Chest

Chest is my favorite muscle to workout because it is my strongest muscle. I usually work out chest at the beginning of the week particularly on Mondays. The first thing I do for chest is always bench press. For bench press I do five sets of five repetitions increasing the weight by five pounds every set. If I complete the last set for five repetitions then I will move up five pounds every set the following week. So if I do 200, 205, 210, 215, and 220 all for five repetitions then the next week I will move up to 205, 210, 215, 220, and 225. The second thing I do for chest is inclined bench press which is instead of laying down flat your sitting in an inclined vertical position. I do three sets of five repetitions increasing the weight by five pounds each set. The next exercise I do is fly’s using dumbbells or a cable machine for three sets of ten repetitions. The last exercise I do is either three sets of push ups until failure or three sets of dumbbell bench press until failure. During powerlifting season I did completely different exercises which were much more complex such as board press, lockouts, floor press, and speed presses. During powerlifting I benched on two days, Mondays and Thursdays. Mondays were the heavy days and Thursdays were the light speed days. Mondays would usually consist of board presses, floor presses, and lockouts usually working up to a three rep max. The three rep max is the heaviest weight you can lift for three repetitions. The light speed day would consist of eight to ten sets of three repetitions. On light speed days you use very light weight like 50-60% of your one rep max. The idea of a speed day is to train with speed and lift weight as fast as possible. Eventually when lifters get more experience they start using bands or chains on the weight. Bands or chains add resistance, when you come down with the weight it gets lighter but when you come back up the weight gets more resistance. The purpose of bands and chains is to train your weak points and get make you lift much faster.