Weight Lifting Exercises For Your Chest – Bench or Crossovers?
January 11, 2009 – 8:18 pmby Westy
So What’s the best exercise to build up your chest muscles fast? I’m glad you asked! Go to your local gym and you’ll see blokes working out the Bench Press almost to exclusion of every other exercise for their upper body. There’s good reason for this. The bench press is one of the best weight lifting exercises for your upper body and especially for your chest. It’s not the only one however.
Some of the other exercises that you can use for your chest muscles are:
The Incline Bench Press
Flyes On A Flat Bench
Incline Flyes
Cable Crossovers
Dips
The two exercises that should be focused on first are the bench press and dips. This is because they are very all encompassing exercises. For those who are looking for a great workout and gain an increase in their size and muscle, these are the exercises that will do that for them.
Bench Press: So how does it work?
1. Lie back on the bench and keep the bar above your line of sight.
2. You should make sure that you have a spotter if you are going to be lifting heavy weight.
3. As you lower the bar slowly, keep breathing in.
4. As you push the bar up, breath out.
5. Continue the exercise until the muscles fail.
This exercise is great for working out the total chest and shoulder area. You’ll feel it in your triceps (especially if you use a narrow grip) and in your lats too. Take care to do a good workout using lower weights to warm up the area before lifting. You’ll be able to tell the difference in your workout if you “prime” the muscles using a warmup that builds to the desired weight like 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.
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