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 deck, and others.
