#Workoutanytime full#
#Workoutanytime series#

There's a whole treasure trove full of workouts and exercises to be uncovered to blast the chest that can sculpt your pecs and push your upper body training days to the next level. You can train your chest at home or in a pinch with bodyweight moves like pushup variations, feature chest-centric movements in broader full-body workouts to spread the workload, and if you feel like you're lagging, even ramp up the volume beyond the Monday standard with multiple sessions dedicated to chest in a week. You'll also be stronger anytime you need to push or swing using your arms. Still, the benefits of chest training are important to keep in mind: Not only will a well-developed chest have aesthetic benefits in terms of how your shirts fit and how you'll look without one, you'll also see postural benefits (just make sure to balance out your chest day with back training, too). Your chest is a fairly large muscle group, so you'd be hard-pressed to ignore it. The Benefits of Training Your Chest Muscles The serratus anterior and subclavius are also chest muscles, which rotate the scapula and anchors and depresses the clavicle, respectively. The pec minor helps to move your ribs and shoulders. The pec major is tasked with adduction of the arm (movement in toward the body) and rotation of the arm forward, along with assisting other muscles in pulling the trunk up when your arms are above your head. The pectoralis major is larger, as the name implies, and is superior (or located above) to the pectoralis minor, is smaller and located below the pec major. There are actually two muscles that make up your pecs, the pectoralis major and pectoralis minor.Īlan Gesek/Stocktrek Images // Getty Images The chest is a muscle group you might have heard referred to by one catchall name: the pectorals, a.k.a.

First, though, it helps to understand the muscle group before you pick up a weight. You can build out a new plan using some of these exercises, which will spur muscle growth and help you to build strength. Variety is a major key for for muscle adaptation, so you'll want to use different types of equipment and techniques to challenge your chest to help it grow. There's more to chest training than just your bench press max weight-and there are more exercises that you should do to target your chest muscles.

#Workoutanytime series#

Fair, if you subscribe to the International Chest Day school of training, that starts and ends with a series of barbell bench presses, aimed at piling up as many plates onto the bar as possible without any consideration of everything the chest muscles actually do.īut anyone who wants to train for a balanced, healthy physique will understand that you need to train smart, not like a meathead (at least not all the time). The idea is that you might fixate on these muscles because they're in your immediate field of vision, and that's not conducive to building a well-balanced, ' functional' physique. These muscles tend to be the focus of most beginner and vanity-based workout routines, much to the consternation of functional fitness obsessives. That's why the chest is sometimes considered to be one of the mirror muscles, a catchall category for the easily pump-able muscles that are anteriorly positioned on your body (in other words, on the front side of yourself). What do you see? That's right-your chest is front and center, prominently positioned at the top of your torso. THE CHEST IS one of the prime muscle groups for guys to target in weight room workouts, and for good reason.