The New Kids' Menu

Children want familiar favorites. Parents want culinary excellence. Satisfy both cravings with these five classic kids' meals, re-engineered for adult palates as well.

The average dinner at the average house on the average day: Dinner's ready, but the kids don't want grilled cheese after all, now that it's sitting on their plates. And Mom and Dad, well, they would have vastly preferred a real meal anyway. The kids go to bed hungry. The parents go to bed hungering for more.

There's a better way. We asked five professional chefs who are also parents how they find a culinary happy medium in their homes. The five recipes they shared puts the style in family-style cooking: They're modern, sophisticated spins on foods kids love. Plus, they're quick to prepare and made from high-quality, natural ingredients. That means more flavor and less guilt for you. So stop settling for average. Cooking for kids never tasted so good.

If Your Kids Like: Macaroni and Cheese 
Try: Mac & Cheese (2) 

By Carlito Jocson, executive chef and owner of the Yard House Restaurants chain

"Kids love chicken, bacon, and macaroni and cheese," Jocson says. "But the other great ingredients in the dish elevate it to something adults will enjoy."

What you'll need:
1 lb dried pasta (like Barilla whole-grain penne)
3 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp butter
1 c sliced crimini mushrooms (optional)
1 lb pulled rotisserie chicken or sliced grilled chicken breast
8 slices cooked applewood bacon, cut into 1/2 -inch pieces
1 c half-and-half
1 c 2 percent milk
2 c grated cheddar cheese
1/2 c grated Parmesan
1 c mix of half panko bread crumbs and half grated Parmesan

How to make it:
1. Cook pasta in boiling salted water, drain, toss with 2 tablespoons olive oil, and set aside. Preheat oven to 375°F.

2. Heat remaining olive oil and butter in a large saute pan over medium-high heat. Add mushrooms and saute until brown. Next, add chicken and cooked bacon and saute for 2 minutes. Take pan off heat and add half-and-half and milk. Set aside.

3. Mix pasta and contents from pan in a large bowl with cheddar and Parmesan. Dump into a 14-inch casserole dish and top with bread-crumb mix.

4. Bake in oven for 30 minutes, or until top is golden brown. Serves 4.

Once you master this recipe, try out this other way to make Great Mac 'n' Cheese for the kids.

If Your Kids Like: Chicken Nuggets and Fries 
Try: Chicken McWaltucks and Zucchini Coins
By David Waltuck, chef and owner of Chanterelle in New York City

"Kids love eating crispy finger foods," Waltuck says. "This is a healthier version of a Happy Meal, without the saturated fat. My son doesn't usually like zucchini, but since these are breaded and baked, the shape and texture make them fun to eat."

What you'll need:
3 whole skinless, boneless chicken breasts (about 2 1/4 lb)
4 large eggs
1 c milk
2 Tbsp Dijon mustard
4-5 c panko (Japanese bread crumbs), or coarse dry bread crumbs
2 c all-purpose flour olive oil

How to make it: 
1. Rinse chicken under cold water, then pat dry with paper towels. Trim away any excess fat or cartilage and cut breasts against the grain into 1/2-inch strips. Preheat oven to 375°F.

2. Combine eggs, milk, and mustard in a wide bowl and whisk to blend. Spread half the bread crumbs in a shallow pan or pie plate and all the flour in another shallow pan or pie plate. Dip chicken strips into flour, then egg mixture, then bread crumbs. Arrange breaded strips on two large baking sheets. Replenish bread crumbs as needed.

3. Drizzle chicken pieces with olive oil and bake about 15 minutes, or until golden brown and cooked through. Turn strips halfway through.

4. Sprinkle with coarse (kosher) salt and ground black pepper, transfer to serving platter, and serve with your favorite healthy dipping sauces and lemon wedges. Serves 6 to 8.

Zucchini Coins

What you'll need: 
2 large zucchini
2 large eggs
1 1/2 c fine dry bread crumbs canola or other vegetable oil

How to make it:
1. Wash zucchini and dry thoroughly. Slice crosswise into rounds about 1/4 -inch thick. Preheat oven to 375°F.

2. Beat eggs in a shallow bowl. Spread bread crumbs on a plate. Dip each zucchini round first in egg, then in bread crumbs, shaking off any excess. Place each round on a baking sheet in a single layer. Drizzle with oil.

3. Cook in oven for about 10 minutes until golden brown. (This can be done with chicken simultaneously to save time.) Sprinkle zucchini with coarse (kosher) salt to taste and serve immediately with lemon wedges. Serves 6.

If Your Kids Like: Canned Chicken Noodle and Vegetable Soups 
Try: Sukiyaki Bowl
By Takashi Yagihashi, chef and owner of Takashi Restaurant in Chicago and author of Takashi's Noodles

Yagihashi cooks this popular Japanese lunch for his children to sneak a few vegetables into their diet. "The sukiyaki sauce is sweet, so kids like it," says Yagihashi, who recommends adding sliced onion, cabbage, enoki mushrooms, green onions, spinach, or nori. "Let your kids build their bowl. It's fun."

What you'll need:
1 c mirin (Can't find it? Use 1 c chicken stock or water and up the amount of sugar by 2 Tbsp)
1 c soy sauce
1 c sake
2 1/2 Tbsp sugar
1 c shirataki noodles, or rice noodles 1 14-oz beef rib-eye roast, sliced very thin, or try pork or chicken 4 lightly beaten eggs
8 c steamed rice

How to make it: 
1. To make sukiyaki sauce, stir mirin, soy sauce, sake, and sugar in a bowl until sugar dissolves.

2. Boil shirataki noodles in a small saucepan for 5 minutes. Drain noodles and set aside.

3. Place sliced vegetables of your choice (up to 5 cups) in a skillet. Add 2 cups sukiyaki sauce. Cook over high heat until it starts to boil. Arrange meat on top and then decrease heat to medium. Pour eggs on top. Cover pan and simmer for 90 seconds, or until eggs are cooked evenly. If liquid runs out, add 1 more cup sauce.

4. Place 2 cups rice in each bowl. Pour sukiyaki over rice. Garnish with noodles, more fresh vegetables, and 1 tablespoon sauce. Serves 4.

Read More

Nutrition Plan for the Lean Muscle Diet

Whatever your weight, we've got the meal plans to help you torch flab and build muscle

You've read the 8 Principles of the Lean Muscle Diet, and you've got the basics on how to build the body you want by living like you already have it. But you want some specifics. Sure, "eat more food" and "eat better food" make sense intheory. But how does that work in execution?

Let's take a closer look at some sample meal plans, based on three different body weights and weight-loss goals.

Skinny-Fat Stan

Torch flab and build muscle by following this nutrient-packed eating approach.

Current Weight
160 lb

Target Weight
160 lb

Training Status
Beginner

Training Hours/Wk
4 (3 Strength, 1 Cardio)

Intensity Of Effort
Moderate (12)

Goal
Simultaneous Fat Loss And Muscle Gain

Total Daily Calories
2,560 (160 × [4 + 12])

25% protein
640 calories (160 grams× 4)

34% fat
864 calories (96 grams× 9)

41% carbs
1,056 calories (264 grams× 4)

Your Sample Meal Plan

Breakfast
3 eggs scrambled with a handful of vegetables, 1 large banana

Lunch
4 oz chicken breast on a kaiser roll, 1 large handful of radishes

Dinner
6 oz tuna steak, 2 medium potatoes (6 to 7 oz each), sauteed swiss chard

Snacks
1 scoop protein powder mixed with 1 1/2 cups plain yogurt, 1/3 cup nuts, 1 apple.

Deskbound Dan

To cut your gut for good, include more fat in your diet.

Current Weight
240 lb

Target Weight
216 lb

Training Status
Intermediate

Training Hours/Wk
2 (2 Strength, 0 Cardio)

Intensity Of Effort
Moderate (10)

Goal
Weight Loss

Total Daily Calories
2,592 (216 × [2+10])

33% protein
864 calories (216 grams × 4)

45% fat
1,170 calories (130 grams × 9)

22% carbs
558 calories (139 grams × 4)

Your Sample Meal Plan

Breakfast
1 scoop protein powder mixed with 2 tbsp peanut butter, 1 1/2 cups berries (+ liquid)

Lunch
6 oz baked black cod, 2 cups brown rice, 1 to 2 cups steamed green beans

Dinner
12 oz grass-fed steak, 1 small potato (3 oz), 1 to 2 cups steamed broccoli

Snacks
3/4 cup yogurt with 1 1/2 scoops protein powder, 2/3 cup nuts, 1 peach.

Read More

The Lean Muscle Diet

This new year, ignore the trendy, complex diet plans designed to shrink your wallet and not your gut. To build the body you've always wanted, live like you already have it

When men set 

out to lose weight, they usually start at the wrong place. They pick a popular diet; any diet, it doesn't matter which one. Most plans tell you to eat none of some things and tons of others. Your weight drops until it stops. Then it's up to you to make sure your shrunken gut stays that way.

These diets have it all backward. Instead of starting with no idea where you'll end up, act as if you've hit your target. Follow the principles from our new book, The Lean Muscle Diet (buy it now), to build the body you want ... and keep it.

Principle No. 1
You Need to Eat More Food

If you have a Taco Bell Cheesy Gordita Crunch habit, the first step is easy: Limit your intake of anything with a name that includes the words "cheesy," "gordita," and/or "crunch."

But you still need to eat something, and whatever it is, it'll have calories you must account for. The accounting is simple: There are two sides to the ledger. One side is your calorie intake, and the other is your metabolism—that is, the calories you burn—which works in four ways.

Digest. About 10 percent of your metabolism comes from how you process food. But you can do better if you eat more protein. 25 percent of protein calories are burned after you swallow them, compared with 2 to 3 percent of fat calories and 6 to 8 percent of calories from carbs.

Move. Everything from working out to walking to the mailbox burns more calories than not moving—and accounts for 20 to 30 percent of your metabolism. The more you move, the better, including those times when you...

Hit the can. When you dial up a #1 or #2 (or sneak out a fart), energy leaves your body. Alas, you can't toot your way to single-digit body fat.

Stay alive. The rest of the calories you eat go toward your body's other basic operating functions. (That's at least 60 percent of your metabolism.) By changing the "calories in" part of the formula, you also change the "calories out."

With less energy in the tank, you may burn fewer calories during your workouts. That's the danger of cutting calories without a plan to maintain your new lower weight. Your metabolism slows, leaving you hungry and primed to regain fat you lost, especially when hunger hits near a Taco Bell. The key is to reverse that process.

Principle No. 2
You Need to Eat Better Food

Pity the man forced to survive on gluten-free pizza and fat-free ice cream. The Lean Muscle Diet makes eating easy and delicious because you're encouraged to eat (gasp!) real food. Here's the breakdown of your eating plan.

Eat 80 percent of your diet in whole and minimally processed foods that you like. "Whole" foods are ones that look like what they started out as: meat, fish, eggs, milk, nuts, seeds, fruits, vegetables, potatoes, and beans. One exception: Protein powders are highly processed, but they're still a great way to consume the protein you need to make the plan work.

Eat 10 percent in whole and minimally processed foods that you don't necessarily like but don't hate (say, Swiss chard and lamb). This is intended to expand the range of nutrients you're eating. Maybe you'll even learn to like a food, which means you're less likely to suffer from diet burnout.

Eat 10 percent in whatever the hell you want. Consider this your reward for faithfully embracing the two previous categories. Use this bonus however you'd like: Have a small indulgence every day, or save up for a bigger weekend junkfest. Even if it includes Cheesy Gordita Crunches.

Here's a shortcut: If the food doesn't have an ingredient list, it's a safe bet. Steak, apples, quinoa, eggplant, salmon—they're all single-ingredient foods. With packaged foods, each additional ingredient signals an extra step in processing, which may have stripped away some of the good stuff. And often, to make up for lost flavor, food manufacturers pump processed foods with sugar and fat. These foods also tend to be higher in calories.

"Quality" also means taste. On this plan, you won't find any rules about foods you must eat. Nor will you find a list of foods you should never eat. Just about anything you already enjoy can fit into the plan, although perhaps not in the quantities you're used to eating.

Principle No. 3
Macronutrients Matter (Especially Protein)

Nutritionists refer to protein, carbs, and fat as "macros." Protein, of course, is the stuff of muscle growth, particularly branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs), including leucine. The circles above show the stats for three good protein sources. On our plan, you'll eat 1 gram of protein for every pound of your target body weight, or 25 percent to 35 percent of your daily diet.

But protein also increases satiation (feeling full at the end of a meal) and satiety (feeling less hungry between meals). So protein pulls triple duty: It speeds your metabolism, slows your appetite, and maintains muscle.

What about the other macros? You'll eat 0.4 to 0.7 gram of fat per pound of your target body weight per day. If you have a good chunk of body fat to lose, use the higher end of that scale. It's not that fat calories have any magical properties; a higher percentage of fat simply means fewer carbs. That tends to work better for heavier guys, who often are less sensitive to insulin, a hormone triggered by high-carbohydrate meals. Less sensitivity means more insulin; more insulin means your body will use less fat for energy. For everyone else, it's personal preference. Whatever calories are left after your calculations will come from carbs. Who knew math could be so tasty?

Read More

Here's Why One Slice of Pizza Is Never Enough

Scientists reveal the 10 most addictive foods in the world

If you’ve ever thought you were addicted to pizza, you might just be right. A new study from the University of Michigan suggests that some foods really are more addictive than others.

Researchers surveyed people about the foods they can’t put down. The most habit-forming foods typically had two things in common—a high fat content and a high glycemic load, meaning they spike your blood sugar quickly after ingestion. Foods with a high glycemic load tend to be rich in sugars and refined carbs.

These items were most addictive, in order: 

(While soda and cheese don’t have the combo of high fat and a high glycemic load, they each score high in one of the categories.) 

Meanwhile, the least addicting foods in the study were cucumbers, carrots, beans without sauce, apples, plain brown rice, broccoli, bananas, salmon, corn without butter or salt, and strawberries. 

“We found that people who indicated experiencing symptoms of food addiction reported the most problems with foods with a high glycemic load, where the refined carbs hit the system in a rapid, rewarding manner,” says lead study author Erica Schulte, a doctoral student. “It may be that people who consume food in an addictive manner find the blood sugar spike more rewarding than those who don't report addictive-like eating.”

Previous research suggests that eating sugary foods activates brain regions involved in processing reward. 

Fat then adds to the problem. Research shows that eating fats activates brain regions involved in taste and touch, perhaps because the oily and greasy foods feel good in your mouth. “It may be that the combination of the highly rewarding blood sugar spike, with the pleasurable mouthfeel of fat, creates the most ‘addictive’ potential for a food," Schulte says. 

Schulte adds that while you can find plenty of high-fat foods, such as nuts, and high-sugar foods, such as bananas, in nature, you won’t find a naturally occurring food with high levels of both sugar and fat.

“This underscores that highly processed foods like chocolate and French fries may be made to be artificially rewarding by containing high quantities of both fat and rapidly absorbed refined carbs,” she says. 

Food policies that tax highly processed food or restrict their marketing to children might help curb addictive eating, says Schulte.

In the meantime, if you think you have food addiction, therapy might be the best route . If you just occasionally overeat these foods, consider mindful eating. It will slow you down and help you avoid overdoing it, says Schulte. 

And for a complete cutting-edge exercise and nutrition guide that you can use on your computer, tablet, or phone, check out The Lose Your Spare Tire Program. It’s the easiest and most effective way to drop 20, 30, or even 50 pounds (and flatten your belly forever!).

Read More

Barefoot Running Stumbles

The irresistible promise: Ditch your padded sneakers and run faster with fewer injuries. So why is the minimalist running craze causing maximum pain

The 2011 L.A. Marathon was going well for Joseph Gabriel. After 26 miles enduring a cold rain and gusty winds, he was still on pace to break four hours—his goal after four months of training. But as he turned onto Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica, with the finish line in sight 300 yards away, he felt a sudden tug above his left ankle.

"It wasn't painful; it was more like a pulling sensation. I thought it was a muscle," Gabriel recalls". I had no idea what had happened and didn't want to make it worse." So he stopped—and the crowd went nuts. "Everyone was yelling my name—it was printed on my race bib. They shouted, 'It's right there, keep going!' And I'm like, But I can't walk!" So Gabriel hopped the final stretch on his good leg. Time: 4:02:44.

Gabriel had ruptured his Achilles tendon. It took three months of rest and rehab before he could run again, gingerly. His physical therapist, Darwin Fogt, M.P.T., wasn't surprised by the injury—and not because his patient was 50 years old. To Fogt, Joseph Gabriel was yet another victim of the so-called barefoot running craze.

Gabriel didn't run (and finally hop) the L.A. Marathon barefoot; he trained and raced in a pair of minimalist running shoes—the kind with a nearly level heel, or "lower drop" in athletic-shoe parlance. He was one of legions of runners who'd read the bestselling book Born to Run, about Mexico's Tarahumara, an indigenous tribe whose members compete in races of 100 miles or more in flat sandals—and almost never get hurt.

In the book, author Christopher McDougall blames spongy shock-absorbing shoes for breeding runners with poor form and weak feet. McDougall, who also wrote about the Tarahumara for Men's Health in 2006, visited Harvard University, where he met Daniel Lieberman, Ph.D., an evolutionary biologist who studied gait mechanics. Lieberman showed that when barefoot runners land forefoot first—in front of the arch—their gait is measurably less jarring than shod runners who hit the ground with their heels. In January 2010, with the popularity of Born to Run soaring, the journal Natureput Lieberman's research on its cover.

"Lieberman's publication, McDougall's book—it was a perfect combination of events," says Matthew Silvis, M.D., a sports medicine physician at Penn State who teaches barefoot technique. Shoemakers rushed to meet the new demand, introducing lighter, flatter shoes with names like Bare Access and Minimus. Glovelike footwear called FiveFingers or Skeletoes became popular. "Barefoot running" became shorthand for the minimalist movement.

But now Dr. Silvis, who is studying injury rates among barefooters, says he is seeing an alarming number of foot stress fractures, calf tears, and Achilles strains in runners transitioning to barefoot or minimalist running. Fogt, president of Evolution Physical Therapy in Culver City, California, concurs. He says he finds plantar fasciitis in the majority of his barefoot runners, compared with perhaps 15 percent of traditional runners.

Fogt's client, Gabriel, admits that he bought into the craze. "I drank the Kool-Aid," he says. "I just thought I should do it because of what I had heard, even though I was having no problems with what I was using at the time." The promise of a more efficient stride was irresistible: "I got the new minimalist shoes, threw out my old ones, and out the door I went."

LIGHTWEIGHT SHOES CAN MAKE A RUNNER feel faster; and with no initial pain, a new convert to minimalist running is tempted to log miles as he always has. For Gabriel, months of high-mileage training without proper conditioning added strain to his hamstrings, calves. . .and Achilles tendons. It's not just older guys who are at risk; Fogt sees people of all ages with injuries related to barefoot-style running. Dr. Silvis is currently treating a 20-year-old elite distance runner with a history of stress fractures who tried a barefoot approach in an attempt to ease the shock to his tibia bones. But, says Dr. Silvis, he "straightaway ran at his normal distance and intensity, and subsequently fought Achilles difficulties for weeks."

That's typical, says Nathan Koch, P.T., a physical therapist based in Scottsdale, Arizona. "Runners are always trying to get faster, looking for an edge," he says. "They're also always hurt. And when they're hurt, they want answers. So people made assumptions that if you could run barefoot, your injuries would go away."

In May, researchers at the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse published a study demonstrating that a forefoot or midfoot landing—the usual technique in lighter shoes with a less cushioned heel—increases the load per step on the Achilles tendon by 11 percent compared with a heel landing. That's about 7,000 extra pounds of force over a mile for a 150-pound runner, says study author John Willson, Ph.D., now an associate professor of physical therapy at East Carolina University. That kind of force, says Fogt, is the reason anyone who's making the switch from conventional shoes to minimalist footwear needs an extensive training period to ready the foot for barefoot style. "And not everyone's foot is able to tolerate barefoot running, even with the training period," he says.

Neither McDougall nor Lieberman asserted that barefoot running had any proven benefit over shod running. Lieberman merely demonstrated that forefoot strikers are, quite literally, lighter on their feet. He also observed from habitually barefoot cultures—he visited the Kalenjin tribe in Kenya—that human anatomy is innately suited for running.

The problem? "People took our paper, which was about a very small, limited topic, as telling them how to run," Lieberman says. "Running is a complex skill that you can't learn how to do just by taking off your shoes."

Read More

This Might Be the Best Bacon You'll Ever Taste

Are you ready to experience craft bacon? We taste-tested 18 gourmet varieties to find the most primo product.

But hold on—isn't bacon bad for you? Actually, no: Two strips of cooked bacon provide 6 grams of protein for 89 calories. A 2010 Harvard review found that saturated fat (like bacon fat) doesn't contribute to heart disease. And despite reports to the contrary, it's unlikely that Bacon Can Hurt Your Sperm. So go ahead, pig out a little.

WINNER

The Baron of Bacon

VANDE ROSE FARMS ARTISAN APPLEWOOD-SMOKED BACON
$65 FOR 60 OZ, FOODORO.COM

The pork is from Duroc pigs, prized for their tender meat. Our tasters praised the "nutty, fruity" flavor. This stuff comes at a cost, but it's cheaper per ounce than others we tested.

---

RUNNER-UP RASHERS

Best Thick-Cut Bacon

BEELER'S HICKORY SMOKED
$14 FOR 16 OZ, BACONFREAK.COM

Our testers raved about Beeler's "buttery" bacon, which has a subtle vanilla flavor. Try a strip cooked, chopped, and sprinkled on homemade pancakes with maple syrup. 

Best Peppered Bacon

LOBEL'S
$13 FOR 16 OZ, LOBELS.COM

The folks at Lobel's cure this bacon with dark maple syrup, then roll it in cracked peppercorns. They also smoke it twice, intensifying the flavors. Tuck some into a grilled cheese. 

Best Nonpork Bacon

D'ARTAGNAN DUCK BACON
$15 FOR 8 OZ, DARTAGNAN.COM

Turkey bacon has nothing on this duck breast variety, which delivers a nice "chew" and all the smoky, salty goodness of traditional pork strips. Use it to reinvent your next BLT.

---

COOK CRISP-TENDER STRIPS

Skip your skillet and opt for your oven instead, says Nate Anda, chef at Red Apron Butchery in Washington, D.C. You'll ease up on cleanup and ensure that each strip of bacon comes out evenly cooked.

Step 1 / Preheat your oven to 325F. On a rimmed baking sheet, arrange the strips in one snug, even layer. The close quarters will help render the fat, resulting in crispier bacon.

Step 2 / Slide the sheet into the oven and bake until crisped, 10 to 15 minutes. The bacon will keep cooking in the hot grease, so carefully transfer the strips to a paper-towel-lined plate.

You're not done reading about bacon yet, are you? Of course not. You have questions, so many question. Like for instance, Is Bacon Really Good on Everything? To find out, we spent three straight days adding bacon to every meal. After that, be sure to check out The 7 Ways To Enjoy Bacon, with bacon-based recipe ideas on everything from salad to chili to dessert.

Read More

3 Reasons You're Not Benching Bigger Numbers

Overcome these sticking points, and watch your bench press numbers skyrocket

Editor’s note: This is Part 3 of a three part series on how to increase your strength in the “big three”: the barbell squat, deadlift, and bench press. In this story, you’ll discover three techniques for eliminating your weak spot—known as a sticking point—in the bench press. (Read part 1 here: The Secret to a Massive Squat. Read part 2 here: The Secret to a Gigantic Deadlift.)

When two guys sit down at a bar and talk fitness, there’s just one question they use to size each other up: “What do you bench?”

Indeed, the bench press is the lift by which all strength is judged—and that’s when Bench Press Monday is a weekly ritual for most lifters. 

But if you—Monday after Monday—have benched roughly the same amount of weight over the last year, improvement doesn’t lie in more benching. You need to work on the phase of the lift that’s pulling your numbers down, says Mike Robertson, C.S.C.S., a former powerlifting coach for Team USA, and co-owner of IFAST in Indianapolis.

“If we’re talking bench, we’re talking two really common sticking points and one less common one,” he says. “But fixing sticking points in the bench is the easiest way to improve your numbers.”

You falter when the bar is at your chest
Your chest and triceps—your “pressing” muscles—obviously need to be strong for you to have a big bench. But issues in this position often have more to do with your pulling muscles.

“Getting stuck off the chest is usually due to a stability and control issue, often because your upper back is weak.” Indeed, a strong upper back provides a more stable foundation for you to lift from.

“Having people do more upper back work often fixes this problem,” says Robertson. “I like row and chinup variations.”

(To bolster your back even more, try The 21-Minute Big Back Workout)

Robertson adds that if your pulling muscles are strong but you’re still having issues, building a stronger chest does help some people.

“Doing some dumbbell bench presses builds up the pec muscles and builds stability,” he says.

Standing Supported Single-Arm Row
With a dumbbell  in your right hand, place your left hand and left knee on a bench. Keep your back flat and upper body parallel to the floor, as your right arm hangs. Now raise your right upper arm to your rib cage, squeeze your shoulder blade back, and lower it again.

Isometric Chinup
Hang at arm’s length from a chinup bar using an underhand, shoulder-width grip. This is the starting position. Pull your chest to the bar as fast as you can, pause for a three count while “pulling” your shoulder blades down. Take 2 seconds to lower to the starting position.

You fail midway through
The midpoint of the bench, where your elbows are bent about 90-degrees, is no-man’s land, says Robertson. “Your chest has just done it’s big effort, but your triceps aren’t in a great position to press yet,” he says.

That’s why your best bet is to do exercises that help you become a local in no-man’s land. “I like floor presses and board presses,” says Robertson. The reason: they both help you become stronger and more comfortable in the position where your elbows are bent 90-degrees.

Floor Press
Lie on your back and hold a barbell above your chest with your arms straight and knees bent. Lower the barbell until your upper arms touch the floor. Pause, and press the weight back up to the starting position.

Foam Roller Press 
(This move replicates the board press, but uses equipment you can find in any gym.) Lie with your back on a bench and place a foam roller length-wise on your chest. Secure it with a resistance band, if need be. Grab the barbell overhead and hold it directly above your chest. Lower it to touch the foam roller, then press it back up.

You miss the lockout
Most guys don’t struggle with this phase of the lift, says Robertson. But if you’re not “most guys” and the final push eludes you, look to your triceps, he says.

“The lockout is really a big thrust from your triceps,” says Robertson. Your move: strengthen those muscles, which make up the back of your arms. You could do classic tri-isolating exercises like skull crushers and rope press downs, but something more bench press specific is a better option, says Robertson.

“I like the close grip bench press here,” he says. “Moving your hands in closer takes less stress off the chest and overloads the triceps. Plus, it requires a greater range of motion so the lockout phase is actually longer in this variation.”

Close Grip Barbell Bench Press
Using an overhand grip that’s a bit narrower than shoulder width, hold a barbell above your sternum with your arms straight. Lower the bar to your chest. Pause, then press the bar up. That’s one rep.

Read More