Fatloss & maintaining muscle part 2: Weight training chest & biceps

This article is part a bigger post: My bodybuilding routine: Fatloss & maintaining muscle. Today part #2: Weight training chest & biceps.

I can only but guess that these are the two most popular muscle groups when it comes to men. Chest and biceps. Mainly because the muscle groups are easy to train, but also just because. Because it’s the muscle groups everybody seems to find most important. Every muscle group should be trained if you want your body to be balanced. Whether you like it or not. Besides that, to get big arms triceps are way more important than those biceps 😉

The chest and biceps go well together. Better than triceps. You will be hitting your triceps already quite hard during your chest routines, and you won’t be able to hit them as hard as you’d like. So biceps is just the better option.

I will throw in a schema to build-up muscle. Even when I am cutting I am training as if I want to gain muscle mass. That’s (for me) the only way to keep muscle mass at a decent level. The schema below is pretty basic. No weird things, drop sets or super sets. The idea is to build up the weight for three sets and then do a quick drop set at the end.

The sets are as follows. You will do 4 sets, first go up in weight with a minute rest in between sets. Then rest 10 seconds after the 3rd set and drop to about 70% of the weight and do another 10 reps. That’ll make you feel those muscles 🙂

Repetitions	Rest	Remarks
12	60s
10	60s
8	10s
10-12	-	Drop weight to about 60%-70% of your previous set

Chest

Chest
Dumbell press
Cable flies
Incline dumbbell press
Decline dumbbell press
Tricep dips

1) Dumbell press

Overall, I work a lot with dumbbells. I have the ability to go really heavy with dumbbells. I can just drop them when it becomes too heavy. Another thing with dumbbells is that you have to maintain your balance and one arm can’t outpush the other.

2) Cable flies

For flies I prefer cables or machines over dumbbells. With dumbbell flies the resistence will get less and less during your upward motion. Cables or machines will keep the resistence at the same level during the entire motion. You can do this flat or incline. Depends on which muscles you want to hit the most.

I start flies with 7.5, maybe 10 kgs each side. Seems like a small amount of weight, but don’t be fooled here!

3) Incline dumbbell press

The incline. Hitting your upper chest. The exercise is exactly the same as the dumbbell press, just use an incline bench at about 30 degrees and start the exercise.

 

4a) Decline dumbbell press

The opposite of incline is decline. It targets the lower pectorial muscle area.

4b) Tricep dips

How I love to do some tricep dips to end my chest workout. I normally do 3 sets until failure (around 20 reps). It really hits your low pectorials, but also good for your triceps. It’s the perfect exercise to end your chest training session with. Sometimes I skip the decline dumbbell press in favor of the tricep dip.

Biceps

Biceps
EZ-curl
Bicep curl
Reverse bicep curl

1) EZ-curl

Using de EZ-curl bar can be a pretty heavy biceps exercise. Just put on the weight you can carry and start doing curls. Be careful not to move your upper too much, because you want to target your biceps and not your lower back!

2) Bicep curl

Then there is the bicep curls with dumbbells. You can do these together or alternating. I prefer alternating, otherwise I am just doing another EZ-curl bar.

3) Reverse bicep curl

You biceps consists of two muscles (hence the “bi”). So don’t forget to do a reverse grip curl or hammer curls.

 

Good luck! And again. What feels good for me, may not feel good for everybody. Just kill those muscles 🙂