A set of exercises to increase the mass of the pectoral muscles

The mus­cles of the chest (or, as they are also called, the pec­toral mus­cles), with prop­er devel­op­ment, give the fig­ure of a man an attrac­tive shape, since a wide chest has always been con­sid­ered a sign of mas­culin­i­ty and strength. It is also use­ful for women to per­form breast exer­cis­es to main­tain the shape of the bust and pre­vent sag­ging of the mam­ma­ry glands.

A set of strength exercises for the chest

In order to exert an intense load on the pec­toral mus­cles and there­by stim­u­late their strength­en­ing and active growth, it is nec­es­sary to include sev­er­al ele­ments from the fol­low­ing strength com­plex in the fit­ness train­ing:

• Bench press.

To tech­ni­cal­ly cor­rect­ly squeeze out the work­ing weight, you need to lie on a hor­i­zon­tal bench, grab the bar with your palms wide apart, and remove the bar­bell from the fix­ing racks. Fur­ther in the exer­cise, you should bring the bar clos­er to the chest. Inhal­ing, straight­en the upper limbs and press the bar­bell to a posi­tion above the chest. After a sec­ond, slow­ly low­er the pro­jec­tile to its orig­i­nal posi­tion. This bench press puts a load not only on the pec­toral mus­cles, but also involves the tri­ceps, deltas and trapez­i­um, so it must be includ­ed in the fit­ness pro­gram for the devel­op­ment of the mus­cles of the tor­so.

• Bench press with dumb­bells.

Tech­ni­cal­ly, this train­ing move­ment is iden­ti­cal to the bench press and also inten­sive­ly loads the chest mus­cles and oth­er mus­cle groups of the tor­so. In addi­tion, due to the need to con­stant­ly con­trol the posi­tion of both dumb­bells and their ver­ti­cal tra­jec­to­ry, sta­bi­liz­ing mus­cles are forced to join the work. In addi­tion, dumb­bells are more con­ve­nient to use dur­ing home fit­ness train­ing.

• Bench press per­formed on an incline bench.

The tech­nique of this vari­a­tion of the press involves mak­ing move­ments in a giv­en sequence: lie down on a bench, rest your feet on the floor, remove the pro­jec­tile from the stands and, hold­ing it with a fair­ly wide grip, bring it clos­er to the top of the chest. Fur­ther, hav­ing inhaled, it is nec­es­sary to squeeze out the work­ing weight, observ­ing the ver­ti­cal tra­jec­to­ry of the pro­jec­tile, despite the inclined posi­tion of the tor­so. In this exer­cise (pro­vid­ed that the angle of the bench is approx­i­mate­ly 20 degrees), the load is focused on the mus­cles locat­ed in the low­er part of the chest. The main advan­tage of the incline bench press is that it allows you to take much more weight than a hor­i­zon­tal one.

• Incline bench press per­formed with dumb­bells.

The pro­to­col for per­form­ing this exer­cise does not dif­fer from sim­i­lar work with a bar­bell. How­ev­er, in this vari­a­tion of the bench press, it is extreme­ly impor­tant to choose the right dumb­bell weight. If the mass of pro­jec­tiles is too large, then this train­ing move­ment can­not be per­formed in full ampli­tude, which means that its effec­tive­ness will decrease and, in par­al­lel, the risk of injury will increase.

• Bench press on a bench with a neg­a­tive slope.

The prin­ci­ple of per­form­ing this ele­ment of fit­ness train­ing is the same for all press­ing move­ments from the chest: you must first bring the bar clos­er to the tor­so, and then move it to the dis­tance of out­stretched arms. The ben­e­fit of such a bench press is not only in the devel­op­ment of the pec­toral mus­cles, but also in increas­ing the elas­tic­i­ty of the pec­toralis major mus­cle. To avoid the neg­a­tive con­se­quences of a long stay in the upside down posi­tion, you need to raise the body dur­ing the rest peri­od between sets of the exer­cise.

• Breed­ing dumb­bells.

Hav­ing tak­en the shells, lie down on the bench and place the dumb­bells in front of the chest on out­stretched arms so that their heads are direct­ed towards the head and knees. After tak­ing a deep breath, you need to slow­ly spread the upper limbs to the sides. When the shells fall just below the bench, you need to pause in the exer­cise, exhal­ing dur­ing this peri­od of time. Bring­ing the shells togeth­er in front of the chest, repeat the exer­cise.

Fitness Tips

In fit­ness class­es aimed at stim­u­lat­ing the growth of chest mus­cle mass, you must be guid­ed by the fol­low­ing tips from expe­ri­enced sports instruc­tors in order to get a pos­i­tive result as soon as pos­si­ble:

• fit­ness class­es for the devel­op­ment of pec­toral mus­cles must begin with a warm-up. It should con­tain ele­ments of artic­u­lar gym­nas­tics and such ener­getic move­ments as swings and breed­ing of the upper limbs. In addi­tion, the warm-up may include a light car­dio load that helps increase blood flow to the tar­get mus­cles;
• at the end of a fit­ness work­out, after com­plet­ing the main com­plex, you need to stretch the mus­cle fibers well. This is nec­es­sary in order to relax the mus­cles and acti­vate regen­er­a­tion process­es in it. Such a hitch also reduces the risk of krepatu­ra, which often accom­pa­nies strength train­ing;
• When choos­ing a work­ing weight, you need to focus on the lev­el of phys­i­cal fit­ness. At the same time, at the ini­tial stage, pref­er­ence should be giv­en to lighter pro­jec­tiles and grad­u­al­ly increase the load, focus­ing on a feel­ing of light­ness when work­ing with a giv­en work­ing weight;
• the num­ber of rep­e­ti­tions of exer­cis­es in each approach and the num­ber of approach­es them­selves should cor­re­spond to the degree of mus­cle train­ing and the ulti­mate goal of the train­ing. To increase mus­cle mass, you should work with heavy weights and per­form a small num­ber of rep­e­ti­tions, and to sep­a­rate the mus­cles of the chest and give them relief, you need to focus on high rep­e­ti­tions and use shells that are not too heavy.

Mistakes in fitness training for the pectoral muscles

In order for fit­ness class­es, the pur­pose of which is the for­ma­tion of volu­mi­nous and embossed chest mus­cles, to be effec­tive and safe, the fol­low­ing com­mon mis­takes should be avoid­ed dur­ing train­ing:

• you should not chase heavy work­ing weight, which in most cas­es leads to a vio­la­tion of the tech­nique, and there­fore to injuries, as well as to the redis­tri­b­u­tion of the load from the chest mus­cles to oth­er mus­cle groups;
• the use of only press­ing exer­cis­es leads to adap­ta­tion of the mus­cles, there­fore, a vari­ety of train­ing move­ments must be includ­ed in the fit­ness pro­gram;
• work­ing only with free weight is also a minus. Mod­ern sim­u­la­tors allow you to work out all the main mus­cle groups of the chest, so you should not ignore pow­er sports equip­ment.