Sunday, January 11, 2009

Weight Lifting Exercises For Your Chest - Bench or Crossovers?

By Westy

Many people wonder which is the best exercise to use to build muscle in the chest area. If you look in your local gym there are a number of people using all sorts of exercises to get the results that they are looking for in their chest region. The bench press is the most popular choice for those who are looking to improve the muscles in the chest. This is known to be one of the best exercises that you can use to work the upper body and most especially the chest. There are others that you can use as well.

The other exercises that you can do for your chest are:

The Incline Bench Press

Flyes On A Flat Bench

Flyes At An Incline

Cable Crossovers

Dips

I tend to think that most times the chest workout should start with focus on either the bench, or dips. The reason being that they are great comprehensive exercises, and if you're looking to gain mainly size and strength, there's no need to do focus exercises for any particular body part. And plus, why workout harder or longer than you need to!

Bench Press: So how does it work?

1. Lie on the bench with the bar above your line of site

2. If you're lifting heavy, get a spotter to help you grab the bar at arms length, and settle it above your chest (in line with your nipples is best)

3. Breath in as you are lowering the weight toward you.

4. Breath out as you push that weight as hard as you can toward the sky!

5. Keep going until your muscles fail.

The bench press works on the shoulders as well as the chest. You will feel the workout in your triceps and the lats at the same time. You should make sure that you warm up the muscles with some low weight first. If you do some warm ups first, you will feel the benefits in your muscles if you take the time to do this.

For example, if you lift a maximum weight of two hundred and twenty pounds, you should warm up with a weight of ninety pounds for fifteen repetitions. Increase the warm up to one hundred and forty pounds for eight repetitions, and then one hundred seventy pounds for four repetitions. Finally, increase to two hundred pounds for one repetition. This will make sure that your muscles are warmed up completely before you begin your bench presses. The bench presses will be done until your muscles fail, so keeping your muscles warmed before you workout is very important. - 16463

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