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 ...

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Ask any top bodybuilder what area of his chest he works to stimulate most, and barring a few exceptions, they will all answer in the same manner: Upper chest! The upper pectoral shelf was made legendary by Arnold Schwarzenegger in his bodybuilding heyday, and not a whole lot has changed since then. Arnold could balance a full glass of water on his upper pectorals, and bodybuilders have been trying for years to match that feat! Here is a training style which emphasizes the upper pectorals. Incline bench press For this particular movement, you will be challenging yourself to bring the barbell down to a point at the very top of your chest. Remember that you’re working from the top of the chest down, so you will need to start at the top of the chest. Flex the ...

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We all tend to find comfortable grooves in life. We wake up in the morning, and fall into our regular groove of brushing our teeth and grabbing a protein shake before running out the door to work. When mealtime arrives, we’re often on auto-pilot. We throw a chicken breast on the Foreman grill, and prep our carbs at the same time. After washing it down with a Diet Dr. Pepper or some Crystal Lite, we get back to work in anticipation of our journey to the gym that evening. When the time comes for training, it’s often the same way. We train at the same time each day, and we know what to expect. Our machines will be there for us. We’ll use about the same weight each time, save for small incremental increases. ...

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Q: I’m working to bring up my lagging chest development with flat and incline bench presses. But these exercises don’t seem to give me a pump in the pecs, only in my triceps and delts. Should I give up on these and focus on stretching movements like flyes? A: The two exercises that you’re currently doing are by far the best movements for adding mass onto the chest for the simple reason that no other exercises allow for as much direct pectoral stress over a greater range of motion. So, the problem is not with the exercises themselves. It’s with the mode of execution. When you’re using a compound exercise to target a specific muscle group you have to be totally focused on working that muscle exclusively. The slightest mental slip and you’re prone to falling into the cheat zone, where ...

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We know, we know... Most people will tell you that the bench press will solve all your chest problems and then some. But we don't exactly agree... While powerlifting exercises are, overall, a great choice if you had to choose just one exercise, the fact is, you don't! The most important part of mentioning this is that the upper and middle pecs get the lion's share of workout during a bench press, military press, incline dumbbell press and even cable cross over workout. But when do the lower pecs come into play, other than passively? And how crucial are your lower pecs to your appearance on the posing dais? In a word, they are EVERYTHING! Lower pecs can elude a lot of people, and therefore, make the entire chest look shallow. Bodybuilders overwork their upper pecs, because of the side ...

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Anyone who has spent a few years in the gym can probably show some pectoral development. However, to earn that massive set of Arnold-like pecs, you have to go further, train harder and stay more focused than the rest. Here are six key steps to developing a successful pec strategy. 1. Stay Focused Some guys train hard and disciplined, but decide to take a month or two off during summer. Then they come back to the gym and realize they’ve lost their gains, so they train their asses off again, until that Christmas party and the new girlfriend derails them for another couple of months. Then they come back, realize they’re back to square one and they’re off for another cycle of training and subsequent breaks. That won’t cut it. Consistency is a requirement for bodybuilding success, and pec training certainly is no exception. ...

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Few exercises can top the staying power of the classic bench press. Ask any serious bodybuilder and odds are you’ll hear that the flat bench is, and always has been the meat-and-potatoes of his chest routine. Simply put, the flat bench delivers. But here’s the catch: Whenever you make a specific exercise a habit, you’re all but guaranteed to hit a plateau at some point. Your body adapts to the stress you subject it to, i.e. it grows, but only enough to handle that stress. You may be working your butt off when you do your regular benching sets for the 100th week in a row, but as far as your body is concerned...it’s old news. By doing the same exercise with roughly the same sets and reps week after week, month after month, you get into a ho-hum routine where not much ...

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Anyone who has spent a few years in the gym can probably show some pectoral development. However, to earn that massive set of Arnold-like pecs, you have to go further, train harder and stay more focused than the rest. Here are six key steps to developing a successful pec strategy. 1. Stay Focused Some guys train hard and disciplined, but decide to take a month or two off during summer. Then they come back to the gym and realize they’ve lost their gains, so they train their asses off again, until that Christmas party and the new girlfriend derails them for another couple of months. Then they come back, realize they’re back to square one and they’re off for another cycle of training and subsequent breaks. That won’t cut it. Consistency is a requirement for bodybuilding success, and pec training certainly is no ...

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