So you workout. That’s great! If your a guy, you probably do chest workouts regularly. But if your a woman, my guess is you don’t.  YOU SHOULD BE!

Why. Well ladies, while I could sit here and type and type and spout off about all the great reasons, you should just click here and read this great article from BodyBuilding.com called “A Girl’s Gotta Bench!“

I like to do my chest workout 2 times a week. This can get difficult with hockey, but I for sure do this workout once a week and I always shoot for twice. When you do your chest workout, you want to use heavy weights and less reps. Why, because your chest muscles area  large group of muscles that will respond better to heavy weight than light. And lifting heavy will get you stronger. 🙂

There are a bunch of different exercise for the chest. Here are the ones I do most:

Bench Press
Incline Dumbbell Press
Flat Bench Single Arm Dumbbell Press
Decline Bench Dumbbell Press
Flys
Push-ups

And don’t forget, most of the above have many different types of variations to change things up.

SAMPLE WORKOUT

One workout I like to do is this dumbbell only workout below, aim for 8-10 reps with about 1 min between sets, maybe a 1:30 as the weight increase. As you get stronger and the amount of weight you are lifting starts getting super heavy increase the rest time even more as your need the time for your muscles to get the energy back. The weights listed below are what I do, modify accordingly:

1. Flat Bench Single Arm Dumbbell Press (4 sets)  – I do the sets in  increased weight as its kind of my warm-up chest move, of 25lbs, 30, 35, 40 (40’s with a spotter)
2. Decline Dumbbell Press  (4 sets) – Just put your bench at a decline angle  – 30-35lbs. It helps to do this with someone else to hand you the dumbbells as you are in position on the bench and to take one from you to make getting off the bench easier.
3. Incline Dumbbell Press (4 sets) – 30 – 35lbs
4. Flys (3 sets) – 20lbs, 25, 25
5. Push-ups – Finish with some of these. It will be amazingly hard after all of the above. Try to do 3 sets of 10 if you can!

Good Luck and Have Fun!