How has your chest training been lately? Are you making the best gains of your life, or are you just chugging along, trying to keep up with the others around you? If you haven’t been adding 5 pounds per month to your major compound chest movements, then you’re essentially treading water, spinning your wheels, and wasting your time. Here are some tips that you can employ to bump up your chest training productivity.

Start with wide flyes

Begin each workout with 2 to 4 sets of slow-motion, wide dumbbell flyes with a lot of depth. You’ll wake up a lot of muscle fibers than lie dormant during your standard workouts. This may limit your ability to hit maximum poundage immediately following these sets, but your chest/shoulder tie-ins will grow much stronger, which will benefit strength gains more in the long run.

Max out once per workout

Using a spotter to protect you, you should attempt a maximum lift for a one-rep best, each and every workout. Use either the flat or incline bench press. The decline bench places a great deal of stress upon the RC and AC joints of the shoulder, which can lead to an injury that can keep you out of the gym for 6 to 8 weeks.

Add 500 calories per day

You add new muscle when you get stronger – and new muscle requires plenty of food in order to be created. Don’t pile junk on your plate. An extra serving of meat, pasta, and bread each day will be more than adequate. If you notice yourself getting fatter, add a few minutes of cardio to the tail end of your workout, 3 to 4 times per week. You need a caloric surplus to growth, without exception.

Stretch less

It may sound contrary to what you’ve been told in the past. However, a great deal of stretching before and during a workout can actually break some muscle infrastructure strength and make you weaker when you do lift. Always warm up. But don’t overdo it with ten minutes of wasting your glycogen stores.

Train with a buddy

There is an unexplainable amount of courage that arrives on the flat and incline bench movements when you have an extra set of hands guarding your body from being crushed by an errant barbell. You’ll lift with more confidence and you’ll push yourself past failure much more often with this option at your disposal. Find a partner with the maturity and strength on par with your own.

Belt, gloves & more

Most of what we do in the gym is mental. Granted, we’re not going to bench press 1500 pounds, no matter how psyched you we are. But if we can find some advantage to help us feel stronger, we are going to be stronger. Add something you’ve never included before. Take 200 mg caffeine before your workout. Use a weight, gloves, or chalk. Find some new ways to bring confidence to your old lift, and the numbers will begin to climb.

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