5 Effective Chest & Arm Workouts

By pairing your pullups with burpees (push-up-squat-thrust-jumps) you’re going to ensure a metabolic boost and fat burning advantage.

When it comes to signs of virulence, cutting an impressive figure and looking good in a suit or a t-shirt, nothing comes close to having a good chest and nice arms.

Ideally, you should have at your disposal a handful of extremely effective chest and arm workouts that you can rely on when you want to stimulate more chest and arm growth -- or when you simply want to get a quick, metabolism-boosting toning workout.

You’re about to get five chest and arm workouts that give you just this.

1. Chest Complex Blaster

Complex sets are comprised of a strength set followed by a power set, and this chest complex blaster takes advantage of the fact that this type of one-two combo stimulates both growth and performance. Here is how to do it:

-Choose a chest press motion, preferably dumbbell chest press, barbell chest press or incline chest press. You can grab any of these exercises onthis video exercise library.

-Perform 1-3 15 rep warm-up sets, then a heavy set of 10, 8, 6, 4, and 2.

-After each strength set, perform 6-8 “clap” push-ups.

2. Rack Stripping

This is a standby workout that many bodybuilders use to finish up a tough arm day. It’s conceptually simple: Start with the heaviest dumbbell on the rack with which you can do a standing alternating curl with good form.

Do as many alternating curls as possible with that weight (probably just 1-3 reps with the heaviest weight).

Then go to the next lightest weight (typically five pounds less) and again do as many reps as possible.

Continue this scenario until you’ve gotten to the lightest dumbbell on the rack. This may take you as long as 15-20 minutes, but will provide an enormous stimulus for your arms.

3. Pull-up à Burpee Superset

Surprisingly, pullups are fantastic for making your chest look better, since they assist with shoulder blade alignment and a more balanced-looking upper body. And of course, they stimulate the arms too -- especially forearms and biceps.

By pairing your pullups with burpees (push-up-squat-thrust-jumps) you’re going to ensure a metabolic boost and fat burning advantage.

Here’s how to do this superset workout:
1)      Do 10-15 regular or assisted pullups
2)      Immediately drop and do 10-15 burpees
3)      Recover 1 minute, during which time you can jumprope, do crunches, stretch, or engage in some other productive activity.
4)      Repeat for 4-6 rounds

4. Renegade Rows Tabata Set

This is a quick four minute set that simply requires a set of dumbbells.
Get into a renegade row position, which basically involves holding a set of dumbbells in the push-up position.
Set your timer for four minutes, and do as many renegade rows as possible in 20 seconds. Recover 10 seconds. Then again do as many as possible in 20 seconds. Continue this 20 on, 10 off scenario for the full four minutes.
This is called a Tabata set, and if you just have a short period of time, it’s extremely effective. If you have a longer period of time to exercise, recover for 60 seconds after your first Tabata set, then do 2-3 additional sets.

5. Swimming Pull-Ups & Push-Ups

As a swimmer myself, I couldn’t give you a chest-arms tips article without throwing in one of my personal favorites -- a swimming pullups and pushups workout.
This one is straightforward, but does in fact require a pool (something you should have access to if you’d like an upper body like Michael Phelps orRyan Lochte).
Warm up well, then swim from one end of the pool to the other as quickly as possible (25 meter sprint). When you reach the pool edge, grab the diving blocks and do 10-20 pull-ups. Then hop out of the pool, and do 10-20 push-ups on deck.
Recover back to the other wall with easy kicking or easy swim stroke. Then turn around and sprint again.
Complete 8-10 rounds and you will experience an incredible fitness boost, albeit accompanied by a fair bit of post-workout soreness.
Enjoy, and leave your questions, comments, feedback or favorite chest-arm workouts below.