Up Your Bench With These Chest Muscle Building Tips
Written by Tony Schwartz
The bench press is seemingly everyone’s favorite lift. Go to a gym on a Monday and you are lucky to find an open bench. Everyone wants a big bench press, so they prioritize it by doing it first in the workout and first in the week.
This prioritization works for a short period of time, but eventually leads to stagnation. So if you’ve been prioritizing your bench press for the last few months with no substantial increases in strength or size it is obviously time to change your approach, as your current method is not working.
So what should your new priority be? Well, I have found that bench press obsessed lifters are generally deficient in overhead pressing strength. For these lifters improving their overhead press will cause their bench press poundages to skyrocket, because this is a limiting factor in their strength. That’s right, one of the best chest muscle building tips is prioritize shoulder exercises!
Try it out for a few weeks and see what you think. Put an overhead pressing exercise first in your workout and first in the week. Attack it with the same dedication that you give to your bench press.
And speaking of the bench press, refrain from using it during this overhead pressing specialization cycle. Instead focus on things like dumbbell bench press, incline bench, flyes, and other chest exercises you haven’t used in awhile.
After 4-8 weeks of an overhead pressing focused program I think you will be pleasantly surprised when you return to prioritizing the bench press. Keep in mind that you probably won’t be stronger when you first return to the bench press, but within a few weeks you will be smashing your old records and you will see why I call overhead pressing one of the best chest muscle building tips!
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