Chest Training Tips for Women
If you are looking for chest training tips to take your training to the next level, you’ve come to the right place. If you feel that your chest is lacking that certain shape that gives you a healthy and fit look you can implement certain exercises to combat that. A well-developed chest built through weight training will give you better proportion, enhance your bust line, and give your waist a trimmer appearance.
While many ladies are indeed training their chest in the gym these days, many are not seeing the results they desire due to a wide array of misinformation and mistakes which can cause them to either overtrain or undertrain their chest, and in some cases training the chest inadequately. Some of the chest training errors I see many women making include everything from poor from to failure to use adequate poundage.
First, before we get into this let me make it clear that just because you train chest, or train chest hard and heavy doesn’t mean you are going to “bulk-up,” get a huge chest, lose your neck, or look like a man. A well-developed chest actually brings out your natural feminine curves, which is very appealing.
Watch Your Form
Your form when working your chest is the number one tactic to a good chest workout. But what is good form? To my surprise, I discovered many women don’t know proper chest training form.
Bench pressing form: Whether you are using the barbell or dumbbells, the bar (or imaginary bar between two dumbbells) should run right across your nipple line when you lower it. Don’t rest the bar on your chest, just a quick touch and then press back up. Push up using your chest muscle, not your arms. While your arms will, of course, be a part and assist the press, keep your mind where the tension should be, the chest.
Incline pressing form: Just as with the flat bench press mentioned above, the incline press is virtually the same movement, except since you are at an incline the bar should touch your upper area of your chest when you lower it. Ollie Odebunmi at livestrong.com states, “Keeping your wrists straight and your elbows under your wrists, lower the bar slowly to the top of your chest to the point where your clavicles meet.” The movement is a straight line up and down.
Challenge Yourself
Again, far too many women are not putting near the effort into chest training as they could. No, you don’t have to be pressing 150 pounds, but you should be challenging your chest muscles each chest workout.
How do you effectively challenge your chest training? First, start logging your training (exercises, sets, and reps). You have to have a starting point to build on. General “muscle-growing range” is about 8-12 reps, but this can vary with more direct goals.
To improve chest training each week use progressive overload. Log your chest training this week. Next week when you hit chest again try to beat last week’s workout, even if it’s by one extra set or rep. If you could only bench press 95 pounds last week for 12 reps, then try to bench press 105 pounds this week for 10-12 reps. The week after that try to bench press 115 pounds for 8-10 reps. You get the idea!
Try Chest Dips
The chest dip is a greatly neglected exercise among women and chest training. Why? …Because it’s perceive as difficult. Personally, I find the chest dip superior for developing a great upper body (chest, shoulders, and triceps).
To greatly enhance your chest development and strength add some chest dips to your chest routine. If you can’t do a chest dip just yet, no worries. Many gyms offer assistance machines. The key to these assistance machines is, just use them as a building support system. Your goal should be to wean yourself from it and do chest dips on your own using your own body weight. Once you can mater free chest dips using your own body weight, then it’s time to put on the dipping-belt to add resistance to your chest dips.
