Chest Development the Fun Way!

Kayak Fishing on our favorite river, the Llano River

Just eight more days before I post the before and after pictures of the progress of my physique shaping workout. Standing before the mirror this morning I can see better definition of my chest and modest shrinkage of the stomach. Related to this I want to point out that the picture above shows an activity where I have found I gain good definition of the chest through a fun non-exercise activity. In the picture above I've just caught a Guadalupe Bass on the Llano river in Central Texas. Fighting this monster bass gave me a chest like Arnold Schwarzeneger! (ha!)

But really, kayaking is the fun chest development activity and the Llano River is one of our favorite kayaking destinations. We drop off the kayaks at the river crossing at County Road 102 west of Llano, Texas, park the truck out of the way, and paddle upstream as far as we can go. Along the way we portage about four small rapids pulling the kayaks up with ropes (class I rapids in normal flows) and finally we end up at a location where there's a long steep rapid where there's not enough water to float the kayak.

We usually lunch there, pick up river rocks for our rock garden landscaping, then float back down, and joyously run the rather tame rapids raising our paddles in victory. A normal day on the Llano with fishing and swimming stops takes three to five hours. In the couple dozen times we've paddled that stretch, we've only come across one other fisherman. It's like having our own private paradise with lots of nice swimming holes and great fishing to boot!

From a fitness perspective I have observed that kayaking is a wonderful, fun way to build up a man chest! The Llano River kayak workout requires heavy paddling to move upriver, and to navigate the rapids. Even though most of the drift down stream requires only light, easy paddling, it takes a lot of strong paddling to hit each rapid at the right speed, to hit the right entry point, and to maintain the line through the rapid so as to not get stranded on a rock. But as much as I enjoy the fun of the river paddling, if the goal is to develop the chest, the real work comes when I go paddling with my wife on local lakes.

There is no movement without paddling on lakes and add to that the fact that my wife is a paddling machine and lake kayaking with her is about constant motion and workout. Personally, I like to drift and quietly take in nature, but paddling with her is all about keeping up. When we paddle Brushy Creek Lake north of Austin, it takes 1 hour and 45 minutes from kayak drop off at the dam all the way up the lake to where Brushy Creek is too shallow to paddle and back, paddles digging water all the way. What a workout! Within a couple of weeks of regular paddling I notice very good development of the chest.

Speaking of workout, today I got back on track with the first 16 session strength training this week, having skipped Monday. Yesterday I bumped my KB swings from 120 to 150 and for the first time used the 20 lb barbell for Turkish Get Ups. With the extra weight I could only do the "old man" style on the left side, but was able to perform "strong man" TGUs on the right side even with the 20 lb weight. However, with the extra 30 swings and the extra barbell weight I dropped from 3 TGUs each side to 2. During my strength session today I also added the 20 lb barbell for presses, windmills, and curls. I used the 30 lb Kettlebell for everything else and I added an extra 20 swings at the end of the session because I was feelin' pretty darned good! My muscles are glowing nicely this morning!