Know Your Muscle Building Exercises - The Chest


Every bodybuilder and weight trainer will have his or her favorite exercises for each body part. That's how it should be - as you progress through the various stages of learning you'll understand what works best for you. It is useful, however, to take stock of your progress every so often and carry out an analysis of where you are and what changes, if any, are needed to move onwards and upwards.

Part of this analysis should include an assessment of the core exercises that make up your bodybuilding training program. In this article we'll look at the chest exercises that have proven their worth to serious bodybuilders for many years. Where appropriate a series of exercises suitable for achieving pre-exhaustion will be presented. All exercises should be performed to failure with one set of six to eight reps.

1. Dumbbell flyes - this exercise provides a useful means of isolating the pectorals and preserving the triceps for the subsequent exercise. The exercise should be performed as follows:

- Hold dumbbells directly overhead.

- Lower them to sides with elbows slightly bent, pulled back and to the side. Lower no further than level with the torso.

- Use the pectorals to pull the weights back up to the starting position.

2. Incline bench press - you can move straight on to this exercise if you have reached an appropriate level of experience. If you perform this exercise as the second part of a pre-exhaust routine you may have to use lighter weights than normally.

- Take a shoulder width grip.

- Lower the bar to the chest with the elbows pointed to the side.

- Return to the starting position.

Richard Mitchell is the creator of the bodybuildingadvisor.com website that provides guidance and information to athletes at all levels of bodybuilding experience. Go to Bodybuilding Advice to learn more about the issues covered in this article.

More Resources

Unable to open RSS Feed $XMLfilename with error HTTP ERROR: 404, exiting

More Building Muscle Information:

Related Articles

Know Your Muscle Building Exercises - The Shoulders
Every bodybuilder and weight trainer will have his or her favorite exercises for each body part. That's how it should be - as you progress through the various stages of learning you'll understand what works best for you.
What Is Strength Training?
Traditional strength training consists of performing one to three (or more) sets of exercises on a specific, isolated muscle group. One rep, or repetition, equals one complete movement of the exercise from start to finish.
Build More Muscle and Lose More Fat by Discovering the Power of Training Variables!
Everyone will inadvertently hit a frustrating plateau in their training at one time or another. You're cruising along for a while, gaining strength, losing fat, looking better, and then all of the sudden it hits.
How These 3 Basic Elements Can Be Used To Boost Your Own Muscle Gains!
The foolish idea that 'more is better' when it comes to bodybuilding goes directly against the basics of exercise science. When is comes to increasing your rate of muscle gains, more exercise is almost never what is needed.
Bodybuilding Benefits - The Price for Confidence!
Success came to me at an early age. However, it did not come without a price.
The Baby Boomer Athlete
Are you a Baby Boomer? If you were born between the years of 1946 to 1964, you are part of the 79.1 million Boomers, comprising 29 percent of the total US population.
The Importance Of Sets In Your Muscle Building Program
In an earlier article we looked at how repetitions contribute to the muscle building process, but is the position regarding sets just as clear cut? Unfortunately, the answer to this is no as some experts feel one set to failure is sufficient, whereas others argue that multiple sets are needed to ensure maximum muscle gains. Research to date suggests that, when using six to eight repetitions to failure at 75-80% 1RM, there is little significant difference between training with single and multiple sets in terms of increasing either strength or muscle size.
Machine Exercises That Suit Beginners
The aim for beginners to weight training must be to lay the foundations for the intensive workouts that their bodies will eventually be subjected to. Obviously successful bodybuilding involves bringing together disparate elements such as nutrition and rest but choosing the right exercises is crucial.
Building Muscle Mass With A Power Cycle
Building muscle mass with a power cycle. Desperatefor pounds of new muscle? Forget the isolation exercises, forget the weight training routines that have you going for the pump, the burn, flushing the muscle with blood, or any of that other nonsense.
Increase Your Training Intensity - Training To Failure
You can only build muscle tissue if you can generate progressively stronger muscular contractions, so this calls for an emphasis on finding ways to increase exercise intensity. This should not be confused with exercise duration as maximum training intensity will actually shorten the time needed to achieve maximal muscular growth.
Exercise The Right Way - The Lying Triceps Extension
Other articles in this series looked at a number of exercises, mainly from the perspective of developing a comprehensive muscle building program. Sometimes we take things for granted, especially when it comes to performing the basic exercises that constitute the core of most bodybuilders' training regimes.
Glucosamine Review and Potential Benefits
Something interesting happened as my triceps workouts continued in their intensity. After doing some triceps elbow extensions and numerous other elbow extension exercises, I began to feel effects of what is known as elbow tendonitis.
Exercise The Right Way - The Triceps Pushdown
Other articles in this series looked at a number of exercises, mainly from the perspective of developing a comprehensive muscle building program. Sometimes we take things for granted, especially when it comes to performing the basic exercises that constitute the core of most bodybuilders' training regimes.
Know Your Muscle Building Exercises - The Back
Every bodybuilder and weight trainer will have his or her favorite exercises for each body part. That's how it should be - as you progress through the various stages of learning you'll understand what works best for you.
Beach Body Abs
With the return of warm weather in the spring, thoughts can never be too far behind of the approaching summer and the many wonderful outdoor activities that we'll often associate with it and among our top favorite summertime activities will always be the trip to the beach. Warm blue skies, refreshing ocean breezes, hot sand, cool waves and the many attempts at constructing the perfect sand castle; you can swear you're almost there just thinking of it.
Who Else Wants To Build Muscle Fast?
I see it all the time. Guys in the gym doing set after set of all these different exercises, and if you looked at these samepeople 3 months from now they have not really changed physicallyall that much, maybe a little more toned but nothing reallynoticeable.
Bodybuilding Protein
What helps make comedy also builds muscle?This is key to getting the most out of your bodybuilding protein intake. There's not much point in stuffing down that half chicken and protein shake?only to roll over and have a nap.
Creating An Anabolic State That Supports Muscle Growth
You can only build muscle if your body is in the correct anabolic balance to allow growth to take place. Intensive exercise is clearly an important part of the muscle building process but achieving the maximum muscle mass depends on putting the building blocks in place.
Bodybuilding: Effective Ways To Handling Criticism
It's important to set the way we'll respond to different critics throughout the journey of achieving our personal and bodybuilding goals. As are other areas of life, Bodybuilding is a sport of opinion.
Weight Lifting 101
WHY WEIGHT LIFTING?What's the one thing that you can do to lose weight, re-shape your body, improve muscle tone, become stronger, fight off osteoporosis, lower blood pressure, etc.?Weight Lifting! Or as it's also called, Strength Training!For the rest of this book I will refer to the art of weight lifting as strength training.