Category: Chest

Strong Chest Muscles Command Respect And Confidence

Strong Chest Muscle Command Respect And Confidence

So you want to build big and powerful chest muscles? Big pecs or chest muscles that command respect and adoration? You can be the proud owner of a big and powerful chest if you set your mind to it.

Many people actually think that there are 2 separate chest muscles, well there aren’t. The chest muscle or pecs that you see on each side of your chest is a fan shaped one continuous muscle although they may be called by different names such as pectoralis major, minor and clavicle head to differentiate the different parts of the same muscle.

All chest exercises work your chest muscle but from different angles which places different stress on your chest. You need to use a variety of chest muscle exercises to hit your pecs at various angles to stimulate massive muscle growth.

Each different angle you use with any chest muscle exercises will reach into various different fibers in your chest muscles for effective stimulation of different areas of your pecs so that your entire chest will grow muscles fast and symmetrically giving you that broad and powerful chest that threatens to rip through your t-shirt.

For best results building your chest muscles, use free weights, especially dumb bells instead of machines. Chest muscle workout that use any chest machines should be avoided as it has many disadvantages like it will not only produce the desired results may also cause injuries because of its narrow range of movements. Your chest muscles will also not grow fast because machine exercises lack the involvement of synergistic muscles or supporting muscles. As with any weightlifting workout, proper lifting form and techniques are of paramount importance.

Many people typically use only 1 or 2 types of chest exercises and almost invariably, it’s the flat bench press and flys. Well, to build a powerfully big and well chiseled chest muscles, that is a fatal mistake as you do not adequately hit the pecs from all angles so as to stimulate muscle growth in your entire chest muscle.

All chest muscle exercises will not only work your chest but also your delts, biceps and triceps to a lesser extent. So you need to focus, visualize and to concentrate the force on the chest. Mind and your chest muscle connection is vital here so as to make your chest work harder instead of using your triceps, delts or biceps to power your chest workout. Also work on the full range of motion and squeeze your chest muscles hard at every top of each movement. Always lower your weight slowly and deliberately fighting gravity to provide more resistance to your chest muscles and therefore elicit more muscle fibers for more muscle growth.

A word of caution though. You will need a spotter or a personal trainer for safety reasons because you must lift heavy for excellent muscle gain especially so for chest muscle development. Your spotter or personal trainer will also be able to correct your mistakes and help you with forced reps to reach into the deep tissues to elicit maximum muscle fiber stimulation.

Extreme Bench Press Workout

Extreme Bench Press Workout

Want to increase your bench press? Try this out…

One of the best exercises that you can do for upper body strength and power is the Bench Press. Both incline and regular bench press work the chest in its own way, it just depends whether you’re targeting the upper or lower chest. Once a set of these exercises are performed, lactic acid will be building up in the muscle itself which causes fatigue and pain. When the fatigue becomes too great, it signals your brain to make you set down the weight. The majority of this lactic acid will lie in the assisting muscles of the shoulder, more specifically the anterior deltoid.

The goal of this workout is the shift that lactic acid build up in the front of the shoulder and chest to the back of the shoulder. This simple trick will allow you to perform your next consecutive set with more strength and power because much of the lactic acid has been shifted to the rear deltoids. Here’s what it’ll look like:

Exercise 1: Incline/Flat Bench Press (8-12 reps) man-doing-reverse-fly

Exercise 2: Dumbbell Rear Deltoid Flys (15 reps)

Repeat both exercises back-to-back with no rest for 4 sets with one minute rest in between sets.

It’s important to complete this superset at the very beginning of your chest workout. If you save it for later, the lactic acid build up will be too great to transfer completely.

Have fun with this one, and let me know the results you get! See ya…

 

Mitch Muller

CPT – MindsetFitness.net

Chest Training: The Right Way

Chest Training: The Right Way

The pectorals are one of the most noticeable muscles on the human body, so it becomes obvious as to why the training of this muscle group should not be taken lightly. A strong, defined and sizeable chest is one of the more masculine features of the modern man. It’s no surprise that the size of a man’s chest has become the cornerstone to a larger looking frame, which in turn makes the other muscles of the upper body look larger as well.

The chest is made up of two muscles:

  1. Pectoralis Major

  2. Pectoralis Minor

The Pectoralis Major is, just as its name implies, relatively larger as compared to that of the Pectoralis Minor. It originates from the collar bone (clavicle) and stretches across the anterior deltoid to the anterior side of the sternum. It is important to understand that the Anterior Deltoid plays a helping role with many chest movements, so it must be watched carefully if effort to train your chest to maximum stimulation. I will discuss more of this later…

The chest muscles become stimulated when excessive amounts of weight are forced down onto the arms (Example: gravity in a standard bench press). If lighter weight is used, the chest most likely will be relaxed. This is because the force of the weight is being completely controlled by the arms. When heavier weight is applied, that force shifts downward through the triceps and into the chest to help support the load. This provides a great example of how the chest is a weight-bearing muscle.

So does this mean more weight is better for the chest?

Yes and no. When it comes to specific training methods, there are an infinite amount of variations is chest exercises. However, our goal here is to cause as much mictrotrauma and fatigue to the pecs as possible AND at the same time, consistently improve on a week-to-week basis.

So what major muscles are recruited when performing any standard chest exercise?

– Pectoralis Major

– Deltoids

– Triceps

Now the reason I mention this is because the deltoids and triceps are much smaller than the chest as a whole. This means that when force is applied, the targeted muscle (Chest) is NOT taken to full stimulation and these two smaller muscles will be the FIRST to fatigue. See a problem anyone??

So what can be done to correct this and cause the targeted chest muscle to fail at the same time and reach FULL stimulation? Here’s the answer…

PRE-FATIGUE THE MUSCLE!

The easiest way to pre-fatigue the chest in my book, are leg-elevated push ups. By doing this, your chest will get a head start for the next compound exercise. In this movement, you’re only using body weight to work the upper portion of your chest muscle. We target the upper portion of the chest for 1 reason:

To provide a much fuller and larger-looking chest!

Training the chest using just flat bench press movements will stimulate growth, however the ending result looks saggy and undeveloped. By targeting the upper portion here, (with mostly incline movements) the end result is more eye-catching and will give you that manly-man look you’ve been working hard for.

So here’s a sample routine that I’ve used many times to shock my chest into growth…

The following 3 exercises are performed back to back with zero rest in between. The workout will consist of 6 sets of these 3 movements. Rest time is 2 minutes between sets.

  • Leg-elevated Push ups

-Continue to point of initial fatigue, not till chest is at failure.

  • Incline Barbell Bench Press

-75% of one rep maximum, 10 reps (Use a spotter)

  • Decline Dumbbell Flys

-80% of one rep maximum, 6-8 reps

Notes: The reason we use decline flys as opposed to regular flys is because your center of gravity lies in the center of your mass; when declined, that center of gravity shifts upwards into your chest, further intensifying your chest workout.

Well I hope that helps! Try this one out for yourself and let me know how sore you are the next day. It’s a tough one. But remember, stay focused on completing each set. Train hard and train smart…

-Mitch Muller

CPT – MindsetFitness.net

Summary with credit to: Permanent Muscle by Reuben Bajada. The Poliquin Principles by Charles Poliquin. ACEFitness.org