Building Muscle Information

Effective Chest Training, Like Everything Else, Begins With The Proper Mindset

An attitude of always wanting more, never being satisfied, is a key element in becoming successful in whatever you do. There's always a higher level of development to achieve-if you're constantly searching for it.

Having that mindset is essential to lasting success. It's also the cornerstone of the habits you need to develop if you want to maximize your chest training. You'll also need to cultivate such winning characteristics as optimism, patience,perseverance, determination and flexibility.

A number of physical factors can also affect your mental attitude, including the frequency of your chest workouts, the number of sets you use, the number of repetitions you set out to perform on every set, the amount of weight you use and the length of time you spend in the gym. When you overtrain physically it gives your mental well being a serious blow, too.

Train to Absolute Failure The ultimate goal of every single set in your chest workout must be to train to absolute failure.

By that I mean you must give 100 percent effort during every set. You shouldn't have anything left in reserve at the end of the set. This is very taxing, mentally and physically, which is why you can't withstand many sets and why you need to work on your mindset. You need to control or get rid of that litte voice in your head that is always telling you to settle.

That requirement is crucial to efficient chest training.

Obviously, you'll need a training partner, or the proper equipment such as a power rack, a machine, or using dumbbells, if you're going to train to absolute failure and train safely.

For now, let's throw out any well-known, legitimate reason you could come up with that takes your training success or failure out of your own hands.

Whatever program you use, the important thing is to put all the effort you can into your training.

One thing that is very important is to go over what it is you are trying to accomplish. I briefly review in my head what I want before I do each set of my workout. What's my goal in the set? What will accomplishing the set goal mean to my other goals?

Now, about that intensity - you probably think you know what intensity is,right? You train hard, right? But is training hard the same as training with 100% intensity of effort? If you polled the people in your gym, 99% of them would tell you they workout extremely hard.

I'm the same way. And yet when I look back on my workouts, I always realize I could've trained a little harder. But that's okay, because I am constantly improving my effort every time I workout. I'm always striving for a higher level of effort andincreasing the quality of each workout.

You Can Increase the htensity of Your Chest Training Now

Before we can achieve more we must constantly be raising our own standards.

Train Your Chest Less Frequently

I know, the thought of training less worries many people that they will not only stop progresssing but will lose what they have. This just isn't so.

Use it as a powerful motivating tool. The thought of training your chest less frequently creates a feeling of uneasiness, or what I call a sense of urgency. It dramatically increases the magnitude of every workout.

The benefits have a far greater effect than just bolstering my mindset.

Training less gives you adequate time to recover from your intense workouts.

Use Fewer Sets

Knowing that you're going to do only a few sets in your chest workout creates this same sense of urgency, allowing you to bring a lot more focus into each rep and set that you do.

Although I always change things up from time to time, a typical chest workout for me is as follows:

After warming up sufficiently and doing two heavy sets of bench presses, I complete my chest workout by doing one set each of three different chest exercises. Many lifters give themselves two, three or even four sets of a particular exercise to get it right. If you give yourself four chances at anything, you'll have less of a sense of urgency to get it right the first time. You will pace yourself and hold back for those other sets. It's only human nature.

Anything less than 100 percent effort is a wasted set in my opinion. Have you ever noticed that when you get yourself in the right mind-set, you can pump out more reps on the last set of an exercise than you did on the first one?

It should be just the opposite. If you were really giving your all during the first couple of sets, you wouldn't have nearly as much energy left to meet or exceed that rep range on the last one.

If you truly train with the proper mindset, then you'll need less training to build your chest. If your training is less than animal-like, you'll need more sets. Be honest with yourself. Only you can determine what's best for you.

Spend Less Time in the Gym on Chest Training

The ability to focus and put forth your best effort in chest workout after chest workout, month after month is what will bring you results.

The less time you spend in the gym, the easier it becomes to focus, and because you're training chest less frequently, using fewer sets and fewer reps, your time in the gym will be much shorter. It will surely make it a lot easier to focus on building an awesome chest. Now, all you have to do is shut up and train!

Proper Recovery Is Critical

Recuperation is probably the most important yet most-often-neglected component of building muscle efficiently. Recuperation means to recover fully from your intense workouts. Only when your muscles have fully recuperated are they ready to grow larger and stronger. If you train again before this process is complete, you will short circuit the growth/recover mechanism and your gains will come to a screeching halt and that's exactly what you want to avoid.

Develop your new chest routine with these steps in mind and see if you don't ignite new growth and more strength in your chest.

Written by: Gregg Gillies, www.buildleanmuscle.com

Gregg Gillies is the founder of http://www.buildleanmuscle.com where he publishes a free newsletter available. He is the author or two books, as well as being a regular contributor to Body Talk magazine. His writing has also appeared in Ironman Magazine.