3 Step Guide to Build A Muscular Chest

While grunts and sweat are very much a part of the equation, building a strong chest is an academic as well as an athletic endeavor. Knowing how to overload, confuse, and repair muscles efficiently will guarantee a muscular chest in a matter of weeks.

1. Muscle Confusion

The best way to strengthen and tone the major muscles of the chest is to incorporate muscle confusion into a chest workout. Muscle confusion entails the use of rapidly changing routines and time intervals between sets or workouts.

Changing up the routine, for example, for a chest workout is as simple as changing the angles from which the chest is attacked by doing incline bench press, lateral flys, and shoulder presses in addition to regular bench press. These different emphases will confuse the pec major and pec minor muscles by stimulating different areas of the chest, a proven deterrent to the plateau effect.

Keeping rest intervals to 45 seconds or less will keep the pectoral muscles partially depleted of oxygen, tearing more fibers per workout. When lifting for tone, it is the opposite: sustained contractions with lower resistance will tear and rebuild the slow-contracting oxidative fibers.

2. Muscle Overload

Muscle overload is another form of muscular confusion that involves lifting beyond one's known capacity. It requires perfect form throughout the lift so that the pecs do not cheat through the lift. People who arch their backs when bench-pressing, for example, will squander their strength as well as increase their risk of injury. The best way to incorporate muscle overload into a chest workout is to increase the amount of weight for a given lift by 12 to 15 percent once a plateau is reached. For someone who bench presses 200 pounds, for example, increasing the weight to 225 after a set of 4 reps can be completed with perfect form is muscle overload. This should be done for each lift.

3. Debunking the Cardio Myth

Finally, many aspiring bodybuilders shy from cardio because they believe that it shrinks their muscles. If it is done correctly and for the right amount of time, however, cardio supports those anaerobic muscle fibers that compose the large muscles like the pecs. Interval training works best for chest bodybuilders; sprinting at 90 percent for one minute and jogging for two minutes, for up to 24 minutes.

Changing up the routine for a chest workout is as simple as changing the angles