Everyone knows to build muscle mass one of the best exercises for the upper body is the bench press. As always certainly one of the questions most bodybuilders want to know the answer to is: how much can you bench press?’. Of course i is probably not the best measurement of total all round 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 fast and get a bigger bench press:

Grow your triceps. As much as two thirds of the complete muscle mass on your arms is made up of the tricep muscle. it is more than likely that weak tris are restricting your bench press progress. 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 will certainly help improve your bench press.

Why not try training your triceps individually by themselves. More often than not muscle building programs will suggest that you train the triceps along with the chest. Try training them on their own for a change. Doing this means that you can train them very inensely and trigger muscle growth in the process. Do this over a period of a few weeks and then go back and see how many more weight discs you can press.

Variety. have you been doing the same training session over and over again? time to mix it up then. Your muscle won’. 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. If you do too much and overtrain your chest then it can struggle to recover and find it hard to grow more. Instead of focussing on quantity, focus on technique and intensity. A short intense workout is much more effective than a long drawn out one.

Good rest periods. Your muscles don’t grow in the fitnes centre! They grow when they are resting. If you don’t give enough time for growing then you simply won’t grow. Of course do not workout again when your muscles are still, a fair rule of thumb is to limit yourself to 6-9 sets each workout for each muscle group, any more and you may be at risk overtraining.

Take a prolonged training break. 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.

Use negatives as a form of pushing your chest muscle harder during a bench press workout. Negatives are when you find two spotters to intially aid you to press the weight but who then let you take the full weight and lower it by yourself under slow complete control. This is done because people are able to lower more than they can lift. Therefore if we can manage to get the body lowering more weight it is likely that this will help us on the effort phase also. The lowering portion of the lift is know to trigger more muscle growth than the positive effort phase.

Check your diet. Are you eating 5-7 meals a day with approximately 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight? If you are not then it is possible that you are limiting your gains by not following a muscle building diet strictly enough. In each meal try to get them split as so: 50% carbohydrate, 30% protein and the rest can be made up of fats. Use supplements if you can such as 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 pectoral muscle group and place you at a heightened risk of getting injured. Ensure you are not moving your feet up off the floor and that your hands are not grasping the bar too closely together, these are two easy and often made errors.

By following the guidelines above you will be giving yourself the best chance to build muscle mass on your chest fast. Go get them!

Tags: bench press, bodybuilding, build muscle mass, chest training, how to build muscle, Weight Training
Filed under: Build Muscle