Developing your chest, shoulders and biceps muscles can help to increase your upper body strength levels, and make your physique seem more muscular. The best way to train these three muscle groups is in three different workouts on separate days. This gives your muscles enough time to recover between sessions, and allows for optimal performance in each one.
Chest
Train your chest on the first day of the week. Bodybuilder and strength coach John Meadows recommends starting your chest workout with a dumbbell press variation. These are great mass-builders, and also a good way to get your joints warmed up. After this, move on to a machine press, focusing on squeezing each repetition in the contraction position. Do a fly or cable crossover movement third, and finish with a barbell press. While you may be used to doing bench presses first in your routine, placing them last makes them much more of a challenge, and allows your joints to warm up properly, decreasing your risk of injury.
Shoulders
Take a rest day after your chest workout, then train shoulders on day three. According to Charles Poliquin, owner of the Poliquin Performance Center for elite athletes, the best shoulder exercise is the overhead press. It builds muscle in your shoulders, triceps, traps and core, and helps to improve overall strength. Perform three sets of five reps of standing overhead presses, then move on to two sets of 15 reps on each of lateral raises and reverse dumbbell flies.
Biceps
Train your biceps the day after your shoulder workout. To build your biceps, you need to use a variety of different exercises and rep ranges. Start your workout with five sets of heavy dumbbell preacher curls. Follow this up with two sets of concentration curls and two sets of curls using thick grip dumbbells or barbells. When training your biceps, you should hold each repetition for a second at the peak contraction, and squeeze your muscles hard.
Considerations
While you may want to focus on your chest, shoulders and biceps, it is important that you train your other muscle groups too. Neglecting your leg and back muscles can lead to poor posture, an unbalanced physique and injuries. You should try to dedicate one day per week to these muscle groups too. When trying to build muscle, diet is just as important as training -- you need to eat calorie-dense, protein-rich foods, supplemented with fruits and vegetables, whole-grain carbohydrates and healthy fats.
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