Building an Armor-Plated Chest
Who doesn’t want a chest that hangs on your torso like a sheet of steel? I think most men out there probably have no problem growing their chests, because everyone was raised on the bread-and-butter bench press. Just make sure you prioritize your upper chest once in a while. In 8 years do you want to say: "Yeah, I just do incline presses now because I did too many flat-benches earlier on in my lifting career…". I sure don’t.
Today I started with incline dumbell presses to give some love to my upper pecs (see last paragraph). 95’s felt easy, so I moved to 100’s and got a new PR: 100’s x 6. I believe that I could have done this in the past: I remember one workout where I was psyched to use 100’s, but couldn’t kick up the DB’s on one particular incline bench. Oh well, next time 100’s x 8-10 here I come.
Then I simply moved 2 feet to my right and used a flat bench to knock out 4 sets of flat DB presses: 100’s x 3-8 reps (pretty tired from the first exercise).
Then I did decline Barbell presses to work the lower chest. I would have done decline DB presses, but it’s kind of hard to get those into place when you are working out alone. 4 sets, 225 x 8 was the best set (although I feel like I tweaked my right elbow after this…).
Flat DB fly’s were last, only 2 sets with 60’s, 6-10 reps, stopped early because my right arm felt tweaked. Feels better now though, thank God ’cause I got back tmrw.
Calves were last, 4 supersets of seated and donkey calf raises…8-10 reps…8-12 reps. Then I went to standing calf raises and just kind of went for a couple pump sets to get the blood flowing. I also jumped on the Elliptical for 40 min. after lifting and sweated up a storm.
So I think this workout went ok. I felt kind of drained after the incline presses, but all in all, this session went pretty well. I think I’m going to continue to switch from DB to BB presses from week to week, just makes sense.
I have back tmrw…and last week I did 30 f…ing sets, and you know what? I think I’ll do that again tmrw!
Happy Lifting!
October 28, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Great read. I’m new to lifting but your blog reinforces what I’m doing now. I always try to work the top of the chest first, then mid, then bottom. I want to have a nice balanced pecs instead of man titties. Thanks for posting and hope that your arm is feeling better.