By training your major muscle groups, muscle fibers are stimulated to burn total body fat instead of thinking you need to live on a treadmill.  If looking to get sculpted, lean, build muscle, get strong, and burn more fat, look no further!  Your chest is one of your major muscle groups, so it is not to be ignored.

WHY TRAIN CHEST

Your chest is one of the three largest muscle groups of the body.  By training the largest muscle groups (chest, back, and legs/glutes), you maximize your effort in less time.  That means you get stronger and fitter in less time.  Muscle burns fat faster than cardio, so train the larger muscle groups.

HOW TO TRAIN CHEST FOR WOMEN

Don’t be intimidated if you are a woman.  Even the tiniest barbie-doll like figures that compete on stage lift heavy, too.  It takes a lot more than just lifting heavy to get bulky and put on tons of muscle mass.

I know I was really intimidated to train chest.  More because I was so weak when I first started out, and weak when I start over from illness and bedrest. I couldn’t even lift the 45 pound bar with no weight on it. I had to get creative and find the lighter straight bars that were 25, 30, and 35 pounds.  I slowly built strength and within a year benching almost my bodyweight.

It takes a lot to get bulky, so don’t freak out.

HOW TO TRAIN CHEST FOR MEN

I then moved on to being the only girl training with the big dawgs.  It was me lifting with NFL players, powerlifters, and former World Record Holders in weight lifting.  I joined them on Wednesdays when it was their ‘light’ chest day, which was still more than double my best.

In The Three Day Body, we focus on having only three days in the gym so you can be the father, husband, friend, etc that you want to be.  You don’t need to live in the gym.  Now if you’d like, you can have a 4th training day designated for a lagging body part.  These guys used their 4th training day for chest.

Sunday was heavy and hard chest day.  Then rested a couple days until fully recovered, then Wednesday or Thursday I would join them for light chest day.

In the program, depending on life and what you have going on, you can keep it to your three days.  If you’ve got the room and want to train a 4th day, go for a second day for chest.  Typically women like to use their 4th day for legs or glutes, while guys like it for chest or arms.

BEST TRAINING TIPS FOR CHEST

SQUEEZE HARD – Don’t just go through the motion, but squeeze your pecs.  Activate your pecs in the beginning of the movement, and keep your focus in the muscle through the entire movement, and at the end of the movement squeeze hard at least another second or two.

SLIGHT BEND IN ELBOWS – Good for cable cross overs or dumbbell flies.

VISUALIZE – Imagine you have a ‘barrel of a chest’ even if you are a small framed person. Put your mental and physical energy into activating pecs, driving energy in your pecs, and being more intentional for maximum results.

SLIGHT DECLINE – In the slight decline bench press, only use a very slight decline to protect your shoulders.  Drag a decline bench into the smith machine rack.  If no decline bench, then grab a flat bench and place a 45 pound plate underneath one end where you feet is. That’s al the angle you need.

FEEL THE STRETCH – I love this feeling.  When warming up, focus on feeling the stretch where your pecs cross over your shoulders in the front.  Nothing intense, but just a tiny stretch to activate it and loosen it up.  I do a few warm up sets like this just to get the blood flowing and joint loosened up. Lots of old school weight lifters blow out their shoulders and joints from not warming up properly, going to hard-too-fast, or just lifting more than what their joints can handle. Feel that stretch, the blood flow, the joints loosen up, and then slowly increase your weight. Your joints will love it.

DON’T GET SLOPPY – Form is so important. It’s why I’m descriptive in the program and have some of my favorite training videos below to visualize it.  Make every rep better than the rep before.

WHEN YOU GET TIRED – If at the end of a set and don’t think you are going make it, dig deep with your focus.  I do this on bench press when I switch the mental energy from my ‘barrel of a chest’ (which isn’t a barrel at all), to driving my heels through the ground, squeezing my lats to push the bar up, the arch in my lower back, and the power of my breathe to drive up the bar.

STRECH DURING AND AFTER – Research has suggested stretching the muscle you are activating to help stimulate more muscle growth, while resting between sets.  Definitely stretch after because having a tight chest can cause shoulder, neck, and upper back problems.

HOW TO SAVE TIME AND GET RESULTS BY TRAINING YOUR CHEST

You probably have more you want to do than just live in the gym.  I know I do.  Life is short and there is so much I want to do, and so much to be intentional with.  I study and teach the high performance life. It’s important to be able to be the father, mother, son, daughter, business owner, professional, student, etc, and not neglecting it. AKA teaching and living to simplify training and nutrition so you can have the health and body you want, without compromising well-being and relationships.

Being in the fitness industry, I’ve watched many obsess over it to where it was an addiction that destroyed their well-being, relationships, relationship with food, happiness, and sense of balance.  I won multiple national qualifying figure competitions training only four days a week, winning against others who lived and breathed it.  They trained every day and sometimes twice a day.

There’s more to you than that and you can have it. 

You have dreams. You want happy, deep, and connected relationships. You need vacations whether they are cheap or extravagant. You need balance. You need faith.  By training only three to four hours a week focusing on the larger muscle groups, you get better results, and you  save time to be intentional with just as important areas.  If not, the more important areas.

Be intentional with training, and you get maximum results and less obsession. You can have healthier relationships, better results, better well-being, and more time to enjoy your life.

Ya hear me?

HOW TO DO CHEST EXERCISES

Below is a compilation of all the chest exercises that we use in The Three Day Body, man or woman. Although I am extremely descriptive in each exercise to get the maximum result, it’s good to have a visual, too.  In case you need a visual, see chest training exercise videos below.

Watch it.

Close your eyes and try to visualize yourself doing it.

Be your own biggest coach and cheerleader.

Get in your own head.

Get in the zone.

Make every single rep better than the rep before and get maximum results in less time so you can enjoy the rest of your life, too.

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CHEST EXERCISE TRAINING VIDEOS