Building Your Chest by Brad Turnbull
If you are trying to build your physique one of the most important aspects is a strong and powerful chest. The good news is that building your chest is an easier task than most people make it out to be. If you follow these simple guidelines, eat the right foods and get plenty of rest you will be sporting a set of pecs to be proud of.
- Concentrate on compound movements – I can’t emphasize this enough. Bench press, decline press & incline press will all build and maintain mass. Isolation exercises like flys and pec decs will enhance the muscle once it is there but unless you have got the muscle mass there you are wasting your time.
- Do only 2 exercises at the most. I cringe when I hear some of the workouts that some people come up with for chest. They read in a bodybuilding mag Jay Cutler’s competition workout for Mr Olympia and start doing a chest day with 6 exercises. There is a time and place for this workout – training for Mr Olympia. So unless you are at that level stick to the basics and your chest will grow as it is not being overworked. We will cover advanced training in later newsletters.
- If you are only doing one exercise, lift using the single rep method (perform the full range of the exercise with a pause at the top before starting the next rep). For every 4th workout lift using the continuous tension method (perform a partial rep keeping the muscle under constant tension) - we will discuss these two lifting methods in greater detail in the next newsletter and how to incorporate them in your training.
- Work in the 10-12 rep range. If doing 2 exercises you can use pyramid sets for one exercise
- Allow at least 3 days rest before working chest again.
This was the workout article in our August 2008 Monthly Newsletter. If you have already signed up please click on the button below
