I get asked by many people how I achieve the shape in my chest and the muscle definition in my chest. It’s true that a defined, sculpted and muscular chest looks amazing on a guy. A toned and defined chest for a woman looks beautiful too, no matter what type of clothing you are wearing. A nice chest also helps your posture, your clothes fit a lot better and it helps visually portray your self-confidence to other people.
An amazing chest can be defined in a number of ways. For some people, it can mean a nicely defined chest. Other people may want a big chest with large pectoral muscles. Optimally, you should want a large chest with perfect muscle definition.
In this chest workout exercise article, I will discuss an example of one of my chest exercise workouts that hits all parts of the chest. There are so many different chest exercises to do that it is easy to mix and match various chest exercise on different pieces of equipment for tons of variety every chest workout.
My goal always is to try to achieve a chest that is both muscular and beautifully scupted. These exercises will work out your upper, middle and lower pectorals. You can use the same chest workout or modify it to better suit your needs. I recommend:
- 5 different chest exercises each workout.
- 4-5 sets of 8 to 12 repetitions, depending on how heavy or intensely you will be doing each set and repetition.
- The first set of each exercise I prefer to use a light weight as a warm-ip
- I also recommend that you slow down the speeds of lifting and releasing the weight to accentuate the positive and negative of each movement.
1. Wide Chest Press Exercise - Hammer Strength
First of all, I like to start with some form of wide chest press as my first chest exercise to really focus on the large chest muscles. I like using the wide chest press Hammer Strength exercise machine. What I like about this exercise machine is that the motion is not linear and it works the entire chest using a wide press. You also don’t need a spotter. Therefore you can really push yourself and press as heavy as you want without losing grasp of the weights or injuring yourself.
2. Cable Crossover Chest Exercise
The next exercise that I like to do is the cable crossover exercise. You can do this exercise standing up, slightly bent forward or bent over. Done on a pulley, it also offers constant resistance and a full range of motion. I’ll start with one exercise standing up, with a slight bend and using a lighter weight. For the second to fifth exercises, I prefer the bent-over approach while using this machine. Depending on how you do this exercise, you can work out your chest from many different angles. This is a great exercise for fine-tuning and sculpting your chest.
3. Dumbbell Chest Press Exercise
- 3A). Flat bench or 3B). Incline bench
After this exercise, I like to do either the lying dumbbell chest press exercise or the incline chest press. Both are performed in the same manner - one lying on a bench and the other sitting at an incline. The lying down chest press I prefer to do every week. The incline I will alternate with exercise #4. Again, this exercise really works the entire chest and gives you a wider range of motion when you use the dumbbells because you are not limited by any range of motion. Although, with dumbbellls you may need the help of a spotter.
4. Incline Press on Hammer Strength Machine
The next chest exercise is an incline chest press using the Hammer Strength Machine - another seated and relatively wide-grip exercise done at an incline. On this machine the movement is not a straight press but rather a chest press that is upwards and at an angle. This exercise tends to have a better range of motion that is non-linear. It’s much more difficult to lift heavy weights due to the angle at which you are lifting. I find that it does a great job in working out the upper and middle pectoral muscles. Also, the seat must be properly adjusted within a given range so that you are working your chest and not your shoulders.
5. Close-grip Chest Press - Freemotion Machine
This exercise uses a close-grip and will hit the chest from a different angle. You can do this exercise using any cable pulley-machine.
This is just one example of a chest workout. You can vary the order and mix and match your chest workouts with the many other chest exercises for even greater variation.
Variations of Chest Exercise Workout Sessions:
- 1, 2, 3A, 4, 5
- 1, 2, 3A, 4, 3B
- 1, 2, 3A, 3B, 5
- 1, 4, 3A, 5, 2
- 1, 2, 4, 3A, 5
Conclusion
This is a snap-shot of my chest workout that I feel gives me the results I desire. By performing the above-mentioned foundation chest exercises using a combination of plated machines, dumbbell exercises and pulley machines, you too can achieve an amazing chest. Along with exercising you also should eat properly and get plenty of sleep. Sure genetics helps a lot, but working out and exercising properly to maximum all the potential benefits is also mental and motivational in nature!
