With beach season in full swing, you're probably looking for ways to make the time you spend in the gym more productive in order to get a killer upper body that will garner a second glance from the hot girl tanning a few feet away.

To do so, you have to tone up that body of yours and build some muscle mass in key regions of your body.

Muscle Groups

The major muscle groups you should focus on are, in order of importance, your abs, chest, biceps, triceps, back, and shoulders. These are all the important muscles in your upper body and the ones that get noticed most.

By performing a full upper body workout up to 3 times a week, you will be sure to hit each muscle frequently enough to see some fast changes, but still allow enough time between sessions for recovery. Also, since you will also be working your triceps and biceps during some chest and back exercises, you will indirectly be stimulating more than one muscle group in a single exercise.

If you are short on time, your best bet is to perform a single set of at least one exercise for each body part. This will still allow you to target all the major muscles and will help you maintain your strength. Here is a list of some great exercises that will give you the most bang for your buck.

Abs

Swiss Ball Crunches

Performing exercises on the Swiss ball is ideal; as it is not a stable surface, you will have to recruit all your core muscles to stabilize yourself and will therefore get a much better complete core workout. To perform this exercise, lay with the center of your back on top of a Swiss ball, your arms out to the side and your hands behind your head. Curl up and do an abdominal crunch, just as you would if you were lying on the floor. This exercise will primarily target your rectus abdominis (the vertical muscle), while calling in your obliques to stabilize you, and will help you achieve the desired "six-pack" look.

Hanging Leg Raise

To perform this exercise, grab hold of a pull-up bar or another bar that is high enough for you to hang off. Once you have a good grasp, slowly bring your knees up to your chest, and then lower them back down. The slower and more controlled you can perform this movement, the greater the benefit. This exercise will also target your rectus abdominis, as well as your hip flexors.

Chest

Barbell Chest Press

Think of this as the king of all chest exercises, and probably the most frequently performed. Why? It is a compound movement, which causes many

muscle fibers to fire and ensures more muscle growth. You will be working

your pectoralis major muscle, while also indirectly working your triceps and anterior deltoid muscles. The result will be more defined chest muscles.

To perform this exercise, lay flat on a bench press machine. Make sure your back is touching the bench at all times (to prevent unnecessary stress on the back joints). Grasp the barbell with both hands placed shoulder width apart and push the barbell away from the rack. Slowly move the barbell down to your chest and then drive it back up to the starting position on a count of two going down and two coming up.

To increase the intensity of this lift, use a cambered bar. This will allow you to increase your range of motion and work the deeper tissue of your chest muscles to a greater extent. Watch out with this version, however, as it does place more stress on the shoulder joint, so if injury is a concern, you are better off with the normal barbell.

More chest, shoulder, back, and biceps exercises to have all the beauties doing double-takes on the beach...

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