscle growth, you will make sure you have a full meal at this point. There are some pretty good resources out there that can really help you organize your meals and help you with your weight training programs. Vince Delmonte's guide to gaining weight for the skinny people. Program includes a 190 page ebook, 29 week roadmap, nutrition guide, 3 months email support and 3 hours of teleseminars. You can check out the program here . |
