How To Build Your Chest Muscles: Train With Intervals

Since the beginning of bodybuilding time, men have wanted to build a chest that enters the room a good 2 seconds before the rest of their body. They want a chest that stands out and commands attention, a chest that steps up and sticks out. A broad chest that women seek to lay their head upon.

And ladies too, seek a beautiful chest, one that accents their natural assets. But they also want their chest to be sleek and feminine like the rest of their physique at the same time.

Well, achieving either of those goals is easily attainable with a thorough chest routine. And add a few expert tips and tricks into your overall plan, and you’ll have the chest of your dreams without the shoulder injuries of your nightmares.

Shoulder injuries have always been the rain on the chest training parade.
Injuries are often due to overtraining, improper form, or simply not applying a back training ying to the chest training yang.

So when you do this routine, it will train your entire upper, upper body. By that I mean your chest, your rear delts, the rhomboids between your shoulder blades, your traps, and your rotator cuff muscles. From your ribs to your collarbone, at both the front and back of your body, your muscles will be exhausted, but trained to just the right level of exhaustion.

With just the right volume, but without overloading the shoulder joint, we are going to use basic chest exercises, but with a twist in a few cases, to make the most of the least. By training with supersets, you’ll get in and out of the gym if you do only the 6 exercises below. Talk about a beautiful chest fast.

While the full program offers the optimal volume for mega-chest-mass, I’ve included some substitutions for women that are a little concerned with adding too much mass too fast to their chests. So make sure to read training substitutions, included below the workout, so you can customize the program to your goals.

I’ve also included a summary of the methods, and a bonus instant chest building technique you probably never think of, after the workout. As well, a complete set of exercise descriptions is included at the end of the article.

THE UGN STANDOUT-IN-THE-CROWD CHEST Workout

Superset 1:

Rest 60 seconds between exercises. Rest 90 seconds before repeating the superset.

A1) DB Flat Chest Press (4 sets x 6 reps) Tempo: 3-0-1

A2) Barbell Row or Seated Wide-grip Row (4x8) 2-0-1

Superset 2:

Do not rest between exercises. Rest 60 seconds before repeating the superset.

B1) DB Incline Press (3x8) 2-0-1

B2) DB Chest Fly (3x10) 3-0-1

Superset 3:

Do not rest between exercises. Rest 60 seconds before repeating the superset.

C1) Medium-grip Bench Press (3x12) 2-0-1

C2) DB External Rotation (3x10) 2-0-1

Female exercise substitutions:

Do only 2 sets of each exercise.

For exercise A1), substitute the maximum number of pushups you can do in place of the DB Flat Chest Press.



How to Instantly Increase Your Chest Size

This is something that everyone should be doing, several times per day. If you work at a computer, you should be trying to hold this position all of the time.

Here’s what to do:

In a seated or standing position, hold your arms down by your side.
Externally rotate your shoulders so that your palms are now facing forward.
Use the muscles between your shoulder blades to bring your shoulder blades together.
Squeeze extra hard and pull your shoulders back by contracting your rear delts.
At the same time, try to pull your shoulders down (you might feel a stretch running along your neck between your shoulders and your ears – the more stretch you feel, the more you need to work on holding this position).

This should pull your shoulders back and pop your chest out at least two inches.
You should feel tension between your shoulder blades as your muscles work to hold that position. You might also feel a stretch in your chest.
Now hold this proud posture as much as you can all day and when standing around in the clubs or in line at the grocery store.


Trust me, someone will notice!

Interval Training is not only about fat loss. Interval training can also help you to strengthen and build lean quality muscle.

Best Fat Burning Foods

Best Foods For Fat Burning
By: Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
www.TurbulenceTraining

I couldn't be any simpler with my nutrition recommendations for foods for fat burning. You will get have the most energy and the best body and fitness level possible if you eat whole, natural foods. I always ask Dr. Chris Mohr, author of the Turbulence Training for Fat Loss Nutrition Guidelines if I ever need help with nutrition information.

You must avoid processed foods, which is pretty much anything in a bag or a box. So cut out muffins, donuts, pre-packaged cereals, white bread, pasta, chips, crackers, cookies, etc.

We need to return to a time of simpler eating, focusing on fruits, vegetables, nuts, lean proteins, and healthy fats. It will take some "bad habit breaking" to rid yourself of your addiction to processed foods, but in your journey you will learn to appreciate the taste of REAL food again.

You don't have to eat meat to lose fat and build muscle, but it's not unhealthy to eat beef, chicken, and fish. In fact, fish contains essential fatty acids we can't do without.

You might have heard about the importance of healthy fats, which is a big turn-around from the low-fat mentality of the 80's and 90's. We now know eating fish and nuts won't make us fat, but will in fact make us healthy and help control our appetite.

So just focus on foods that haven't been processed, and you'll start to see changes in your body and energy levels in a matter of days. Get rid of the processed foods and you won't be tired anymore!

I strongly believe nutrition is the MOST important factor in fat loss and in health. If you're eating processed foods, trans-fats, and too many calories, you won't get maximum benefits from your exercise program, no matter what you are doing. Nutrition can either heal you or kill you, so choose wisely. Fortunately, the right choices are the simple choices.

I've had clients that switched to whole, natural foods and almost overnight they've reported changes in their bodies and huge increases in mental energy. So stick with the simple nutrition approach for fat burning.


About the Author

Craig Ballantyne is a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist and writes for Men's Health, Men's Fitness, Maximum Fitness, Muscle and Fitness Hers, and Oxygen magazines. His trademarked Turbulence Training fat loss workouts have been featured multiple times in Men’s Fitness and Maximum Fitness magazines, and have helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat, gain muscle, and get lean in less than 45 minutes three times per week. For more information on the Turbulence Training workouts that will help you burn fat without long, slow cardio sessions or fancy equipment, Turbulence Training

Interval Fat Loss Training vs Cardio Workouts

Cardio Workout Routines

Breaking News! Doing long slow cardio workout routines Does NOT work for fat loss!

Researchers from North America and Australia agree that you can get faster fat burning and fitness building results from interval training. So stop your long cardio workouts now and switch to shorter burst exercise.

The story of interval training begins back in the early 1980's when Drs. MacDougall and Sale were studying sport specific training adaptations to different types of cardio workout routines. They were shocked to find long sessions were not always best.

In fact, they discovered that interval training is better for short power sports like basketball, hockey, and football, and interval training even had a major role in getting fit for sports like soccer and running 5k races.

But it wasn't until the mid 1990's that the first fat loss study was done on interval training. At that time, Canadian researchers compared interval training to long cardio workouts and found that interval training was able to burn fat faster.

Men and women were able to do shorter workouts and get more results. But surprisingly, it wasn't until 7 years later that the first American interval training study was done, and unfortunately it has never been published.

Only a few elite trainers know about this study that found interval training worked better than slow cardio workout routines for fat loss. The subjects were middle-aged women, and they lost more fat with interval training compared to slow cardio.

Finally, in 2007, almost 30 years after MacDougall and Sale first brought interval training to the spotlight, another study was done in Australia that confirmed intervals work better than cardio exercise for female fat loss.

This study compared 20 minutes of intervals against 40 minutes of steady state cardio, and only the interval training group lost belly fat.

If your program uses long slow cardio workout routines, you need to switch to interval training. But don't worry, its not hard. Interval training simply means working hard for a short interval and then recovery for a short interval.

Here's a really good interval workout routine you can use to start getting more fat loss results from your exercise program immediately. First, you need to start with a regular warm-up. Never skip this.

After you've done that 5-minute warm-up that gradually increases in intensity, its time for your first work interval. You will need to increase the intensity to a "slightly harder than cardio pace". That's a good level to start with.

For example, if we say that your regular cardio workout is a 6/10 intensity level, then I want you to go to a 7/10 intensity level for a 1 minute interval. That should be no problem, and eventually we'll increase that to 8/10.

But once you are done that minute, I want you to drop all the way back to a 3/10 intensity level - basically a cool-down level. You'll do that to recover between intervals so that you can work hard when its time to work hard.


Alternate for a total of 6 intervals and then finish with a cool down. For more interval training cardio workout routines, grab your copy of the Turbulence Training for Fat Loss manual.