Be the best version of yourself
Can normal kids really look like James Bond or Captain America? Yes, says Waterson, if he has his advice and the dedication and genetic ability of his famous clients. But we are all different. So instead of trying to emulate someone different, he says, you may find it more beneficial to try to become the best version of yourself.
With that caveat, Waterson’s first choice for a “well-rounded” chest (and chest) workout would be a heavy dumbbell press on a 25- to 45-degree incline bench, which works the upper chest more. He would replace that with “something that flares” and hits the muscle fibers in your chest from a different direction: say, an incline dumbbell fly. He then likes to throw cables to recruit surrounding supporting muscles. Craig’s over a year of preparation for no time to die included a low-to-high cable fly in a split squat stance, engaging the abs, lower back, and arms.
Bodyweight exercises are key
For a grueling chest finisher, Waterson likes bodyweight exercises: a standard pushup, or with your hands or feet on a bench (targeting your lower and upper chest, respectively), or even with a weight plate. weight on the back (which is no longer necessary). a bodyweight exercise, but good). Then I’d probably go two or three days before hitting the chest again, but from a different angle: a heavy flat or decline press, an equivalent flye, maybe a cable press, finishing again with another bodyweight exercise. as bottoms on parallel bars. , which function as a good barometer of his progress.
To get the most out of your chest, Waterson suggests a protocol of four sets of eight to 10 reps for each exercise and one to failure for the finisher. “A little flop” on the other exercises is fine, and maybe a few forced reps at the end if you’re training with a partner. But you should not fail in every session: sometimes you want to feel that the sessions are getting easier and that you get stronger. Conversely, a plateau may indicate that you are training too much or not enough diversity. Muscles are, Waterson says, like finicky houseplants: Give them too much attention or not, and they won’t grow. (Suddenly the dead palm in the corner of my home office seems revealing.)
Mix up your reps regularly
You should, Waterson says, change your rep range maybe every four weeks to make sure you’re stimulating all the different muscle fiber types and maximizing your gains. And balance your chest program, and his physique, with exercises that pull your shoulders back, like cable retractions. Final pro tip? “Don’t start with a ‘kyphotic’ chest, which basically means with the shoulders rounded forward, because you’re going to end up with impingement.”
These days, I train in Distinct performancea functional gym without mirrors in Teesside, North East England, where my trainer callum campbell he occasionally stands on me while I’m floor pressing, like bench pressing but on the floor. But what Really hooks – read: hammers – my stubborn pecs are doing burpees (so many burpees). The promise of a bigger chest, if not Hemsworthian, is almost enough to make me want to do burpees.
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