How to Build Chest Muscle

Whether male or female, the desire to build chest muscle is the same. A well developed chest makes your entire upper body look better under a tee-shirt or on the beach. Building chest muscle takes a little basic knowledge and the will to continue working hard during your workouts. Each individual will have differing specific goals when it comes to building chest muscle. You may want to only tone up your chest, you may want to add power for a sport or you may be looking to add large amounts of chest muscle. Either way, the basics of building chest muscle will form the foundation of your routine.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Weightlifting Belt
• Spotter/Training Partner

Build Chest Muscle

1. Perform Light Bench Presses: Just like you don't want to jump into to heavy lifting exercises, you don't want to move straight into stretching. One or two light sets of bench presses with a very comfortable weight will help to get the blood flowing to your chest, shoulders and arms. This will allow you to stretch more comfortably and safely.

2. Stretch your Upper Body: Before moving into your heavy lifting, it is important to stretch out your chest, shoulders, and arms. A proper warm up and stretching routine will keep you from having to miss workouts because of soreness or injury.

3. Execute Proper Bench Press: The Flat Bench Press is the ultimate builder of chest muscle. It is the ultimate test of upper body strength as is incorporates the chest, shoulders and arms. The Bench Press is the staple exercise of your chest building workout.

4. Execute Proper Incline Bench Press: The Incline Bench Press is also a staple of a strong chest building routine. It focuses more specifically on the upper chest. It is the number one mass builder of the upper chest.

5. Execute Proper Dumbbell Flyes: The Dumbbell Fly is consider a secondary, or shaping exercise. It is less of a mass builder and more of a muscle shaper. It requires lighter weight, but focuses almost exclusively on the chest muscles. It can be performed either on a flat bench or on an incline bench.

6. Eat Plenty of Protein: Diet is crucial to chest muscle development. You will find yourself more hungry once you start an exercise regiment. You will want to feed that hunger with low fat, low carb, high protein foods. Protein builds muscle, and lean sources of protein are available that build muscle without adding to your fat stores.

7. Read Fitness Magazines: Fitness magazines will keep you up to date with recent advances in health and fitness as well as provide inspiring articles and chest building routines for you to try out. Muscle and Fitness, Men's Health and Muscle and Strength are some of the more popular fitness magazines.

Tips & Warnings

• *Though there is no scientific proof, it is generally felt that high repetition sets (12 to 20 repetitions) tone the chest muscles, middle repetition sets (8 to 12 repitions) build thicker muscle and low repetition sets (3 to 8 reps) build power. A repetition is one full movement of an exercise.
• *There are many ways to perform the Dumbbell Flyes as there are many different machines available that simulate the motion. Any machine or cable exercise that forces you to bring your arms across your chest is considered a fly and will help you to develop chest muscle.
• *Vary your routines between barbells, dumbbells and machines. It will make workouts more interesting and will hit your chest muscles from many different angles which helps to stimulate overall growth.
• *Be willing to experiment with different exercises or routines in order to find the combination of exercises and repetitions that you find work best for you.
• *Never underestimate a proper warm up and stretching routine. Having to miss workouts because of injury will keep you from building chest muscle.
• *Be careful performing Dumbbell Flyes. This exercise puts your chest and shoulder muscles in a precarious position. You should be properly warmed up and using the appropriate weight. Perform the exercise slowly and with great concentration to get the proper effect and to prevent injury.

Who Can Help:

• Tired of Being Tired? Fight Fatigue and Try FRS for FREE!

Resources

• Muscle and Strength's forum can help you answer further questions.
• A sample chest workout for you to examine.
• Famous bodybuilder Steve Reeves' favorite chest routine.

[gobo]

on 5/21/2009 I AM SO HAPPY TO BE A MEMBER BUT LIVE IN NIGERIA HOW CAN I GET A FRIEND THAT WILL ALWAYS ENCOURAGE ME WITH MAILS AND INFORMATION