How to Get a Bigger Chest - 7 Easy Chest Exercises to Get Your Pecs Noticed

Aside from building up biceps and abs, one of the main concerns of men is how to get a bigger chest. Having a well defined chest can give you a more confident posture. Here are some exercises that will help you increase the volume, size and definition of your pecs.

To avoid injuries and to get the most out of these chest exercises, each of the chest exercises should be performed with proper form. For lifting exercises, if you are to lift heavy, be sure to have a spotter to supervise and to help you out.

Do push ups. For beginners, push ups tend to be hard but, when you keep on doing them, they will soon be easy for you to perform. Have your hands about shoulder width apart when doing push ups.

Bench Press. It is the most popular chest building exercise of all time on how to get a bigger chest. It requires a large number of muscle fibers to perform, which triggers the body's natural growth hormone response. It is best to perform 8-12 reps and 1-3 sets to build muscle mass and hypertrophy. Don't let the bar touch your chest for it causes some pressure to your shoulders.

Inclined and Declined Bench Press. They are the same with the bench press but the bench is inclined upwards and declined downwards. These two work more on the upper and lower pectoral muscles.

Bar Dips. This is a chest and triceps exercise that works your chest and triceps muscles. At first, you can start dips with just your own body weight and then later on use a weight belt. This is done by holding yourself at arm's length on the parallel dip bar and slowly lowering yourself. At the bottom of the rep, push yourself back at the starting position. When doing bar dips, the more forward you lean, the more chest muscle gets involved in the movement.

Dumbbell Fly. This exercise isolates the movement to your chest muscles. You do this by lying flat on a bench, and hold dumbbells at arm's length with your palms facing each other. Start to lower the weights by opening your arms in a wide arc as far down as you can. While doing this, you should feel your pecs stretch. Then lift them again back to the starting position in the same arcing motion.

Another exercise that will help you on how to get bigger chest is the Cable Crossover. This exercise is somewhat similar to the dumbbell flys. It targets the inner chest and also works to bring out the impressive striations in your chest muscle. From a standing position, hold the cable handles attached to the overhead pulleys. Bend your upper body slightly forward, with arms extended out on the sides, but keep your arms slightly bent. Bring your arms and hands together toward the center of your body as if you're hugging someone. Make sure your arms crossed each other.

How to Get Shredded for a Bodybuilding or Physique Competition

One of the most common questions people ask me is, "How do I get shredded for a bodybuilding or physique competition?" This is especially common with people who are planning on entering their very first event.

The answer to that question is somewhat subjective. There is no set formula that will work exactly the same way in exactly the same time-frame for every single person. Having said that, there are some guidelines for figuring out the best way for you to get shredded for a bodybuilding or physique competition and you can use them to make a plan that works for you.

One thing you should understand, though, is that getting shredded is an art as well as a science. Knowing how and why and when the human body burns fat, what causes insulin and cortisol spikes and what makes the body retain or excrete water are all part of the science. Knowing how your specific body will react to certain steps is where the art comes in. Some guys take several years and several competitions to figure out what works best for their particular bodies.

That said, there are three key areas that you need to focus on in order to get shredded for a bodybuilding or physique competition: water intake, caloric deficit, and carb intake.

If you're wondering why I didn't mention ramping up your weight training routine, it's because the whole purpose of weight training when you're cutting is to preserve and protect the muscle you already have while you're trying to lose fat. When you're doing the things you need to do to burn those last few percentage points of fat, you're not going to have the surplus for building new muscle. You just want to keep what you have. The purpose of shredding is to show what you have and really make that definition pop.

First, Decide Where you are Right Now

I've said many times that you have to have set, measurable goals. This means definite deadlines and actual numbers. Without these, you have dreams, not goals. You have the deadline; the deadline is the date of your event. What you need now is a number. What body fat percentage are you going for?

My rule of thumb when cutting or working to get shredded for a competition or a photo shoot is to lose 1% of my body fat per week. So, if you're at 12% body fat right now, you need to get started on your fat loss about six weeks out. It won't hurt you to add another week in there just in case something gets you off track.

Get Some Intense Cardio into Your Program

During this time, you should be doing some high intensity interval training for your cardio to create some of that calorie deficit. Not all of it, because burning 3500 calories (which equals a pound of fat) per week is a heck of a lot more difficult than cutting 3500 calories a week. Ideally, your calorie deficit should come from a combination of cutting calories and burning them. So for instance, you can burn an extra 250 calories a day and cut 250 calories a day to lose one pound of fat per week.

Start Cutting Back the Carbs

One of the best ways to do this is to replace some of the carbs you're eating in the mornings with a high protein, no carb breakfast instead. I recently posted about the meat and nut breakfast rotation and the incredible results that I've gotten from it. In fact, I got to my lowest body fat percentage (4%) in part by doing this myself.

Then about six days out from your event, you want to cut your carbs back even more. Depending on your particular body and how often you're working out, that could be an intake of anywhere from 0g to 150g of carbs per day. Do this for two days, then go back to your normal low-carb intake. About two days before your competition, you want to actually increase your carbs from there for two days.

The Formula for Water Intake

This is another area that I get asked about a lot. Guys will ask me, "How much water should I drink when I'm trying to get shredded for a competition?" But the fact is that the number depends on the amount of water you normally need to take in. So what I actually give these guys is a formula to work with.

About eight days out from the competition, I increase my water intake by 50%. I normally drink about four liters of water a day, so eight days out I increase that to six liters a day for another two days. This gets your body excreting more water.

You don't start cutting back on the water until about two days before your competition and you cut it down to 50% of your normal intake, not what you've been drinking that week. So in my case, since I normally drink four liters per day, I'll cut down to two liters two days out. Then the day of the event, you cut that by another 50%, which in my case would be one liter.
If you do all of these things, you'll be well on your way to getting totally shredded for that bodybuilding competition. You'll probably have quite a lot of trial and error on exact numbers and exact methods, and the best ones will change from one competition to the next as your body changes, but these guidelines will help you to get the results you need.

Overtraining? Why Overtraining in Bodybuilding Is Virtually Impossible

A lot of bodybuilders are way too worried about the idea that they might be in danger of overtraining. Most of them get this idea from the tons of marketers out there who are trying to get rich by telling people they should train less, not more. There's a lot of money to be made by convincing the new or unmotivated that there's an "easy way" to build real muscle mass. The truth is; that's not the truth.

Why Overtraining is a Non-Issue

In my ten years in the business, I've never met anyone who has reached a state of overtraining. Overtraining is something that is more common in endurance athletes, but very rare for bodybuilders. Scientific research shows that for bodybuilders to reach a state of overtraining, they would have to triple their current volume for three weeks.

I tripled my training volume while I attended Charles Poliquin's 5-Day Hypertrophy Bootcamp (15 workouts in five days) and it absolutely kicked my butt. That was five days. I can't even imagine repeating that for an additional two weeks!

The fact is that 99.9% of bodybuilders will never even come close to overtraining. That said, some people confuse the terms "overtraining" and "overreaching', which are two entirely different things.

Overtraining and Overreaching are not the Same Thing

Overreaching is in an intentional, short period of increased work that deliberately exceeds what your body is able to do. That's what I was doing at Poliquin's 5-Day Hypertrophy Boot Camp. Lost appetite, disrupted sleep patterns, and mood changes are common symptoms of overreaching, but you can recover from it with after one or two weeks of undertraining or deloading. It took me about seven days of doing nothing to recover from my week at the boot camp. The purpose of this overreaching/deloading process is that it creates a greater super compensation after-effect. This is something you need to do with the supervision and direction of a professional.

Undertraining is the Real Issue

Overtraining is not your problem. More often than not, guys are undertraining. The most common reason for undertraining is failing to manipulate your duration, frequency, tempo, rest times and loads. Building muscle mass is all about periodization. Every single one of the athletes that competed in the 2016 Olympic Games used some kind of periodization, which is just another word for focused planning. If you're not doing this, you're spinning your wheels. You may make some progress, but you won't make the kind of progress that you could.

Stop worrying about overtraining and give your workouts everything you've got. Constantly demand more from your body and it will deliver.

The Best Carbohydrates For Your Muscle Building Diet Plan

As you go about creating a muscle building diet plan to help you pack on more lean muscle mass than ever before, one nutrient that you definitely cannot do without is the carbohydrate.

Carbohydrates are going to be what supplies your body with all the energy that's required to not only carry out the process of muscle building itself, but also to perform those hard workouts in the gym.

Some people may try to utilize low carb muscle building diets and while they may work for a very select few individuals, about 95% of the population is better off avoiding these. They just don't supply your body with what it needs to complete the protein synthesis process.

This said, not all carbohydrates are created equally.

If you really want to see the best possible results from your muscle building diet plan then you need to be taking the time to select the best varieties. Let's have a quick look right now at your top options.

Oats

First up on the list of muscle building carbohydrates are oats. Oats really can't be beat. They're high in fiber, low in sugar, and will produce a steady energy release that will last for hours.

Now, the thing to remember while on your muscle building diet plan however is that since you are aiming to take in more calories above maintenance, you don't have room in your stomach for a lot of high-volume foods.

Unfortunately, cooked oats are exactly that. So instead, focus on raw oats. Eat these cold like you would any other cereal or start adding them to your protein shakes for added calories. That will get you the nutrients you need.

Brown Rice

Second on the list of carbs for building muscle mass is brown rice. Brown rice is easy to prepare and works well with just about any meal. It's also a good source of fiber and will not spike insulin levels quite like regular rice would so you'll see better overall results because of it.

Aim to eat it with at least three meals each day.

Dried Fruit

Finally, the last muscle building carbohydrate that you should definitely consider adding to your muscle building diet plan is dried fruit. Dried fruit is a bit better in fresh in this case because of the fact it is so calorie dense.

Trying to eat three apples would very likely leave you feeling rather bloated and full, but in a simple handful of dried fruit you can easily get those calories in without worry.

Combine some dried fruit, nuts, and whole grain cereal for a quick trail mix to take wherever you go.

So don't shun carbohydrates. If you want to see success with your program they must be included but that said, you also need to be adding the right sources.

The Top Muscle Building Vegetables You Should Be Eating

If you're on a plan to help you build muscle, then you must make sure that you're not skipping over the muscle building vegetables that you should be eating. Far too many skinny guy's entirely cut out vegetables due to the fact that they are lower in calories and when you're trying to take in 4000 plus calories per day, it can be quite the feat to try and fit these all in.

You feel stuffed and thinking about a full plate of broccoli is the last thing you want to be doing! But remember, there are plenty of ways to get around this. First, you don't necessarily need to eat huge amounts of the muscle building vegetables to get good results. As long as you have a one cup serving with a few of the meals out of the day, you will be well on your way to meeting your nutrient needs.

Muscle building vegetables do supply many of the essential nutrients that the body needs to properly generate muscle mass, so you cannot overlook their importance. If you're still struggling to get them in, then also consider blending them up into your sauces as that will eliminate much of the 'bulk' that you experience by eating them. Let's have a look at some of the top muscle building vegetables that you should consider.

Broccoli

If there's one vegetable that can't be beat when it comes to good nutrients, broccoli is it. Broccoli is loaded with antioxidants that will help to fight off disease and is an excellent source of potassium that will keep your muscle contractions going strong.

Whether you want to steam it, stir-fry it, or eat it raw, broccoli is definitely something that should be added to your meal plan.

Asparagus

Second on our list of top muscle building vegetables is asparagus. Asparagus is another one that's very easy to prepare and can be eaten with many different meals. Asparagus is relatively low in calories so don't load up on it as it will fill you up, but having three to four spears of it per meal will work perfectly to help you get those nutrients in.

Cabbage

Third up is cabbage. Cabbage is a powerful muscle building vegetable that's also going to really protect against cancer development, something that we all should be somewhat concerned over. Due to the fact that we are constantly exposed to a number of toxins in our system, if you aren't taking steps to protect yourself from these, you're going to be at risk. Eat red cabbage with your stir-fries or chopped into your salad. You'll hardly notice it in there.

Mushrooms

Finally, the last of the best muscle building vegetables that you should consider are mushrooms. Mushrooms are perfect because they're also low in calories but yet at the same time pack a powerful protein punch.

Since getting enough protein your daily diet will be absolutely essential, this cannot be overlooked. Mushrooms work will with almost any dish - stir-fries, eaten raw, added to salads, or added into a wrap or pita. Make sure you start incorporating them in.

So if you want to see maximum results from your muscle building diet plan, be sure that you don't overlook these muscle building vegetables. It pays to take the time to make sure that you get them in your meals each day.

An Abs Work Out - 5 Powerful Methods to Getting Six Pack Abs

You need to start a solid abs work out program and diet regimen to really burn the belly fat and build six pack abdominals. Read on to learn the 5 effective methods to do this.

1) Before we get into your work out. Start with diet. Eat healthy natural foods most of the time. Foods in their most natural state include lean meats, fruit, vegetables, and nuts. These should all be staples of your diet.

2) Eat more. Try to reach 5 or 6 small meals each day. Eat breakfast every morning and then every 3 hours after that. You do not have to hit 3 hours on the dot just try to fill your stomach up with healthy foods every 2 to 3 hours a day.

3) Work on your abs work out. Do not do crunches. They strain your back and neck. They have very little effective on your abdominals. Instead do effective ab exercises that actually target your abdominals like reverse crunches and planks.

4) Compound exercises are effective for fat loss. Even effective ab exercises like reverse crunches are ineffective for losing belly fat.

Which is why your workouts should include exercises like squats, deadlifts, and rows. These types of exercises burn fat and build muscle all over for great effect.

5) Do not give up. After a couple of weeks on your abs work out program you may get frustrated and feel that what you are doing is not effective. But you need to stay motivated. Getting six pack abs will not happen overnight.

Stop Spreading These Bodybuilding Myths and Start Building Muscle Fast

There are lots of bodybuilding myths around today that won't go away. It's time to banish these muscle building untruths and start building muscle fast. This article will hopefully put these myths to rest, starting with one of the most annoying.

Your muscles will turn to fat when you finish training

This is one of the most common bodybuilding myths and also one of the most untrue. Your body cannot 'convert' muscle tissue to fat tissue. When someone puts on weight after they stop working out it is usually due to inactivity and over eating; This is not exactly a secret. But for some reason this rumour started that it was muscle that turned to fat. One common cause for this illusion is that when people stop working out they burn far less calories than they used to, but still keep eating the same. Therefore they are taking in too many calories but not burning as many so naturally put on weight.

Bodybuilders Just Look Strong

This muscle myth comes from a very small truism especially when comparing bodybuilding and power lifting. It is true that some power lifters may not be as big or 'toned' as bodybuilders (which gives the impression of greater muscle size). But this is like comparing apples and oranges. Bodybuilders are usually very strong and certainly a lot stronger than the average person. Sadly this myth seems to come from people looking to make themselves feel better, by dismissing someone else's efforts.

Anyone Can Get 'That' Size By Taking Steroids

For the purposes of this article we will not delve into the effectiveness of steroids. Yes they can and do work. They will certainly greatly improve your results and surpass your genetic potential. However to say you could get to the same size as a pro bodybuilder is a mistake.

What many people don't realise is that many top bodybuilders were hugely bigger than average before taking any drugs. They have the natural genetics to build muscle. Exactly like top class sprinters are much faster than the average person. Granted the steroids help pro bodybuilders get to gigantic size. Average people with average genetics could never reach that size no matter how many drugs they took.

I Don't Want To Get To Big

Anyone who has spent any considerable time lifting weights knows that the above title is a complete lie. It takes a lot of hard work to put even a small amount of muscle on. The previous myth probably fueled this myth; People see the the bodybuilders in the media and think that they will become that size if they start working out.

You probably won't even get a quarter of the muscle mass pro bodybuilders have. Even if you do have amazing muscle building genetics; you will not wake up one day huge. Muscle building is a slow and steady process and you are in complete control at every stage.

Hopefully now you will ignore these myths when someone tries to tell you them and start getting into the gym to try and start building muscle fast. You will probably also realise that building muscle is a lot harder than previously thought.

It is important to diversify your routine and find the right workouts to suit your body type and routine.