It is well known that the bench press is one of the ideal exercises to build up muscle in the upper body. A common question that many bodybuilders want to find out is how much you can bench press. Let us get to the point and see how to build up muscle and get a larger bench press.
Build up your triceps. Nearly two thirds of the total muscle mass on your arms is composed of the triceps muscle. The ideal exercises to build up muscle on your triceps are using barbells and dumbbells, and doing close grip bench presses and skull crushers. Exercises that involve isolating the muscle are not as good because they isolate the muscle completely. Building up your triceps will certainly add weight to your bench press.
Work your triceps separately. The majority of bodybuilding regimens advise that you workout the chest in the same session as the triceps. If you train the triceps separately, you can concentrate on them and get the muscle growing very quickly. Try this over a few weeks and then have a look at how many more kilograms you can bench press.
Variety. Have you been repeating the same old workout for months? After your muscles have done the same workout a few times, they have already adapted to it and therefore the need to grow has been removed. Keep changing things, they can be subtle changes like altering the grip width or reversing the order of your routine or they can be larger changes like doing super sets, compound sets and so on, these will give you a real pump by the way.
Make sure you are not doing too much. While with most things in life more is better, in muscle building this is not quite true. If you do too much and overtrain your chest then it can struggle to recover and find it hard to grow more. Focus on intensity and technique as opposed to quantity. A short intense workout is much more effective than a long drawn out one.
Solid rest. Your muscles are not going to grow in the gym! At rest is when they grow. If you don?t give enough time for growing then you simply won?t grow. Of course do not workout again when your muscles are still, a fair rule of thumb is to limit yourself to 6-9 sets each session for each muscle group, any more and you risk overtraining.
Take a break from training. If you find yourself reaching a training plateau, then think about taking a complete break. This will allow your body recover from all the strain you have put on it. After you have taken a break for a couple of weeks, you can return to your workouts with more conviction.
Look at your diet. Are you eating 6 meals a day with a minimum of 1 gram of protein for every pound of bodyweight you have? If you are not, then you are most likely limiting your gains by not following a muscle building diet. Following a proper muscle building diet is essential in building muscle mass, so in every meal try to consume 50% carbohydrates, 30% proteins, and the rest can include fats.
Concentrate on your technique. Are you pressing correctly? Bad technique can take away the focus from the chest muscles and can put you at elevated risk of injury. Make sure you are not lifting your feet up off the ground and that your hands are not grasping the bar too close together. These are the two most commonly made errors.
By sticking to the tips above you will be greatly increasing your chance to develop more muscle mass on your chest quickly.