For people that are just starting out in bodybuilding or even just pursuing toning in the gym I see a lot of people that try to do too many full body workout exercises. These people are easily identified as beginners because the people who have been doing weight training for a longer period of time already know that if you are looking for gains, fast, you need to focus on one particular body part for the most part in a particular session.
This doesn't mean just work on biceps for an hour although there are people that do exactly that. I'm speaking about dedicating at day to only arms and researching a wide array of exercises for that one specific body part.
One of the favorites among men is "chest day" and there is a reason for that. Every man wants to have a bigger or at least more toned chest and there are a huge amount of exercises that you can do as there are a lot of muscles in the chest area and you need to work them a variety of ways in order to engage all of them. If you are one of those guys that is just pushing up on a flat bench you are doing better than the guy who is doing nothing but you could be doing a lot more.
There are a lot of ways that you can do this but some rudimentary understanding of the various exercises is necessary because as always, not hurting yourself is paramount. If you have never done a program like this before you should start out extremely light and work your way up over the course of a week or even a month because failure to do so, especially with dumbbells could put you out of the game for a long time and we really want to avoid that.
As always I highly recommend that you keep a notebook about what you lifted because you might THINK you are going to remember, but you are almost certainly wrong.
Here is a workout I did the yesterday and despite the fact that I weight train almost daily, I am feeling the burn today but am not injured and this is the entire idea. This is not a plan that I made up, but one that is ignored or not even known about by normies around the world. I got this particular setup idea from a fellow poster here on Hive and I forgot who you are, my apologies.
- Warm up with 20-30 pushups because it engages almost all chest muscles
- 3 sets of 12 reps using barbells on a flat bench
- 4 sets of 5 reps using barbells on an incline bech
- 4 sets of 10 reps using barbells on a bench for fly (pictured above)
- 3 sets of 10 reps on a machine bench press
- 4 sets of 6 reps on a machine bench incline
Getting to basics, the above image is an incline bench and you need to be careful to not incline it too much because if you do then you are engaging your shoulders instead of your chest. It should be 45 degrees at the maximum.
Also, for the incline (or decline, which isn't an option at my gym) you will need to lift substantially less than on a flat bench. If you choose to not heed my advice here you are either in much better shape than me and don't actually need my advice, or you are glutton for punishment.
Also, take as much time as you need between sets and if you start feeling like you can't complete a set this is a good sign that you are trying to lift too much. The idea behind all of this is to work your chest to exhaustion without hurting yourself in the process.
There are many limitations that you will face that depends on what sort of equipment that your gym has but the one that I go to is just a very small gym in an apartment block near my house and the above exercises are generally doable in any gym that I have ever been to. If your gym doesn't have dumb-bells, it isn't really a gym.
When I look back at all the stuff that I have written about I sometimes feel as though I am lecturing people and telling them all the time that they are "doing it wrong!" Understand that if you are doing more than nothing, you are already doing a lot more than most people and you should be proud of yourself for that. I am merely trying to help people achieve results and to maximize your effort.
If you are one of the people that are wandering around the gym and just using all the equipment without really having a plan, you could probably benefit MASSIVELY by getting a plan and then going to the gym. It really will make a difference.
