If you are an athlete who works out regularly, you may be wondering about how to get an inner chest workout so that your pectoralis muscles can reach its full potential. Athletes want to exercise the pectoralis muscles so that their upper body looks and feels stronger. If this sounds like you, then you may need help getting the right chest workout.
Here are some tips you could follow to help tone your upper body.
Tip #1 Keep A Journal of Your Workouts
Before you enter any gym, you need to be disciplined enough to keep a journal where you will record your chest workout activities. Here you will note down when you worked out and what exercises you did. You should also note down other facts like your present chest size, and your workout targets. Your journal is a tool to help you achieve a toned upper body that you can be proud of.
Tip #2 Learn Chest Exercises That Target the Inner Chest
Bodybuilders know that when the pectoralis muscles are worked out the right way then it will help them look their best. So if your chest area seems to be your weak point, you need to do some exercises that will focus on strengthening your inner chest more.
Take note that there is no one single exercise that only emphasizes the inner chest. This simply means you need to do a variety of chest exercises with the correct form to get a bigger chest.
Some exercises that can help strengthen your whole chest area are:
- Dumbbell Flies Coupled with Resistance Bands
- Plate Press
- Inner Pec Push-Up
- Squeeze Press
- Single-Arm Chest Fly
- Cross-Body Push-Up with Band
You will need to do these so that you can get a stronger chest.
Tip #3 Aim for Strength First Before Trying to Bulk Up
Your chest exercises will be helping to strengthen chest muscles, true, but don’t be surprised if you don’t bulk up right away in that area. To bulk up through your workout, you need to successfully break through any plateaus. That simply means that you will progress in stages – once you have strengthened your chest muscles enough, you need to keep providing resistance (such as lifting heavier and heavier dumbbells) over time. That signals to your body and mind that you need more muscles to deal with this kind of work. That is when you start to bulk up.
Tip #4 Eat Right To Fuel Your Workout
You won’t get bigger muscles if you don’t fuel your workout with the right food. All that will happen if you don’t consume the correct nutrients is you will get tired by the workout and your body will become weaker. So the correct way to go about your desire to build and tone upper body muscles is to eat the right food consistently so that you are energetic enough for your chest workout.
Tip #5 Get Enough Rest
Believe it or not, you will need to rest your muscles after some time. Many amateur bodybuilders, in their desire to get quick results, race through their workouts and try to beat their own records for lifting weights and strength training as quickly as possible. However, this can be dangerous because they might attempt exercises that their bodies are not prepared to handle – so they get injured. And when you get injured, that means you will not be able to work out the injured muscles, so your progress gets derailed anyway.
The key to a successful workout is to give your muscles time to recover, especially if you’ve been through an intense chest exercise session. So you need to sleep well and then return to the gym for another workout once you feel you’ve had enough rest.
Tip #6 Take Photographs of Your Chest As You Progress
Since you are trying to get a toned upper body, you need to have photographs of your bare chest at each stage of your workout series. It is best to just take a photograph of your chest at rest so that you can see what you look like without a workout yet for that day. You can keep the photographs pasted on pages of your journal and jot down on each page how much you weighed when each photograph was taken. You can also measure your chest size and note that down per photograph too. This will give you a clear idea of whether you are making progress or not.
Conclusion
Your upper body muscles are very important to exercise well, especially if you’ve noticed that they seem to be the weak point in your physique. You will need to do the right exercises, eat the correct food, and rest enough if you want to make progress in your chest workouts. Be sure you don’t rush yourself because you might get injured if you do. Patience and time are necessary if you are to gain great chest muscles that you have been dreaming about for years.