Lift Weights to Strengthen your Pecs and Chest Muscles
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Tone and strengthen your pecs and entire chest with these powerful weight-lifting exercises.
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Transcript: Lift Weights to Strengthen your Pecs and Chest Muscles
Hi, I'm Leslie Nesbitt for About.com Health and I'm going to show you 3 great toningexercises for the chest.
Why Pecs Strengthening?
This is a great area to work because it's one of the largest muscle groups and definitely you want to work the chest and back for example before you do biceps, triceps, and shoulders so those bigger muscles can assist the small muscles.
Choosing your Weights
Now I have 5-pound weights. You may have a little less, you may have a little more. Be sure that you're warmed up before you begin these exercises.
Upright Rows for Pec Strength
So let's look at the first one, upright rows. We want to take the shoulder heads and roll them up, back, and down. Now as you lift the elbows toward the ceiling try to keep the wrists straight- There's a tendency here to bend. We want the elbows slightly higher than the shoulders and then of course control the drop so the move looks like this- breathing and holding those abdominals in for lower body support.
We're going to go for a set of 15- if you're more advanced you can have heavier weights or you can do 2 sets of 15.
Toning the Sides of the Pecs and Chest
The second move I want to show you is a side lift for the shoulders and chest and then coming to the front. Do the same thing here- keep the knees soft for a nice, strong foundations. The abdominals are in for support, lifting just to shoulder height, and then the same thing in the front, lifting just to shoulder height.
Chest Flies for Pec Strength
Now I'm going to demonstrate a chest-fly on the ball. You can do this on a mat or a towel if you don't have one at home. So once you're lying back, you're going to shoot the arms straight up then create a C shape with those elbows. Keep them curved, the arm position doesn't change. You're then going to drop out to the side and squeeze it back up working those chest muscles.
Make sure you keep the weights right above the center of the chest, the stirnum, and don't let them come up over the face or drop down over the hips.
Breathing as you go, and it's going to feel great.
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