Monster Moves for Massive Pecs
A well-developed chest is the most universally admired body
part that we, as a species, possess. In our unbridled desire to develop our
chest, however, it's easy to over-train to the extent that growth proceeds at a
snail's pace. Frustration ensues, with many giving up in despair. It doesn't
have to be like that. By choosing the correct
exercisesand training smarter, anyone can slap enough meat on either side of his
sternum to impressively fill out a t-shirt.
The following 6 rules for developing your chest to it's
fullest potential will allow you to overcome any limiting factors that have
been holding you back.
Rule 1: Ditch the Mega Heavy Weights
It's time to wise up. Nobody cares how much you can bench
press. You're not a competitive weight lifter. You are using weight as a tool
to work your muscle, not the other way around. While it is a good idea to do
sets in the outer strength range of one to five reps occasionally, you should
perform most of your work with a weight that limits you to six to twelve reps.
That means reps that you can do on your own. If your so-called spotter is
getting a wicked lat pump by doing bent over rows to help you get the weight up
while you are benching, you're fooling yourself into thinking that you're
actually bench pressing. It's a sign that you need to use less resistance.
Bench pressing 225 pounds in good form, where your chest is
doing all the work, is far more productive than cheating your ass off and
relying on spotters to get a few pathetic reps with 315 or more. Antics like
that will ensure that your chest will always suck.
Rule 2: Make Your Chest Do the Work
To build your chest you simply have to do a lot of pressing
work. Unless you know how to make the chest do the work while pressing,
however, your front delts and triceps will, inevitably, do all the work. As a
result you will end up with enormous, round shoulders and arms, but very little
thickness in your chest.
What separates genuine bodybuilders from run-of-the-mill
weightlifters is their ability to feel
the target muscle working during a set, that mind/muscle connection that eludes
so many.
To get it right you need to set up the torso and arms
correctly when pressing. Here's how:
 Pinch
the shoulder blades together; rotate your shoulders back and downward.
 Arch
your back slightly.
 Do
your reps slowly at a cadence of two seconds up and four seconds down.
 Stretch
and contract as you go up and down
To retrain your body, drop your weights right back and only
build the weight back up when you have perfected your form.
Rule 3: Press With Dumbbells
The bench press is a great pec builder. The barbell version,
however, is limited in its ability to maximally stimulate the
musclesof your chest. That's because you can only bring the bar down to the point
where it touches your t-shirt. That means that you're missing out on a vital
few inches of movement. By using dumbbells, however, you are able to stretch
your chest way down to the bottom of their range of motion.
When you use dumbbells you are also able to work each side
of the chest individually. This ensures even development. In addition, you will
be working the small stabilizer muscles in your deltoids and arms that are
required to stabilize the working muscle.
Rule 4: Always Include 'Flyes' in your workout
Presses are certainly the most important exercises for
building chest size, and the majority of your effort on chest day should be
devoted to them. But you also need to include a flye movement. If you don't,
you'll neglect another function of the pectoralis major muscle, which is
horizontal adduction of the arms, as in performing a hugging motion.
Do your flyes heavy, with weights that limit you to eight to
twelve reps. You can wait until your presses are done, or sandwich them between
pressing exercises to give your triceps and front delts a few more minutes to
recover. This way, your weak links won't fail on you before your chest is
thoroughly thrashed.
Rule 5: Mix Up The Reps
The longer you have been training, the more difficult it is
to coax any further growth out of your muscles, the chest included. You can mix
up the exercises you do and the order in which you do them, but you should also
vary the reps. Don't get caught in the rut of always doing eight to twelve reps
for chest. Try other ranges; three to five, four to six or even go on the high
side to 20 once in a while.
You can do different rep schemes within the same workout or
plan cycles, where you use certain ranges for given lengths of time (but be
sure to pay extra attention to warming when using very low weights).
Rule 6: Limit Overall Volume
Overtraining is a very real phenomenon, despite what you
often hear about it being a myth. Maybe if you're a steroid user, you can train
for hours on end, every day. Generally, there is no reason a drug free lifter
should do no more than 12 working sets for chest in any given workout. And
that's assuming that you work your chest once every seven days.
Three or four exercises for three or four work sets are more
than sufficient to stimulate growth if you apply the proper intensity to all
sets. Anything beyond that won't stimulate further growth, but it will start
eating into your chest's ability to recover and grow.
