Chest Training

To Increase Strength and Muscle

Chest training is extremely popular when it comes to bodybuilding. In fact, you probably see more people bench pressing in the gym all the time than any other exercise.

While the squat rack (where real men are made) sits alone, neglected, and gathering dust, there's usually a wait for the bench so you can get in chest training.

I'm not here to bash the bench press at all.

The point is, if you're going to work hard on your chest exercises, you might as well have a chest routine that works, right?

When people find out you weight train, they inevitably ask THE question, "how much do you bench?"

If you don't bench a lot you dread getting that question.

Let's fix that with some serious chest training tips so you can increase your bench press numbers and add some serious muscle mass to your pecs.

Compared to today, the lifters of old could lift some mind boggling weights. They were seriously strong dudes.

Herman Goerner deadlifted 727 pounds with ONE HAND.

And this was before anabolic steroids.

How many guys in your gym even USE the deadlift in their routine?

The way you get seriously strong (and build serious muscle mass) is by training the tendons and ligaments. And you train them by moving heavy weights for low reps.

That's why one of my favorite chest workouts is the 5 x 5 system.

The 5 x 5 system is a classic routine for building muscle and increasing strength.

When warming up you want to warm up the muscles for the heavy weights but you don't want to work too hard or you'll ruin the work sets to come and your chest training program won't get you the results you want.

Let's use the bench press as your chest exercise in this example. Let's say you can do 200 pounds for 5 reps.

Perform 10 slow reps with the bar, followed by 95 x 5.

Then we start in on your 5 by 5 sets.

Hit 150 x 5. Rest a couple of minutes and then hit 185 by 5.

Even if you can easily get more than 5 reps, just do five.

Rest a couple of minutes and then dive into your three "work" sets.

Hit 5 reps with 200 pounds. Even if you can do more reps, stop at 5.

Rest two or three minutes before hitting your second sent.

Then do your third and final set and try and get all 5 reps again.

If you can't complete 5 reps on all work sets, keep the weight the same until you can or, if it's way too heavy, even drop the weight slightly for your next set.

If you do get a full 5 x 5 add 5 pounds to the bar for your next chest workout.

Put this chest training into your program for four to six weeks, hitting chest twice a week, give it everything you've got, get enough sleep and quality calories and you'll see your strength and muscle mass improve.

Here's another muscle building articles on how to increase your bench press ==>> chest training tips.