"How Do I Increase My Bench Press?"Let's face it, how do I increase my bench press is a question every bodybuilder wants an answer to.
Effective Chest Training, Like Everything Else, Begins With The Proper Mindset An attitude of always wanting more, never being satisfied, is a key element in becoming successful in whatever you do. There's always a higher level of development to achieve—if you're constantly searching for it. You're always looking for new tips and weight lifting routines to increase my bench press. Having that mindset is essential to lasting success. It's also the cornerstone of the habits you need to develop if you want to maximize your chest training. You'll also need to cultivate such winning characteristics as optimism, patience, perseverance, determination and flexibility. If I want to increase my bench press, I need to incorporate all of this into my routine. And so do you. A number of physical factors can also affect your mental attitude, including the frequency of your chest workouts, the number of sets you use, the number of repetitions you set out to perform on every set, the amount of weight you use and the length of time you spend in the gym. When you overtrain physically it gives your mental well being a serious blow, too. Combining the proper mindset, along with the right physical factors, is an integral part of the ability to increase my bench press.
Train to Absolute Failure - The ultimate goal of every single set in your chest workout must be to train to absolute failure. I can't hold back. If I do, I won't be able to increase my bench press as much as I'd like. You need to work as hard as possible when training your chest. By that I mean you must give 100 percent effort during every set. You shouldn't have anything left in reserve at the end of the set. This is very taxing, mentally and physically, which is why you can't withstand many sets and why you need to work on your mindset. You need to control or get rid of that litte voice in your head that is always telling you to settle. That requirement is crucial to efficient chest training and to increase my bench press. This does NOT include your warm up sets. Obviously, you'll need a training partner, or the proper equipment such as a power rack, a machine, or using dumbbells, if you're going to train to absolute failure and train safely. For now, let's throw out any well-known, legitimate reason you could come up with that takes your training success or failure out of your own hands. Whatever weightlifting program you use, the important thing is to put all the effort you can into your training. One thing that is very important is to go over what it is you are trying to accomplish. I briefly review in my head what I want before I do each set of my workout. What's my goal in the set? What will accomplishing the set goal mean to my other goals? Now, about that intensity - you probably think you know what intensity is,right? You train hard, right? But is training hard the same as training with 100% intensity of effort? If you polled the people in your gym, 99% of them would tell you they workout extremely hard. I'm the same way. And yet when I look back on my workouts, I always realize I could've trained a little harder. But that's okay, because I am constantly improving my effort every time I workout. I'm always striving for a higher level of effort and increasing the quality of each workout. And by doing so, I have a much better chance to increase my bench press with each workout because each weight training session becomes a battle to improve on what I did previously.
You Can Increase the Intensity of Your Chest Training Now Before we can achieve more we must constantly be raising our own standards. Train Your Chest Less Frequently I know, the thought of training less worries many people. They think that they will not only stop progresssing but will lose what they have. This just isn't so. Use it as a powerful motivating tool. The thought of training your chest less frequently creates a feeling of uneasiness, or what I call a sense of urgency. It dramatically increases the magnitude of every workout. I know, in order to increase my bench press, I need to make this workout and THIS set, the most important thing I can do at this moment and I hvae to give it everything I've got. The benefits have a far greater effect than just bolstering my mindset. Training less gives you adequate time to recover from your intense workouts. Use Fewer Sets Knowing that you're going to do only a few sets in your chest workout creates this same sense of urgency, allowing you to bring a lot more focus into each rep and set that you do. If I don't focus entirely on this set, I've just blown my chance to increase my bench press this workout and I'll have to wait until the next weight lifting session. Although I always change things up from time to time, a typical chest workout for me is as follows: After warming up sufficiently and doing two heavy sets of bench presses, I complete my chest workout by doing one set each of three different chest exercises. Many lifters give themselves two, three or even four sets of a particular exercise to get it right. If you give yourself four chances at anything, you'll have less of a sense of urgency to get it right the first time. You will pace yourself and hold back for those other sets. It's only human nature. Some of the high quality weightlifting exercises for chest that I use include decline bench press, decline dumbbell or cable flyes, dumbbell pullover (yes, this works the chest as well as the lats), and weighted dips (great chest exercise) Anything less than 100 percent effort is a wasted set in my opinion. Have you ever noticed that when you get yourself in the right mind-set, you can pump out more reps on the last set of an exercise than you did on the first one? It should be just the opposite. If you were really giving your all during the first couple of sets, you wouldn't have nearly as much energy left to meet or exceed that rep range on the last one. If you truly train with the proper mindset, then you'll need less training to build your chest. If your training is less than animal-like, you'll need more sets. Be honest with yourself. Only you can determine what's best for you. Increase My Bench Press by Spend Less Time in the Gym on Chest Training The ability to focus and put forth your best effort in chest workout after chest workout, month after month is what will bring you results. I know it's what I need to increase my bench press. Keep in mind, just being consistent won't get the job done. If you have the wrong routine, aren't eating properly, aren't training hard enough, or overtraining you won't increase your bench press by being consistent. Consistency doesn't help if you are consistenly doing the wrong things. The less time you spend in the gym, the easier it becomes to focus, and because you're training chest less frequently, using fewer sets and fewer reps, your time in the gym will be much shorter. It will surely make it a lot easier to focus on building an awesome chest. Now, all you have to do is shut up and train!
Proper Recovery Is Critical Recuperation is probably the most important yet most-often-neglected component of building muscle efficiently. Recuperation means to recover fully from your intense workouts. Only when your muscles have fully recuperated are they ready to grow larger and stronger. If you train again before this process is complete, you will short circuit the growth/recover mechanism and your gains will come to a screeching halt and that’s exactly what you want to avoid. I definitely can't increase my bench press if my chest muscles haven't recovered from my previous training session. I know I may need to take a rest or back off for a bit if I know longer feel motivated to train chest, if lighter weights start feeling heavy, or my working weight becomes too heavy and I start feeling weaker. This let's me know I need to take a step back before taking two steps forward to increase my bench press past my previous best. Develop your new chest routine with these steps in mind and see if you don’t ignite new growth and more strength in your chest.
In order to design an effective program or practical weight training routine, it's important to understand the fundamentals of weight lifting
|
