Resistance Band Workout: Chest

In this week's Made Fit TV podcast, I show you how to use resistance bands effectively and creatively to target your chest. Bands are pretty affordable and mobile, so you can do these movements anywhere!

Jennifer DiDonato: Hey, welcome to MadeFitTV. I'm your host Jennifer DiDonato and this is episode number 57. And in case, you don't know, MadeFitTV is everyone source for health and fitness, information and entrainment. Bodies don't just happen. They are made. They're made by you by the help of me, but together as a group we can get you there. So, welcome to show we are in the gym again, I'm so happy, I'm going to be workout today or using resistance bands. Yeah! Do you guys have any of these? I hope so. They're very affordable and you can bring them anywhere or you can do a lot of things with them, if you're not sure, you know if you looking down at that pamphlet, you know like you know what? There are a couple of movements. I'm here because I know all these come with pamphlets of movements. I'll be source because I have a lot of different creative movements that you can do with resistance band, even if you just have one, I know they coming in a lot of variety with different resistance levels, but you can do a lot with them. So, this episode is how to build a stronger chest with resistance bands because you see like I said, a lot of those simple movements and you think, it was to see even doing anything, but the reason why resistance band are really important is because they're good to incorporate into to your regular strength training regiment to mix it up, to get a little bit more creative with the muscles, and to challenge your muscles in a different way because like I talk about, concentric motion is when you're contracting and getting all flexing there for all of you out there, you'll bugging me about it. So concentric, but then on the lowering you do the eccentric movements, so there is not a lot of resistance on the downward what, what resistance bands do is they provide that resistance for all ranges of motion, not just one, not just on the contracting. So, this is why this episode is pretty important and it's helpful for you, if you're looking for a weight having affordable good workout. So, starting out exercise movement number one, we're going to do a front press with the resistance band. So, what you're going to do, and you can any resistance band if this is, if you have that is just too light, what you can do is just choke up on it like this and do it like that. But this one that I have is about a medium resistance, so it's good for me. You're going to step on it with one foot and you're going to keep your chest up; you can bring the back foot back, heel up because I want you to keep all your body nice and aligned. Because if you're keeping your feet together, which is fine, you might have a tendency to hunch forward, so this where you can help keep your body up right. So you're going to have your palms, bring them up, you're going to feel the resistance already, this is just starting and ending position. So, you want to see, it's a 90-degree angle, you don't want to start pass it to your back, you want to keep it nice and straight and all you're going to do is just while maintaining, keeping the forearms parallel to the ground and you're going to press forward, and bring it on back to starting position. Exhale on exertion. You're going to be targeting the chest, you want to push front and center, squeeze the chest. And what you're going to feel to is you're going to feel the shoulders. So, what you may think might be a little bit light, when you start doing this moving or anything down that is hard. Starting from the side, keep the abs in nice and tight, no hunching, I don't want any of this, I don't want any of that. Full control, keep the chest up, chin up and everything. And you're going to get an awesome shoulder workout, chest workout, and it's going to be something different that you felt versus doing regular chest presses or doing a seated chest press at the gym with the weights. So next movement, number two is going to be a resistance band chest fly. So, you can stand on it with one foot just like the other stance that we had. You're going to bring your palms facing forward, these are adjustable. See that. So, there are locked in the place, some must have cheap ones. No, I'm just kidding. But these are really good. These ones are really good because you can adjust. So, bring your palms facing forward, you already going to feel the resistance in the starting and ending position and you just going to be bring your palms facing forward, close it up. And you don't want to allow your arms to go pass to your back, just like on that chest press. Keep the chest up, you're going to feel in your shoulders too, but you want to must think that you want to really squeeze your packs together, I know its funny girls, but you have packs too. And now you got boobs, but you got packs under there, use up. You want a nice firm squeeze that sounds perverted, squeeze your boobs. See that, nice chest fly. And then we want to think about is like a dragon fly. Dragon fly wings, you know like that, that's how you can remember a chest fly. So that is going to target on that only -- the main muscle of the chest, which would be the minor, which runs along here. So, you're going to get nice firm. You really want to build up the chest because that is a big part of your body, big muscle group. Number three movement is going to be the single arm chest fly. So, what I want to do and this one is really great because you're targeting one side of your chest, but you're forcing your core to work and engage because you're forcing your body to control itself because you're only using one side. So, obviously, your body is a symmetrical; when you're using one side, it forces the other side to compensate, so you're going to have to really keep the abs tight while you're doing this movement. The good thing also, if you have only one resistance band, you can adjust and bring it down resistance or up resistance as that. Wherever you stand, the closer you stand the handle, you're going to build more resistance on it. So, if it's too tough, you can loosen up on it and bring the foot over. So, you can see on with either both feet on there or one leg that we're doing and I want you to bring it up, just like before -- I'm loosing my balance here. And it's going to be the same movement, but really focus squeezing the pack, you want to bring it center, maybe a little bit more over and target all of that. If you feel like you know and not like really focus on working the chest and this may take some practice especially, for the girls out there because you know you'll think about working your chest, so you really want to visualize and really feel where those muscles are because it really makes a difference when you work them out, it really does guys. So, it may take a few weeks, you know you may have to visualize, close your eyes, you know practice everything like that, but it works because you want to be more intent with your body at what your muscles are doing for a total body optimal workout because you don't want to cheat yourself out there. Last movement that I'm going to show is going to be a push up with the resistance band. Now, this is interesting because lastly -- I showed you guys one with the plate weight on there, but this one I want you to put the resistance band over your back and you can tighten up on it. So, what I'm going to do is I'm just going to put it around me like this. And I'm going to choke up on this one because I know that it's a little bit longer. So, you're going to get on the ground and I'm going to do it up to the side. See how I just get on the ground, bring it around. So, now this is creating resistance when I do my pushups on the way up, and its not only on the way up, but it's also on the way down because it's not only is resisting me; when I coming off it's pushing me down and I want to resist that when I'm coming down because you want to do nice and slow, and control. So I don't know, I hope you guys think this is kind of go, it just provides a little bit more of a different dynamic to the movement and creating a different form of resistance because not only on you're resisting on the way up, but on the way down, it's pretty killer kinds of pushing, so you want to control. You also want to remember, you want to be in control on what your muscles are doing, you don't want the weights to push your muscle, you want to control the weights because the muscle is -- I think it like the weights is like there you bitch, you know like you want to control them. So, you don't to weights to tell you what to do. You got to do it in the other way around. It's got to work in your favor. So, for those movements, you guys, email me and let me know what you think, jenny@madefittv.com. You know typical repetitions, you can do like you know 10 to 12 per side with the flies you know I'll write it all on the blog. So now, let's get to the viewer mail. Viewer mail, I really like this when I think it's really important for your guys to listen to this one. It's from Daniel, I don't know where he is from because he emailed directly. What he says, he is trying to live a healthy lifestyle with no support from his wife. I'm sorry he say, she just jealous because he has the motivation she doesn't, but anyway he said he lost 35 pounds over the past year and a half and he is trying to loose 15 or 20. Awesome. He says, he usually in late afternoon to early A.M hours. And when he gets home at night around 2 am he is almost always starving what are some good meals, he can eat when he gets hung. This is from Daniel. Daniel, I know I emailed you on this one, but I wanted to bring because it's such a great question. Eating at night will not make you fat, it depends on what you are eating. If you're eating large amount carbohydrates, I mean if you're going to bed right after eating that, that is going to store probably it's fat because carbohydrate they're used for energy. So if you're not expending energy right after you eat and you just lay down, you may store it. So instead if you're going to that, when you eat the carbohydrates, and then may go for run. So, if you're coming home at 2 a.m. and you're staring, you're body is telling you, you need to eat, you're burring calories, you need to eat higher protein foods like and egg white, omelet or a low carb protein shakes something that'll you hold you over for the night time until the morning because it's okay to eat, but it just matters on what type of foods you're eating. So, please eat at night. If your body is hungry just make sure it's in more on higher quality proteins and minimal carbohydrates because like I said, carbohydrates are used for energy. So email me at jenny@madefittv.com. Daniel, thanks so much for the email. You guys, you can check me out on twitter@jennyddidonato.com and in facebook@enniferdidonato as well. So, comment at the bottom of this podcast, before I want to say you thanks. So, thanks so much for joining us today. Will see you next time on MadeFitTV.