Lagging chest... help

[senn]

sup everyone,

Just wanted some advice or tips on how I can bring my chest up to speed.. its by far my most lagging area.

Aiming for mass. My current routine is a 3-day split, 1 day on, 1 day off.

W1 - Arms/Back

W2 - Chest/Tri

W3 - Shoulders/Legs

My chest workout consists of:

Dumbbell flies 3x10

Bench press 4x10

Incline flies 3x10

Incline press 4x10

Barbell skull crushers 4x10

or something like that... I might switch barbell presses with dumbbells, or do close-grip presses one day but it's usually something similar. I don't feel I'm getting the most out of my chest workout.. I don't know if it's because I'm benching wrong, or if my tris are giving out before my chest.

Also... I'm working out at home with dumbbells and barbell only, so can't really add pec-deck etc to my routine

Anyone got any ideas of how I can bring my chest up to speed?

[Shutupandsquat]

First of all, the chest will grow when it grows. It's a maturity muscle and probably takes the longest of all muscles to grow. Well, not ALWAYS but that's how it for a lot of people and sadly you're one of those people as well. So just keep going at it.

Second of all, why are you only doing ONE exercise where the tricep is the primary mover? Just because press involves the tricep, it's the secondary mover and isn't affected nearly as much as the chest is on chest pressing movements. Add in two more tricep exercises.

[Riccardo]

Cut out one of those fly movements and add a pressing movement like dips. Don't do flies before pressing it will make your chest weak for the pressing movement and you won't be able to push as much weight. Besides I've always thought pre-exhaustion was a load of bollix.

[lemon]

Bench 4 x 8-10 slow controlled reps 90-120seconds rest

Incline Dumbbells 3 x 8-10 again slow similar rest

Dips (preferably weighted) 4x 10 slow, short rest

Wouldn't bother with flys unless maybe some shaping is needed

[senn]

thanks for the feed everyone. might cut back on the flies... I just added them in cos of a lack of other exercises I could do I guess. Looks like dips is on the cards.

for the triceps I occasionally add in kickbacks if I have enough time at the end of my workout, but yeah should really give them more attention aswell.

[Android]

Incline dumbbell press

Flat dumbbell press

Flat bench dumbbell flyes or pec deck

No triceps... u say u do Arms on W1

My tips would be....

Don't overwork with so many exercises, more is only better if you are taking steroids.

Warmup set is light and high rep, then next set is between warmup weight and working set weight, then 3-4 working sets at best weight

Aim to increase weights each time, if not at least next time.

Pick a rep range where lower number is doable but larger number isn't, 8-12 is the usual range

Last set of each exercise go for failure and if possible past failure with rest-pause or use a spotter, or drop-set...whatever it takes to push you further.

Eat well an hour and half before the workout, must be protein and carbs OR a shake an hour before

Take pre-workout like Jack3d or Superpump to intensify your workout, or an ultra-strong coffee

Avoid distractions during your Chest workout.

Must have PWO shake immediately after workout.

Eat meal an hour after workout with protein and carbs

Probably more for the list but is a good start

[olympia]

Hey bro what are your tris like? Do you have good mind/muscle connection with the chesticles?

[Dr Squat]

First of all, the chest will grow when it grows.

That's deep bro. I know what you mean.

My advice- concentrate on getting strong in the big compound movements. That is flat bench press, incline bench press and even decline bench. Focus on getting strong in the rep range of 5-8 (even as high as 10-12) reps and don't be scared to test your strength in the 1-3 rep range.

Not sure how much experience you have but assuming you are past the novice stage then something like Wendlers 5-3-1 is a means of giving you some structure and then adding some variety for assistance work.

[snoopy]

One way of training for growth is to do heavy singles to gain strength, your not going to have a flat chest when you can bench 3 plates for reps and best size gains come from heavy weight and high reps.

Take your time to build up your strength using the four methods of strength and size will come.

(Repetition method, speed method, sub-maximal e.g 90% and above maximal e.g 120% of 1RM using lift outs and negatives).

If you are anteriorly dominant in the shoulders, or dominant in the triceps try decline bench which will eliminate most of the work done by the assisting muscles or the californian press.

[HarryB]

If your chest isn't developing because your triceps and anterior delts are dominant in the pressing exercises then pre exhaust. I am a decent bench presser but had nothing to show for it but good delts and big triceps until I started working hard on heavy flyes and started pre exhausting. Sometimes just working on getting stronger on your pressing isn't the only answer.

I would alternate every other workout doing a flye movement first and then a press. Don't do flyes as an after thought and take it easy on them, hit them hard and heavy. By the time you get to your pressing exercise you should be feeling every part of the rep in your chest because your delts and triceps are fresh allowing you to really hammer pecs without your delts and tris limiting you.

Then the next workout start with a compound and so on.

Always work hard on inclines because aesthetically speaking its better to have a full chest starting at the top than just hanging moobs... IMO

[Silent One]

Firstly Id cut back on the volume of your chest training...that a lot of sets man! IMO, the last two exercises would be taxing your aerobic system more than anything. Second (as per the KIS principle) choose three exercises and hammer the f*@^k out of them with the poundages & intensity. Excluding the warm-up sets(s), I'd do no more than three sets (I like doing a burn set on the last exercise). Next workout choose another three exercises or just change them around. I'm not too fussed about whether they're isolation or compound exercises...the key is intensity, which also means that intense mind-muscle connection.

As with the response earlier, it is a maturity aspect too. Mine lagged for years, now its up with the rest of my torso.

All the best. Remember, keep it simple.

[senn]

cheers for all the advice ill incorporate some of it, and let you know how it goes in a few. keep it coming if anyone else wants to chip in

[Dr Squat]

If your chest isn't developing because your triceps and anterior delts are dominant in the pressing exercises then pre exhaust. I am a decent bench presser but had nothing to show for it but good delts and big triceps until I started working hard on heavy flyes and started pre exhausting. Sometimes just working on getting stronger on your pressing isn't the only answer.

I would alternate every other workout doing a flye movement first and then a press. Don't do flyes as an after thought and take it easy on them, hit them hard and heavy. By the time you get to your pressing exercise you should be feeling every part of the rep in your chest because your delts and triceps are fresh allowing you to really hammer pecs without your delts and tris limiting you.

Then the next workout start with a compound and so on.

Always work hard on inclines because aesthetically speaking its better to have a full chest starting at the top than just hanging moobs... IMO

It's an interesting debate and probably worthy of a separate thread. I come from the school of thought that basic and heavy pressing and aiming to get stronger is the best way to build the base. Of course I am not a bodybuilder and you are.

I agree that heavy flyes are a good exercise. I just don't know about pre exhausting for a novice (which I think he is).

[olympia]

If your chest isn't developing because your triceps and anterior delts are dominant in the pressing exercises then pre exhaust. I am a decent bench presser but had nothing to show for it but good delts and big triceps until I started working hard on heavy flyes and started pre exhausting. Sometimes just working on getting stronger on your pressing isn't the only answer.

I would alternate every other workout doing a flye movement first and then a press. Don't do flyes as an after thought and take it easy on them, hit them hard and heavy. By the time you get to your pressing exercise you should be feeling every part of the rep in your chest because your delts and triceps are fresh allowing you to really hammer pecs without your delts and tris limiting you.

Then the next workout start with a compound and so on.

Always work hard on inclines because aesthetically speaking its better to have a full chest starting at the top than just hanging moobs... IMO

This.

[gringo]

First get someone to check your form, make sure your using your chest. Pre exhaust with flyes is good. Other wise you could try this routine which i feel really made my chest pop out, especially from the side.

Superset with slight rest in between using pyramids.

Flat bench with

Reverse grip bench.

Incline flyes.

Decline bench, you choose whether dumbells, barbell or smith to failure.

Try to use weight that you can do for 8-10 reps till failure.

Just make sure your eating enough. If you take shakes have one both before and after your workout.

Hope that helps.

[Bobsta]

Pre exhausting is definitely a good idea like Harry suggested and also fully agree with Doc squat re heavy compounds building the most mass but I’m gonna go a little outside the box here and I hope I don’t get told off by the big boys :shifty:

Do isolation-moves-only chest workouts for a few weeks!! (Most people will frown upon this but whatever growth/strength potential you might be missing out on as a result of not having a compound movement like the bench press in your routine will be remedied by including heavy overhead presses in your shoulder routine etc)

For the time being make the focus of your chest workouts, working your pecs as opposed to having a bigger bench! Satisfy your need to press heavy stuff by doing a variation of overhead presses in another workout. In fact you’ll be surprised as your overhead press poundages go up so will your bench and you’ll see that when you return to doing them!

Now here’s my suggestions for a chest only workout using isolation moves only:

Start every chest workout by having a 5kg plate in the palm of each hand, and squeeze the plates together as if you were clapping your hands with the plates against eachother and between your hands, if you relax the pressure of the squeeze the plates will fall so you have to continuously squeeze them against eachother ( I hope this makes sense! Sorry about my England!) I will see if I can find a picture of what I mean.

Now whilst you’re squeezing the plates together move your hands close to your mid chest so that the edge of the plates touch your mid chest area, between the two pecs. From there straighten your arms to full length in front of you whilst squeezing the plates hard all the way, move back and forth 20 to 30 times and repeat for 3 sets. Remember if you relax the plates will fall so squeeze continuously, This is a very effective way to activate the pecs and teach you how to feel your chest working and contracting.

Next heavy bottom-half dumbbell flyes: Do the bottom half only, from a full stretch position to half way up and then back down. Dumbbell flyes are a great stretch position exercise for chest but not so good on the top half as you lose tension on the pecs. The key here is continuous tension on the chest.

5 sets of 10 to 15 reps will be good here, but progressively go heavier.

Flat flyes one workout, inclines the next.

Cable flyes: Now we’re gonna make up for what we missed out on the bottom half dumbbell flyes with these by focusing on the peak contraction, cables are great for this as you don’t lose the tension at the top of the movement, the focus here is the big squeeze at the top of each rep, mind and muscle, squeeze that chest and learn how to feel it work. Hold the peak contraction for 3 seconds on each rep.

5 sets of 10 to 15 reps again.

Try different angles at each workout, set the pullies high one workout, mid way the next and low the next etc... but more importantly do the angle that gives you the best contraction and the best squeeze most often.

Try these suggestions if you like for a few of your workouts, maybe for a few weeks, this will teach you how to feel your chest working and how to purposely contract them. Once you have a good mind and muscle connection you can go back to the big compounds(bench press etc) and start getting real strong at them all in the while being able to stimulate your chest when you do your presses.

p.s I just realised that you mentioned you train at home so you wont have access to cables, so for the peak contraction exercise we have to get a bit more creative.

One arm side press ups: Again another hard one to explain! Lie on your side (left) and place your right hand on the floor very close to your body, beside your left pec, put your left hand on your right shoulder, now by pushing your right hand against the floor try to lift your upper body off the floor and squeeze your right pec hard, you'll get a crazy right pec contraction but it will take a bit of effort to do this at first but you'll get there.

Do your reps same as for the cables then switch to your right side to work your left pec, do 5 sets each side.

[musclenz]

Probably training at home will have its limitations in finding ways to stimulate & isolate the pecs. One thing you need to watch is over using flat bench press for chest development. Sure its a mainstay for many lifters as a strength indicator but is useless at developing good pec size because it uses far too much back, shoulder & arm to effectively hit the pecs. Incline & more incline BB & DB presses & some flye work is all you really need to do IMO.

[Beowulf]

Just on a wee tangent bro what is your back like?

[Pseudonym]

Great post, Bobsta. There's a few exercises in there I've never heard of. I'll have to have a bit of a play.

Just a thought... you could possibly get a greater stretch in your "One arm side press ups" by pushing onto a chair, rather than the floor. I haven't tried it, but in theory that should work!

[johnnybravo007]

You can press and Flye as much as you want but if you don't have the correct form for chest building your wasting your time. My chest would be my fastest growing body part and i put this down to form, form, form. And when i say form i mean getting the max bang for your buck. Time after time i see guys loading up the Barbell and pressing through their shoulders flat backed. This will not build your chest. And if there is any growth it is minimal. The trick is to SLIGHTLY arch your lower back (you should be able to get your hand underneath) and pinch your shoulder blades together. This forces your chest up. This goes for ALL chest movements. Keep it like this all the way through your set. Slowly lower the weight down (this causes as much muscle damage as going up) and explode up. Concentrate on sqeeezzzzzzzing your chest together when you go up. I try to focus on this rather than moving the weight if this makes sense. DO NOT bounce off your chest or just rep it out. Slow controlled down and explode up is a lot harder than impressing your bros and repping it out. Once you have this down you can change up your routine to what ever you want. If you have sore front delts the next day, your doing it wrong.

Hope this helps.

[musclenz]

You can press and Flye as much as you want but if you don't have the correct form for chest building your wasting your time. My chest would be my fastest growing body part and i put this down to form, form, form. And when i say form i mean getting the max bang for your buck. Time after time i see guys loading up the Barbell and pressing through their shoulders flat backed. This will not build your chest. And if there is any growth it is minimal. The trick is to SLIGHTLY arch your lower back (you should be able to get your hand underneath) and pinch your shoulder blades together. This forces your chest up. This goes for ALL chest movements. Keep it like this all the way through your set. Slowly lower the weight down (this causes as much muscle damage as going up) and explode up. Concentrate on sqeeezzzzzzzing your chest together when you go up. I try to focus on this rather than moving the weight if this makes sense. DO NOT bounce off your chest or just rep it out. Slow controlled down and explode up is a lot harder than impressing your bros and repping it out. Once you have this down you can change up your routine to what ever you want. If you have sore front delts the next day, your doing it wrong.

Hope this helps.

This is good advise & where many classicly fail on chest pressing movements. The other thing is to anchor your feet firmly onto the floor & push through them during the lift. Be prepared to greatly reduce your weight if the above form is aplied properly but also be prepared to feel the pain

[Bobsta]

Great post, Bobsta. There's a few exercises in there I've never heard of. I'll have to have a bit of a play.

Just a thought... you could possibly get a greater stretch in your "One arm side press ups" by pushing onto a chair, rather than the floor. I haven't tried it, but in theory that should work!

Yup you're right Pseud you'll get a better stretch, it will be quite hard to balance yourself there though, if you can do that you're a legend :nod:

But the floor version makes a great contracted position exercise and realy cramps up the pecs at the peak contraction point and teaches guys who cant feel their chests work how to squeeze their pecs.

[HarryB]

You can press and Flye as much as you want but if you don't have the correct form for chest building your wasting your time. My chest would be my fastest growing body part and i put this down to form, form, form. And when i say form i mean getting the max bang for your buck. Time after time i see guys loading up the Barbell and pressing through their shoulders flat backed. This will not build your chest. And if there is any growth it is minimal. The trick is to SLIGHTLY arch your lower back (you should be able to get your hand underneath) and pinch your shoulder blades together. This forces your chest up. This goes for ALL chest movements. Keep it like this all the way through your set. Slowly lower the weight down (this causes as much muscle damage as going up) and explode up. Concentrate on sqeeezzzzzzzing your chest together when you go up. I try to focus on this rather than moving the weight if this makes sense. DO NOT bounce off your chest or just rep it out. Slow controlled down and explode up is a lot harder than impressing your bros and repping it out. Once you have this down you can change up your routine to what ever you want. If you have sore front delts the next day, your doing it wrong.

Hope this helps.

Totally agree.... I worked my numbers on bench for years and worked up to a pretty decent bench. Pretty much all I got for it was big delts and triceps. Not that I am complaining about that but I definitely didn't get the pec development I wanted. Wasn't until I started rethinking my training strategy and trying to feel things working that I started to see some progress. Then I started working my numbers up again with form changes and it started to happen. I still got dominant delts and tris when it comes to pressing but I at least have a glimmer of chest development now!

[Dr Squat]

This is all good stuff. I'm not saying that the flat bench should be your only weapon. In fact I prefer the incline barbell bench.

But... I can't help but thinking that some of this advice is getting a bit cute. I appreciate that many of the bodybuilders here have done a lot of heavy pressing with disappointing results. However, the benefits you are now reaping are probably helped by the solid foundation that you built when you did your time pressing.

I see too many skinny kids doing pec deck, cable crossovers and machine press. Heavy pressing (with good form) has got to be the basis of their training. Sure it is going to hit the shoulders, triceps, lats and a bit of chest. But this isn't a bad thing is it? IMHO of course.

[Android]

Lots of personal experiences here and all valid but without pics or timelines it's hard to tell which is best, maybe there is no 'best' or maybe the advice is specific to a type of body.

I advocate no barbell press for chest growth because that was taught to me by a power lifter in Perth so I religiously stayed away from it for 5-6 years and grew a pretty large chest from an inverted chest with just dumbbells. He asked me what I wanted to build and I said I wanted slabs of meat on my chest, not a bigger chest or ribcage per se.

Now that I have strong arms and a chest I can 'feel' a benchpress working for me and do partake in a benchpress every so often. I know plenty of guys that built a good chest from bench pressing as their staple exercise so cannot discount it's value. But I know imo it's not a "necessary" exercise for Chest development in bodybuilding, from my experience.