Search

Shopping Cart

Your Cart is currently empty.
Home Workouts Workout Articles IG Muscle > Exercises > The Golden Rules of Chest Training

1. Scapula Retraction

The ability to hold the shoulder blades together during chest exercises will withdraw shoulder involvement from the movement isolating the chest building tone, size and strength.

2. Arching the Back

Arching the back when setting the body position for a chest exercise will allow full scapula retraction and the ability to build chest thickness.

3. Perfect Technique

I have written a two and half thousand word article about this subject. It is called ‘The Perfect Rep: Unlocking the Secret for Permanent, Effective Training’. Please read this if you want to take your body to its full potential. In a nutshell:

Accentuate the negative (release the weight slowly)
Perform the positive phase (lifting the weight) with controlled force
Use a full and appropriate range of motion
Achieve a noticeable stretch and contraction
Exhale when exerting force to lift
Focus on the action of the pectoral muscle during the exercise
Make sure you are using the correct movement pattern
Set and maintain perfect body position


4. Focus on Free-weights and Compound Movements

Big, thick, powerful Pecs are built from a focus on barbell presses, dumbbell presses and weighted dips. Next in line of duty are plate-loaded machine presses, pin-loaded machine presses, smith presses, cable presses and push-ups. Last we come to cable/dumbbell/machine flyes and pec deck. To explain why free-weight, compound exercises are essential for building size and strength I will include this excerpt from and article I wrote called: ’10 Awesome Compound Exercises That You Should Never Miss Out On’…

What Are The Benefits Of Employing Compound Movements?

They are time-efficient because many muscles are trained in a single exercise. If you are using isolation exercises more are required because fewer muscles are involved.
Example: A ‘Push-press’ trains the shoulders, triceps, quads, glutes and a range of ancillary muscles. If you were performing isolation exercise to train these muscles you would need to do ‘lateral raises, tricep extensions, leg extensions, hip extensions’ and more to emulate the same amount of muscular stimulation.
There is a greater capacity to build mass and strength. This is because heavy loads can be applied safely with the pressure divided between multiple joints and muscle groups all contributing varying levels of force.
Inter-muscular coordination is learned through different muscle groups and joints interacting to execute a large, complex movement with synchronized efficiency. This means that the muscles become a powerful team that work well together.
There is a reduced risk of injury (if good technique is always applied). With compound movements the load and stress is shared between many muscle groups and joints. During an isolation movement a single joint must handle the lot.
You must build a strong core and mid-section. If you intend to lift heavy weights with good technique and intensity your abdominals, lower back and the inner muscles of the spine must be strong. Focusing on compound exercises will stabilize your body and keep you safe. Build up the weights slowly and engage your abs and core all the time.
A positive hormonal environment is created when big muscles are stimulated with big exercises. When you focus on the big exercises larger amounts of growth hormone and testosterone are released into the system to support your body’s battle with the heavy weights.
The cardio-vascular system is more heavily involved because the greater amount of large muscles working in compound movements require increased quantities of blood and oxygen. This of course must be supplied by the heart and lungs.


5. Intensity

You must push yourself safely towards absolute muscular failure to get an over-compensation response from the body that will result in a strength and growth increase.

6. Warm-up Correctly and Stretch Between Sets

5 minutes light cardio on a machine that involves all the upper and lower body
Some light stretches
Pyramid warm-up set weights on your first chest exercise before you get to your work sets. Example: Bench Press – 40kg x 20 reps, 60kg x 15 reps, 80kg x 10 reps, 100kg 2 x 8 reps
Perform work sets only after your first exercise
Perform medium chest stretches between sets to increase blood flow, recovery and flexibility
Perform heavy stretches at the end of your workout


7. Exercise and Set Volume

Choose 5-8 exercise and perform 2 work sets per exercise. This will give you are variety of angles and directions to work through covering every area of the chest. You will also be able to focus your intensity on performing two hard sets rather than spreading your power over several sets.

With all these extremely important points in mind I will now give you an infallible chest program not unlike what I do in my own training sessions. There will be two programs to choose from. Each has its own unique structure but both will deliver the same result: A Big, Thick, Powerful Chest…

 

 

 

Special Offers

IG Muscle Bottle

I&G Muscle Atomix Sports Bottle

Check it out!

Latest Member Pictures

Recent photos uploaded by members. Want to share your progress too? Join today, it's FREE!

temp temp temp temp temp temp

view more

About

I&G Muscle have one major mission – to provide sports and fitness fanatics with the best quality and value sports and nutrition supplements on the market today. Not only do we provide a wide range of supplements, but we offer the... Read more

Contact Details