A reader of the blog left a comment asking if I could offer a good chest workout for her. This chest workout is designed to help tighten and tone up your chest and help you build upper body strength while you’re at it.

Our fictitious friend Brittany has been following our nutrition and exercise tips and has lost about 30 pounds. She’s happy with her progress but the more she looks at her body, she realizes that her chest has not “kept up” with the rest of the body.

Her arms have slimmed down and you can see some muscle definition, her legs look great, and her midsection is tightening up… but what about her chest?

Many of us lose weight and have that one section that just doesn’t seem to look right. Whether you are trying to get more lift or tone up, it just doesn’t seem to work no matter what you do.

Why do some areas lag?

Some areas lag due to genetics and how your body holds onto fat. Some of us have it in our legs, some in our lower stomach, and others in our arms… it’s all about genetics.

Unfortunately, age also has a factor in the way our body rebounds from losing weight. Sometimes our skin takes longer in some places to tone up than others.

Another reason that you aren’t toning up as fast as you’d like is because the bigger muscles in your body generally take more volume or more intensity to help them grow and tighten up and many exercise programs do not offer enough volume.

What’s special about this workout?

This chest workout is designed to help tone and build muscle in your chest area so you can have a fuller, tighter chest.

First thing’s first, an honest assessment of your body fat is needed. The chest, especially for women, is a weak point that takes some extra work to build and maintain.

Make sure that your diet is dialed in and you are able to see improvements in your body on a weekly basis. If you are still having issues getting your diet right, I suggest working on that while you do this chest workout.

The next great thing about this is you can basically “plug-in” this chest workout into whatever workout routine you are doing. Any of the chest exercises or chest day work that you do can be swapped out for this.

30 Minute Chest Workout for Women

Lets get on with the actual routine. The “Full Day” is what you want to plug into your current workout and then the “Optional Accessory Work” is something you can do on an off day.

The optional accessory work will help build and tone your chest. It is not necessary but if you can squeeze it into another day you will notice progress much faster.

If you are new to using free weights, I suggest you check out my 10 tips to transition from machines to free weights article and get ready to really make some progress.

Full Day Chest Workout
Exercise	Sets	Reps
Wide Grip Barbell Bench Press*	4	12
Dumbbell Incline Bench Press	5	10
Dumbbell Chest Flys	3	20
Chest Fly Machine	3	20
Lower Pulley Cable Crossovers	2	15
Barbell Pullovers	2	20
Pushups	1	AMAP*

 

Optional Accessory Work
Exercise	Sets	Reps
Chest Press Machine	3	20
Dumbbell Incline Flys	2	15
High Pulley Cable Crossovers	3	20

Workout Tips

Wide Grip Barbell Bench Press* – For this exercise take your regular grip and move out about 1-2 inches. You do not have to go extremely wide, just wider than you normally bench at.

AMAP* – As Many Reps As Possible – Do as many reps as you can in one set; also known as going to failure.

Conclusion

The reason you aren’t seeing results can be from a few different reasons:

• Diet
• Genetics
• Not enough weight training

Two of the three reasons are controllable, genetics aren’t controllable but you can certainly learn what works for you and run with it.

This routine isn’t going to be easy but you will notice improvements after about 8 weeks of this program.