In this article I'd like to discuss training the chest and increasing the bench press. I see a lot of questions about how to improve the bench press and chest muscles. I gained 55 lbs. on my bench press in four months, from 260 to 315, and 3 inches on my chest. My partner also did this with me, and he was completely plateaued at 330 for the past several years (he's 24, weighs 165) and he destroyed that plateau and got to 365. This is, I believe, the perfect workout for chest size and bench press power. Here it is:

Week 1:

Monday
*Bench Press with three sets of eight, all taken to failure, 3-5 minute breaks

*Dumbbell Press first set for eight, and stay with that weight for 2 more sets to failure 2-4 minute breaks

*"Heady" presses (named after my partner, Jason Heady) these are basically a superset, you take a weight about half what you dumbbell pressed, and do alternating flyes and presses with it, but with the presses keep your elbows in and your palms facing each other. Alternate the two for 12 reps each, take a minute break, then see how many more you can pump out.

*Superset flyes and French presses for two sets of 8-12 reps rest a minute before the next

*Superset parallel bar dips and rope pressdowns for 8-12 reps -if by this time you cannot do bodyweight dips, put your feet on the floor and assist as little as necessary to bring yourself up. Looks retarded but its what I did for my first month and at the end of 4 months I was strappin' on a plate-

*Finally, do two sets of dumbbell kickbacks. You shouldn't use much for this, I only use a 15 or 20 depending. The important thing is to keep your elbow high, your back straight, and get a good squeeze at the top. Do continuous sets since one muscle gets to rest as the other is working.

Thursday:
This is the "feeder" workout. You'll do all incline movements because they do not activate as many chest fibers, preventing you from overtraining, but they also activate enough to flush the muscle with blood, get a pump, and consequentially improve your recovery.

Alternate free weight incline and smith machine incline each week for 12, 10, and 8

Dumbbell Inclines with the same reps

Cable flyes with the arms high to focus on the upper chest for the same reps

I usually train shoulders on this day, I think its a good time to. I usually did lateral raises, behind the neck presses, bent lateral raises, an Arnold presses. The reps aren't vitally important, as long as your fatiguing the shoulders and going to your max.

On the incline movements you should go till you feel a good burn, but not to failure.

Week 2

All the same except bench press reps change to 10, 8, 6, 4

Week 3

Bench reps change to 5, 4, 3, 2, 1

Week 4

Bench starts over but on dumbbell presses you will not do a fourth drop set where you lay down the dumbbells you have and grab some about half that weight.

On successive weeks change out some of the auxiliary exercises. Like instead of heady presses do EZ curl bar presses, with a close grip. These are fantastic for improving the striations in the inner pec and bringing out that "diamond". Also, in place of rope pressdowns you can do straight bar, reverse V bar, or diamond push ups. Instead of flyes their are cable flyes. A key factor in this program is flexibility, always keep the same number of exercises, but switch them out for similar ones. Also one thing I liked to do at the end was a set of incline push ups to failure, that'll be harder than anything but if you really want what your after you'll do it. Sometimes, on incline day you may start with incline dumbbell presses, then do incline barbell/smith machine presses. Variety is important and with this program AND varying your auxiliaries from week to week, you can continue to make gains on this program for quite a while. I've been off this program for about 2 months, I've been concentrating on improving my lats, which I have because I put another inch on my chest circumference. I'm planning on going back to this program and include my killer lat workout I'm doing, which I'll write about also.

I realize I didn't fully introduce myself in my first article, I'm Alton Hare, I'm 16, bodybuilding for 8 months. I bench 315, weigh 180, have 16 inch arms, 26 inch legs, 43 inch chest. I've gained 15 pounds these last 8 months also. My fav guy here is Locke, and I'm chasin' after him, I know I'm about as big as he is but I'm not as cut, he has much more muscle, my body fat is higher, I wanna get that big and be as lean! That way my muscle will be much more visible. I want to enter a teen competition next July/August, I believe I'll be ready by then. If anybody knows of any in southeastern US (preferably NC) send me an e mail, I'm interested.

- Alton

beautifuldisaster420@yahoo.com

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