Your
Body Is A Tool So Take Care Of It And It May Save Your Life
Someday
The chest muscle is important to us Police
Officers because it helps us perform pushing movements such as
pushing a car or pushing someone off of us during a
scuffle.
During a scuffle if have the misfortune of
having someone on top of you it will be the power of your
chest muscles that will get you out of that situation.
Another overlooked advantage for having a strong chest is that
it will protect you if you are struck in the chest with an
object or involved in a traffic crash.
The exercises listed below are the ones
that you should incorporate into your workouts in order to
build a stronger and more muscular chest. Start off with
the barbell bench press which is the grand daddy of the
chest workout.
No other movement is better for overall
chest development than the bench press. This is an
exercise that you do not want to perform without a spotter
because if you fail on a set you will need someone to get
the weight off your chest. You can perform this exercise alone
if you use a smith machine which acts as a spotter
for you.
Just as with the exercises for the other body
parts, we are going to do 2 warm up sets and then 3 work sets
for the beginner.We will explore more advanced routines
later. We are shooting for 3 sets of 8-12
reps. When performing the bench press you do not want to
bounce the bar off your chest because this can cause injury
and you are not getting the full benefit of the
movement.
You want to take the bar off the rack and
lower it slowly to until the bar touches your lower chest
and then you want to explode the bar upwards to
the starting position . Do each set until failure which
should be in the 8-12 rep range. If you are doing more
than 12 reps then the weight is too light and it's time to
slap some more weight on the bar.
Another good reason to have a spotter is lets
say that you are doing a set and you can only get 3 reps with
a given weight. Instead of racking the bar, have your
spotter assist you with getting 5 more reps so that you get
the required 8 reps.
These are called forced reps and they are
great for your chest development. More advanced chest
routines will incorporate forced reps along with other
advanced techniques. There are many more chest exercises
that the beginner can incorporate into their routine like the
decline bench, pullover, push ups, pec dec, and
others.
