How To Improve Your Bench Press And Build Muscles Fast
Everyone knows to build muscle up one of the best exercises for the upper body is the bench press. As always certainly one of the questions near the top of bodybuilders lists is: how much can you bench press?’. Of course i ti probably not the best measure of total body strength it does naturally have a very macho feel to it and of course is very impressive. So lets cut to the chase and find out how to build muscle now and get a bigger bench press:
Grow your triceps. As musch as two thirds of the entire muscle mass on your arms comes from the tricep muscle. it is more than possible that under developed tris are stopping your bench press from increasing. The best exercises to build muscle mass on your triceps are using barbells and dumbells: close grip bench-presses and skull crushers. Isolation exercises like tricep press-downs are less effective. They should definitely help notch up your bench press.
Why not try training your triceps individually by themselves. Commonly, hitting the chest muscles is advised to be done in the same workout as tricep training. Try training them on their own for a change. Doing this allows you to attack them when they are fresh and really concentrate and focus on hammering them to stimulate growth. Do this over a number of weeks and see how much more weight you can press.
Variety. have you been repeating the same old workout for months? time to mix it up then. After your muscles have done the same workout a few times, they have already adapted to it and therefore the need to grow has been removed. Keep changing things, they can be subtle changes like altering the grip width or reversing the order of your routine or they can be larger changes like doing super sets, compound sets and so on, these will give you a real pump by the way.
Make sure you are not doing too much! While with most things in life more is better, in muscle building this is not quite true. Too much training for your chest muscles means it takes longer for them to recover and develop. Do not focus on quantity rather go for intensity and quality instead. A short intense workout is much more effective than a long drawn out one.
Decent rest. Your muscles do not grow on the weight bench! They grow when they are resting. You won’t grow if you don’t allow enough time to grow. Of course, never train when your muscles are sore and a good guideline is only do 6-9 sets each session for the chest, more than this risks over training.
Take a rest from training. If you hit a training plateau then consider taking a complete break. Allow your body to fully recuperate and eradicate all the strains and return a week or so later doubly motivated.
Give your chest muscles a much more intense hit by doing negatives. Negatives are when you get the help from two spotters to intially aid you to press the weight upwards but who then let you take the full weight and lower it by yourself under control. We do this because you can actually lower more weight than you can lift. So if we can get the body used to lowering more weight this will help you get stronger for the lifting/effort phase. The lowering phase is proven to trigger more muscle growth than the lifting phase.
Double check your diet. Are you consuming around 6 meals a day with at least 1 gram of protein for each pound of bodyweight that you have? If you are not then it may well be the case that you are limiting your gains by not following a muscle building diet strictly enough. In each meal try to get them divided as follows: 50% carbohydrate, 30% protein and the remainder can be compiled of fats. Take supplements if you can afford to like whey protein, essential fatty acids and multi-vitamins.
Focus on your technique. Are you pressing correctly. Faulty technique can push the focus away from the chest muscles group and put you at a heightened risk of getting injured. Make sure you are not lifting your feet off the ground and that your hands are not too close together, these are two very common errors.
By following the guidelines above you will be giving yourself the best chance to build muscle mass on your chest fast. Go do it!