Chest development is a high priority amongst most males and it even has its own day International Chest Day Monday. However, too many guys are still left with a small, flat and undeveloped chest. This is often due to a lack of training frequency, technique and exercise selection. Often just dedicating one day to training the chest isn’t going to lead to superior results and especially if you continue to ignore your own set up and mechanics.
So let’s get down to some basic anatomy, where the chest is and what does it do?
The chest or pectoralis major is a fan-like muscle on the front of the torso. It originates from 3 main locations: the ribs (costal fibres), the sternum (sternal fibres) and the clavicle (clavicular fibres). Also known by most as lower, middle and upper chest.
All of these fibres pull into one insertion point into the upper arm. Knowing the actions of the chest muscle is going to be key to you choosing the correct exercises, the main actions are Adduction and Flexion.
Adduction is when the arm is coming towards the chest like in a cable fly and flexion is when the arm is lifting upwards like in an incline dumbbell press. Typically the chest muscle works as a whole but you can bias certain divisions of fibres depending on the exercise.
Listed below are my go to exercises for chest development and how I set up the exercise to work for me:
- Incline Dumbbell Press (upper chest)
This exercise is typically selected to build the upper fibres of the chest and the standard height selected is 45 degrees. Now this is when you have to think outside the box and realise that one angle will not fit all when it comes to building this part of your chest and here’s why.
If you have a flat ribcage or lack the ability to extend enough (yes it’s ok for the majority to extend their spine) to place your upper chest on top of the movement, you will not be effectively recruiting more of these clavicular fibres and the main direction of pull will still be towards the middle portion of your chest.
This is why I have just suggested an incline dumbbell press and not a specific degree of incline as this will depend on you, for me it actually works best around 60 degrees of incline.
- Seated Cuffed Cable Fly (middle chest)
This exercise for me feels great!
It offers stability, the ability to get the chest muscle short (increasing the feel for the chest) and less stress on my shoulders. I typically line this exercise up so that it challenges towards the middle aspect of my chest and where most of the sternal fibres pull towards. The reason I choose cuffs over handles is simply to eliminate stability of the wrist and to decrease stress on the shoulders when going into a stretched position.
However you can still perform a regular standing cable fly, with the handles set at chest height and get great results. This exercise allows you to keep a constant challenge on the chest because of the direction that the cables are pulling (out and away from the chest) which creates a different challenge to say a barbell press where there is little to no tension at the top of the exercise.
It’s key to think about keeping the arms long (with a soft elbow) and driving the biceps into the chest. Typically people tend to round a lot and focus on touching the hands together which can take tension away from the chest and will prevent you from getting the chest muscle into its shorter position. This is key for overall chest development.
- Chest Press Machine (lower chest)
The chest press machine will vary from gym to gym.
You might have a pin stack, plate loaded, Techno gym or Cybex. You are looking for one that is flat or decline in focus, then you can manipulate your set up to bias more of the costal lower fibres of the chest.
The chest press machine allows you to produce lots of force and with less focus having to be placed on stability, range and path of motion as this is typically set in advance unlike a traditional dumbbell press where you would have to work harder to control all of the above.
The key focus here is to set yourself up so that your arm path pushes down and towards the ribcage to line up with the lower costal fibres of the pec. A great cue for this press and many other chest movements is to drive back into the bench instead of focusing on pushing the handles away.
Now that I have covered my go to exercises this is how I would look to implement chest work into my programme. I typically train my chest twice per week and recommend anywhere between 2-3 x per week for those looking to maximise their chest development results. Total weekly sets needed to build a great chest will vary, but 10-20 per week is a good starting point. You’re looking to get as much as possible from as little as possible to start.
Rep schemes will typically fit into the 6 – 20 bracket, however this can be made more goal specific depending on whether you want more muscle or strength. So you might look at implementing different phases e.g.
Phase 1: 4-6 weeks 10-20+ reps
Phase 2: 4-6 weeks 6-10 reps
Phase 3: 4-6 weeks 3-6 reps
Or mixing them all into your weekly programme e.g.
Dumbbell Press 4 x 6
Cable Fly 3 x 15+
Chest Press Machine 3 x 8-12
Ultimately you are looking to train your chest as frequently as you can recover from and still see progress. Some might see progress training 2 x weekly with 12 total working sets and others may need 20 working sets across 3 weekly sessions.
