We all know how important it is to hit the chest muscles. Heck, most of us probably start our exercise weeks with chest on day one, right? For this reason, it is imperative for bodybuilders to ensure that these movements – always completed when you are at your freshest and strongest – do not become to easy for the very adaptable muscle groups. Pre-exhaust techniques ensure this! Here are a few exercise orders you can utilize to get the most from your chest days.

Pushups followed by decline bench or dumbbell press

The pushup doesn’t serve much as a bodybuilding purpose, but it is very beneficial for delivering a great deal of blood to the pectorals and wearing them out before the heavy metal arrives in the form of weights. Follow up your pushups with decline bench pressing, which stimulates about the same area of the chest. You will likely discover your strength is still there for the decline benching, but that you may not be able to complete as many repetitions. Your fibers will fail sooner, but that is the goal.

Incline dumbbell flyes followed by incline bench press

If the goal is upper chest development, then this combination should be a given! Start with a medium weight that you are capable of moving 8 to 12 times for your incline dumbbell flues. Drop the weight and immediately complete a fill set of heavy incline bench presses. This will lead to a situation where your chest muscles fail far before your shoulders and deltoids do, eliminating a common training problem while at the same time delivering a nice upper chest burn, with very positive effects for helping to meet your bodybuilding goals. Be sure to use a reasonable amount of weight for the incline flyes. You don’t need to aim for any personal records when it comes to the flyes. The goal is feel, and not numbers. If you can flood the upper chest with blood using only a pair of 20-pound dumbbells, then by all means that set is successful. Remember that the goal is simply to create an environment so that the upper chest will do the most possible work during the second set, not the first.

Flat dumbbell presses followed by flat bench press

On this movement, you should work to move extra slowly on the first movement, with the dumbbells. By the time the flat benching arrives, you’ll be exhausted from this very heavy and excruciating movement. From there, it’s your job to complete a full set of bench presses as you normally would. Use your normal poundage and bring a trainer partner along to ensure you don’t hurt yourself doing it. Again, you may find you have the initial strength to move your normal weight, but that you fail much sooner. Use a spotter to help you work through the failure points. By the last 2 to 3 repetitions of the final two sets, you should only be lowering the weight while your partner assists you on the positive part of the repetition.

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