This is the reason why our chest muscles are engaged in pulling and pushing. Not only this, the pectoralis minor guards the ribs and joins together the shoulder blade muscles.

You can build chest muscle by working out the correct technique, having the right food and letting your muscles grow. You also need to take rest and recover the body from the fatigue. Here you’ll find some correct and effective training methods.

Common Best Chest Workouts – the Incline / Decline / Flat Barbell Bench Press

There are two main motions to develop the chest muscles. A flye or the press or pushing and pulling are the two main motions that activate chest muscles’ growth. The most effective one is the press among the two muscle growth.

If you want to enhance the upper and the lower parts of your chest, you should use the incline and decline bench press. You can also exercise both of the muscle groups by flat bench press which is standard in any workout programs.

Incline/Decline/Flat Dumbbell Press

Dumbbells can enhance the growth of your chest muscles. They also avert shoulder injuries as you perform natural workout movements. One merit of this type of chest workout is that you can find you if any of your shoulder is weaker compared to the other.

Wide-Grip Dips

The growth of chest muscles will be stimulated after you perform few dips. The chest muscles start burning after many dips.

This training has been underutilized in spite of its remarkable outcomes. To overcome the stress, lean forward and use wider grip. This passes the stress on to the pectoral which is the target.

If you are finding dips very easy, you can throw in a weight belt. This will also add on some weight. You can also get result by working out squeezing chin dips.

Some alternatives for a best chest workout

Routine #1

Flat Barbell Bench Press: two sets of 5 – 7 rep
Wide-Grip Dips: two sets of 5 – 7 reps
Wide-Grip Dips: two sets of 5 – 7 reps

Routine #2

Incline Barbell Bench Press: two sets of 5 – 7 reps
Wide-Grip Dips: two sets of 5 – 7 reps
Flat Dumbbell Press: two sets of 5 – 7 reps

Try to keep these sets to as said as much as possible. This has been proven and is the best in building muscle. You will soon notice the growth in your muscle if you follow the training methods within a few weeks.

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Chest Press – On a bench lay flat. Now take a dumbbell in your each arm. Start with the dumbbells alongside your chest and your palms facing slightly near you. Now push the dumbbells in the direction of the ceiling and twist the dumbbells a little such that the left head of your right dumbbell and the right head of your left dumbbell are touching almost. Now bring back the dumbbells to their beginning position.

Bent Over Row – With feet shoulder stand width apart, and back making an angle of 135* from the floor. Now slightly bend your knees keeping your head facing straight hold the dumbbells under your body with your arms extended. Next bring the dumbbells near your stomach and squeeze your back muscles. Return to the starting position.

Squat – Take two dumbbells and stand with slightly wider width than the shoulders. Now position each dumbbell on your shoulder with elbow bent facing front. You should note that your upper arms must be parallel to the floor. Now crouch down while keeping your heels flat. One excellent method to crouch is to pretend like you are sitting on a chair. Now try to bend with your hips before your knees and don’t let your knees go past your toes.

Dumbbell Exercises to Develop Your Biceps

Dumbbell Curls – It is one of the simplest exercises that can be performed with dumbbells. Take a dumbbell in each hand and stand straight. Let your palms face front and now lift the dumbbells only bending your arm at the elbows. You may curl each arm alternatively. Do this routine everyday not swinging your hands. Perform 3 sets with around 8 – 10 reps per set and raise the weight of the dumbbells progressively.

Concentration Curls – Sit on one edge of a bench and bend down keeping a dumbbell in one of your hand. Slightly open your legs and let your elbow rest on the matching knee or thigh. While you rest the other arm on the thigh or knee, curl the dumbbell at the elbow. The routine must be done with no jerks.

Hammer Curls – It is same as the regular dumbbell routine but having one exception. Here in Hammer Curls your palms must face each other. The routine is a little hard than regular curls. So you need to accustom with the weights as your wrists will be under a lot of pressure during this routine. Never straighten your elbows totally whenever you lower the dumbbells.

Incline Bicep Curls – For this routine you need an incline bench and need to lie down on it with a dumbbell in each hand. This routine may look similar as regular dumbbell curls but it is more challenging and interesting. Lift the dumbbells up to your shoulders and lower them again. By this routine you will develop your bicep muscles very quickly.

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Most people are much exited in the beginning to have a weight training routine. But, bodybuilding requires a lot of dedication and patience. People eventually give up their workout regimes later. If you want a perfect body in just one month, you must plan a perfect workout and dieting routine.

Planning your Bodybuilding Routine and get ripped within 4 weeks

1. A lot of fat burning is possible by cardio workouts. Walking and running are considered as the best workouts for improving body metabolism. These leads to lot of fat burning. You should always perform cardio for at least 10 minutes before weightlifting exercises. This not only burns fat but also improves your body endurance. Different body workouts can be done, like sit ups, push ups, dips etc., for warming up. Even you can use a medicine ball or a Swiss ball for boosting body metabolism in your body.

2. The weight training exercises are considered as the most vital part of bodybuilding routine. It will help you sculpting and pumping your muscle. Never focus only on same muscle group daily and leaving others, instead concentrate also on various other muscle groups. Use different workouts like bench press, seated cable row, dead lift, triceps push downs, overhead press, lat pull down and bicep curl in your routine to work on different muscle groups.

3. Nutrition should not be overlooked. Proper nutrition is utmost essential for displaying a chiseled look. Your diet should have high protein and low fat for maintaining energy levels. Nutritious food should be consumed each day such as eggs, soybeans, vegetables, fruits etc. Adding protein supplements to your diets will also help you attaining strength and vigor.

4. Lot of endurance and power is required to carryon with the body building routine regularly. This can be achieved by taking Nitric Oxide, which increases the blood flow in your body. Increased flow of blood in turn helps in muscle pumping. Nitric Oxide also helps in recovering joint pains and injuries caused due to bodybuilding workouts. Therefore it decreases the recovery time and alleviates the immune system. It also quickens loss of fat and thus helping in age reversal.

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So which one is better? Free weights, machines or bodyweight exercises?

Free weight exercises are considered the best workout techniques if your goal is to maximize muscle gain. Of course, you can use machines and do bodyweight exercises, but it’s better to concentrate more on free weight exercises. Your strategy should be to fuel up your muscle fibers as much as
possible and machines won’t be of much help here.

Effective muscle building requires certain muscles that fall in the category-stabilizer and synergist muscles. These muscles have a supportive function and help in giving a complex boost to the main muscle. To stimulate muscle fiber, you need to work these supporting muscles first. Free weight compound exercises
such as the bench press help to work out these stabilizer and synergistic muscles while doing the same bench press exercise on a machine has almost nothing to do with these supporting muscles.

Machines have certain rigidity in the sense they can work only in a particular range of movement and the weights they support are fixed. Machines lack the capacity to work on the muscles surrounding the main muscle you are working on.
Hence, your stabilizer muscles don’t get worked on and start becoming powerless. If these supporting muscles are feeble, there’s no chance for the main muscles to develop.

On the other hand, free weight exercises such as dumbbell press or squat exercises stress the stabilizer muscles. This is one reason why these exercises make you feel tired faster and weights seem tougher to lift than when you use the machine. However, this is the best way to gain muscle weight fast and know
the real estimate of your strength.

If you use machines in your program, they should be used to work isolated areas and only after all multi-jointed exercises have been completed.

So, it’s preferable to use muscles to work only on isolated areas, and that too after you’ve finished doing the exercises that work on multiple joints.

Freshers to weight training should ideally start your workout with a mixture of multi-jointed free weight, bodyweight and machine exercises. Your first goal should be to familiarize yourself with the working of each form, then go in for increasing the weights. After a few sessions you’ll find that bodyweight
exercises are inadequate to efficiently increase muscle growth and you’ll start taking up more free weight exercises.

What are multi-jointed exercises?

Synchronized stimulation of multiple muscles to boost the large muscle groups through compound movements are called multi jointed exercises. It’s ideal to keep these exercises as the base of your work out routine because they work on many different muscles at the same time.

Different muscle zones require different exercises. Let’s look at some exercises that best suit each muscle zone:

These exercises are very important and it’s essential that you complete these exercises before starting a more complex weight training program.

The advantage of these exercises is, they strain your skeletal and muscular system to the maximum level that can’t be achieved by any machine, thereby giving your body the best possible workout routine in a short span. Do as many exercises as you can without overstressing your body. Even experts advocate
these exercises for the successful muscle and strength gain they bring about.

Weight lifting

For best results in gaining muscle mass, use heavy weights for weight training. Heavy in this context means a weight that offers you resistance. Your weight is heavy if you are able to do only 8 – 12 reps before your body gives up. A light weight is when you are able to do 15 reps before you start feeling muscle fatigue. You need to lift heavy weights because more muscle fibers get worked on this way than when you use light weights. It’s as easy as this. Just remember, you need to provoke more muscles to generate more muscle
growth.

Overstressing your muscles is bad

Your body goes through a great deal of stress when you do heavy weight training. Give the body some time to heal itself by taking adequate rest and by spacing out your workouts. Training too frequently without adequate breaks leads to overstrain on muscles. Your body doesn’t get enough time to recuperate
and you wouldn’t have enough energy for your next work out. So, rest is very important. Resting adequately is as important as eating is.

It might be thrilling and challenging to keep working out, but it’s wise to know your limit and stay within these limits. Make sure you pace your workouts such that you are able to work out long term and reach your goals without any burnout. My weight training is limited to three times a week. If I do more than this, my body wouldn’t have enough time to recover and build new muscle. Most people think you’re gaining muscles by working out more. The truth is, muscles grow only when you’re resting. So make sure you get lots of rest for effective muscle gain.

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So how do cardiovascular exercises help you gain muscle mass?

Cardio exercises are usually spoken of in conjunction with weight loss. It’s a little known fact that the right cardio exercises also contribute to weight gain through gaining of muscle weight. Weight training results in increasing muscles as well as a small quantity of fat. A combination of weight training and cardio exercises helps you to gain muscle weight while shedding fat. Cardio exercises help gain muscle mass by pumping in more blood to the muscles and increasing the rate of metabolism.

Cardio exercises, in general, have been found to be very beneficial to health. It helps to prevent heart diseases, improves blood circulation, the rate of metabolism and assists the body in healing at a faster rate.

A typical muscle building exercise routine involves weight training; this leads to increased muscle mass. To maintain the overall stability of the body while gaining muscle mass, it’s ideal to incorporate cardio exercises along with your weight training. This makes it easier for the body to adapt itself to the pressures of weight training. A weight training schedule may be beneficial to build muscles, but it puts excess strain on one important muscle – the heart. A combination of cardio with weight training acts to eliminate this stress from the heart.

Another important benefit from cardio exercises is, they improve your appetite and help you gain weight by eating more. Just try out a simple 30 minute walk early in the morning and see how hungry you feel when you finish walking. Ensure you eat the right, protein-rich foods to satisfy this stimulated appetite to effectively gain muscle weight. Cardio exercises also improve sleep through effective distribution of oxygen throughout the body. Muscles normally develop when the body’s resting. This is another reason why cardio is recommended for muscle gain.

It’s important that you don’t overdo your cardio workout. A moderate frequency cardio routine’s best to gain muscle mass. It’s sufficient if your schedule your cardio exercises to three times a week for duration of 20 minutes each.

So which cardio work outs should you select to gain muscle weight? Almost all cardio activities contribute to building muscles when done in a moderate level. Select an exercise like swimming or rowing to get the best out of your cardio workout. These involve using the larger muscles and are relatively intense in nature as compared to other activities.

And always remember, you are losing a lot of calories when your carry out these activities. Eat calorie high foods to compensate for this loss to gain weight and gain muscle mass effectively. Drink lots of water and liquid food to replace the lost fluids.

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1. Weight training
Effective weight training through the right exercises is the best way to gain weight and build your strength through developing muscles. Weight lifting is said to be one of the most effective ways to build firm muscles. One important factor to note here is, each person has a unique body structure; hence select an exercise routine that best suits your body needs. Working out is not just about performing some routine weight training for the sake of exercising. The right breathing techniques, the right position and posture and the most suitable frequency are very important to maximize the benefits of your work out procedure. Start out with light weight lifting and keep adding weights according to your comfort levels. Calisthenics and squat exercises are also good ideas to build muscle mass.

2. Eat right
Eat foods rich in calories; wholesome food rich in proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals. Keep on eating at regular intervals to gain weight. Just make sure you eat the right kind of food and not junk food. When you’re on an exercise routine, it’s very important not to be malnourished because that will defeat your goal to achieve weight gain. Starving leads to depletion of muscles and stagnation of fat. So keep eating healthy food, preferably in their natural form to gain weight and build muscle mass. What food should we eat to build muscle mass?

- Carb food – Brown rice, whole wheat bread, potatoes, oatmeal, cereals and fruits

- Protein based food – Chicken, tuna, legumes, egg white, cottage cheese, yoghurt, milk and nuts

- Essential fatty acids- Butter, wheat germ oil, olive oil and other vegetable oils

Carbohydrates are great energy boosters and give you’re the energy needed for complex workouts. Proteins are essential for effective development of muscles.

3. Liquids
When you start working out, you’ll lose a lot of fluids in the form of sweat. Compensate this loss by drinking water. Drink lots of water at regular intervals during the day. Other than water, have protein supplements, health drinks and nourishing fresh fruit and vegetable juices to gain weight and build strength.

4. Rest
Adequate rest and sleep is very important for a fit and healthy body. You build muscles when you sleep well because sleep induces activation of growth hormones. Try to take rest after each work out, practice breathing techniques when you rest for total relaxation. You need at least 8 hours of sleep every day for a healthy, alert body.

5. Attitude
Self-motivation is the key to gain strength. The need to gain weight and build muscle mass should come from within. Set goals for yourself to achieve your weight and strength objectives. Chart out your weekly workout schedule, daily diet and set a target weight you want to achieve. Keep reminding yourself of the benefits of a stronger body. Decide on a particular time each week to check to see if you’ve attained your weekly goals. Change your work-out routine at frequent intervals to avoid monotony. Enjoy your new diet and new exercise routine. If possible, get your friends to club in with you to have fun while working out.

Follow the above guidelines for a new body, a refreshingly new personality and a great new look!

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Do not get astonished if I tell you that in order to strengthen your muscles, you need to tear them down. Lifting heavy weights and doing other such weight bearing activities tend to cause micro tears in the muscle fiber. The human body, in return, responds quite magnificently by not only repairing this damage caused, but by also adding some more tissues in the muscle in order to prevent future such damage. This principle has been known to man forever, as adaptation. And the human body is very good at adaptation.

Just as a broken bone is repaired and healed in due course of time by our body, this muscle-tear repair also works in almost the same fashion. Anyone who has had a bone fracture (i.e. a broken bone) must have seen the X-Ray reports. These reports depict that how much change a body goes through during this healing process. The bone is healed as well as it grows larger in size in the area where the break occurred. Quite obviously, one doesn’t go around breaking the bones in his body for this, but this example would make the picture very clear. Proper intake of fluids is vital during this healing process for our body. These act as building blocks to repair and increase the muscle tissue. The diet must be rich in plenty of proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins and fats as well (healthy ones, of course, like olive oil, seed oil etc.).

Muscles adapt and grow in different ways and it is a good idea to have a basic understanding of these differences so that one achieves the results and does not end up wasting his efforts. Basically, there are two types of muscle fibers, fast twitch and slow twitch. The former, i.e. the slow twitch fibers are more efficient at oxygen utilization and are used for activities, such as running a marathon race. The latter, i.e. the fast twitch fibers tend to tire out quickly and are more suited to short bursts of energy and quick bursts of power. These are the fibers your workouts will be mainly targeting.

Another important part of the equation is recovery time. If you do not allow enough time for the muscle to recover before tearing it down again, you will not get any growth. People who fall in this trap usually either stay the same or they actually lose muscle.

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