Day 1 on my training split is chest and triceps in the morning and shoulders at night. This is a pivotal day for me because my chest and front deltoids are weak points on my physique due to an injury I suffered in years past. No cardio will be done on this day because I want full energy for my workouts. In this article we will discuss my morning workout and show you how I am going to make some huge improvements on my chest and triceps.

All workouts start with 5 minutes on the treadmill to warm up my body. After that I move right to the incline barbell press. You can never have too much upper chest and nothing hits the upper chest better than the incline barbell press. I have used a lot of rep and set schemes with my chest and have found the best results both in the off-season and the pre-contest using 5x5 scheme.

I do several warm-up sets then move into my working sets which of late has been 5x5 of 205. Each rep is done very slow and controlled on the negative and explosive on the positive to near lock out. Never lock out my elbows on any pressing motions to save my joints and keep the weight on my muscle.

The second exercise in my workout is the flat barbell bench. This I believe is the mass monster of all chest exercises. It puts thickness and beef on the entire chest region, upper/middle/lower. I perform it in the same manner as the incline barbell press. I do a few warm-up sets to get my body accustomed to the angle then I go to work. My body is a little fatigued from the inclines so I am not using max weight usually it will be around 210.

The last chest exercise of the chest portion of my workout is weighted dips. Dips are a great lower chest exercise if you lean forward while doing them. When you stay more vertical the triceps take over most of the lift. I will do one warm-up set with just my bodyweight and then move on to my working sets. Recently, I have been doing 5 sets of 8 with dips. I find that this rep range is best because my body is a little fatigued from the other pressing. Increasing the reps and therefore lower the weight helps save my joints and lowers the risk of injury. Reps are done with a deep stretch at the bottom and all the way up to near lock out but never lockout.

As you can see with my chest routine I use a decent amount of volume, 15 sets in all and many deal with heavy weight. Only using the basic exercises for my upper/middle/lower chest. Occasionally I will finish with some flies or cable cross overs to pump of the chest big time but most of the time I finish with the dips.

Now after I finish with my chest my triceps are definitely warmed up, but I still find that doing a warm-up set of rope extensions is essentially to get the elbows and triceps on the right page. I will do one set of 30 reps with a very easy weight looking to feel the triceps contract with each rep. Not really worried about pump or burn.

After the warm-up set I am off to my meat and potatoes exercise which varies from workout to workout. I will pick between close grip bench, Decline ez-bar skull crushers or machine dips. All three of these exercises are great for putting tremendous size on the entire triceps.

The close grip bench allows you to use maximum weight for the triceps. Being able to push maximum weight definitely results in great size gains for the triceps. The only reason I don’t do it every workout is that it also recruits the chest and front deltoids a lot and after all the pressing earlier you run the risk of overtraining that area.

The decline ez-bar skull crushers is an exercise I have been using for years. Doing it on the decline increases the range of motion, which make the exercise a lot more effective than doing it on a flat or incline plane.

The machine dip is a favorite of mine, especially when I am fatigued from the chest work before. For some reason I don’t feel free weight dips in my triceps only my chest so doing them in machine fashion really isolates my triceps and does wonders to bring in that horse that we all dream of.

I only choose one exercise and do five working sets. With the close grip bench my rep range will be 6-8 so that I can handle maximum weight while with the other two exercises I will stick with a more moderate rep range (8-12).

Most people don’t realize how much triceps play in pressing movement with your chest and shoulder. That is the reason I don’t use that much direct volume for my triceps. Doing anything more would result in overtraining.

After all of that I stretch out my chest and triceps holding the stretches for sixty seconds. I have gotten positive results from stretching post-workout (recover quicker/lowering of post-workout soreness/growth/strength).

That’s it for the morning workout usually this workout will take me an hour and a half. In part 2 of this contest prep series I will tell you how I am turning my weakest body part into a strength. Shoulders are on tap for the night. 

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