Awesome Chest Exercises For Men
So what are some great chest exercises for men
? Well to be honest there are a ton of chest exercises out there that are really awesome for guys to do to build up their Pecs but it all really depends on you. For example you have to look at your past exercise history, what you have done before, what you currently are doing in the gym to build up your chest muscles, if you have any injuries, and what your goals are. If you goal is to strictly lose belly fat, then I wouldnt really worry about building up your chest muscles. But if your goal is to really build up your body and add mass and size to your frame, then this article is perfect for you. I have been very lucky in that I havent had to do much to build up my chest. I guess I was blessed with good genetics, however my arms suck! Now when you look at biomechanics, usually if youre arms arent that well developed, especially in the triceps then you usually have a pretty decent looking chest. This is because in any pressing movements that are horizontal, the shoulder, triceps and Pecs all come into play. If you have weak triceps, then your chest will be doing most of the movement and vice versa. So if you find yourself with good triceps but a small chest then youll have to make some modifications to the exercises. The one thing you can automatically do is take a wider grip on any type of bench pressing movement. The wider grip will take your triceps out of the movement and increase a lot of the stress on your chest. Just be careful though not to use a lot of weight because the extra long grip places a tremendous stress across your shoulders and chest.
The one movement that I would absolutely stay away from is the class bench press. In the U.S. the bench press for some stupid reason is known as the king of all upper body exercises. Thats garbage in my opinion and a lot of other strength coachs opinion. What young, inexperienced, and bonehead gym rats wont tell you is that the bench press is the NUMBER ONE exercise responsible for tearing peoples Pecs and ripping off their tendons at the insertion points on the humerus. Not the best exercise to be doing to hit your chest. So what Im going to give you is some exercises that are safe but extremely effective in building up your chest without having to worry about injury.
Now before you do any sort of chest workout, I want you to pre-exhaust them with machine flies or what some old school guys like to call the pec deck. By pre exhausting your chest muscles, theyll be forced to work that much harder throughout your workout and not allow the pesky triceps to come into play and take over the movement. Remember, we are not trying to bench a lot of weight, we are trying to stimulate your Pecs and thats it. So what I want you to do is 3 sets of 12-15 reps on the machine chest fly and squeeze at the peak contraction for 1-2 seconds for each rep.
Chest Exercise #1: Incline Smith Machine Presses
Since your chest is already pre-exhausted and slightly fatigued, we are going to hit it hard with the incline smith machine press, but were going to add a little twist to the exercise. I want you to set up an incline bench in the smith machine rack. Youll get under the bar and make sure to take a normal grip slightly shoulder width apart. When you un-rack the bar and lower it, I want it to be in line with your neck. The reason for this is because its going to provide the deepest level of range of motion and biggest stretch. The deeper the range of motion the more muscle fibers you stimulate. Now when you press the weight up, I want you to make believe you have a giant rubber band around your elbows and want to pull your elbows in towards the center. So when you press up, push your elbows in towards the center and squeeze the living day lights out of your chest. You wont be using much weight and wont need to use much weight to get an awesome contraction for this exercise. Do 3-4 sets of 10 reps.
Chest Exercise #2: Weighted Raised Pushups
Pushups often get overlooked when it comes to chest exercises for men. I dont know why. Maybe its because they are so simple to perform that people overlook them. But what many dont realize is that they are one of the most effective exercises for your upper body and one of the safest too. Plus you can add resistance to make it really hard. If you have a partner that trains with you, you can have him place a weighted plate on top of your back or a dumbbell and hold it there. If you dont you can grab some weighted chains from the local hardware store and wrap them around your torso to provide the extra resistance. Youll also want to grab two dumbbells to elevate you off the floor during your sets. This ensures a deeper range of motion. So youll get in a normal pushup position, slowly lower yourself all the way down and explode back up squeezing your chest together at the top. Again we want a peak contraction to really stimulate those fibers. Slowly lower yourself again and repeat the same process. With pushups, I like to go to failure and test my endurance. So do 3-4 sets to absolute failure on each set.
Chest Exercise #3: Flat Dumbbell Press With Bands
This exercise is a serious killer. What youre going to do is a flat dumbbell press but youre going to hook up jump stretch bands to the dumbbell and have the band anchored to the floor. So when you press the weights up, the resistance gets a lot tougher. This is called accommodating resistance and goes hand in hand with your strength curve. Youre of course stronger at the top portion of the movement, but thats where all the resistance will be. When you lower the weight, make sure to do it in a controlled fashion and resist the pull of the bands. Make sure to lower the weights all the way down and get a deep stretch at the bottom portion of the movement. From there, activate your chest and press back up with a peak contraction at the top. When you hit failure on your last set, un-hook the bands and just rep out with the dumbbells till failure. All I want you to do is 2 sets for this exercise for 10 reps and then to failure on the last set with just the dumbbells.
All in all, these 3 exercises above are definitely some great chest exercises for men. You cant go wrong with these and this workout that I provided above. Try it today and I guarantee your chest will be screaming at you for the next couple of days.
by: Jared DiCarmine
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