Tag: Failure

Getting a big chest is a big deal. For most people lifting weights and getting ready for summer there are a few big priorities. One of the things that most guys want is a big chest. There are a few exercises that are key to increasing chest size but also there are a couple of important facts to remember. I think that if you follow all of these you will have huge pecs in no time.

Getting a Big Chest – Don’t Overtrain

First of all you need to be aware that it is fairly easy to overtrain your chest so especially for someone that has been weightlifting for a yea or less it is very important to make sure that all of your chest exercises and related are done in the same workout, this includes chest as well as shoulder exercises. First things first, make sure that your chest workout is hitting all three angles to his all of the muscle fibers of your chest but do not do to many exercises or sets as this is the easiest way to overtrain.

There are three parts of your chest pec muscles. Your pectoral muscles can be broken up into three parts, well kind of anyway, the top near your shoulders, the middle of your chest and the bottom of your chest.

Getting a Big Chest- Upper Chest Exercises

getting a big chest

To his the upper chest you can do incline bench or incline flyes. Try switching each workout to doing one or the other and try to keep your reps are 6-10 reps for three sets, each set to failure.

Getting a big chest – Middle Chest Exercises

To hit the middles of your chest you can do flat bench bench presses or flat bench flyes. For your lower chest you can do flat bench flyes or cable crossovers. Make sure that you are changing your exercises each workout but try to always hit the upper and middle of your chest and every second or third workout do some decline bench for your lower pecs.

Getting a big chest – Lower Chest Exercises

Lower pec muscles will grow very quickly but really what people are looking for is a bigger upper chest as a bigger lower chest makes your chest look a little saggy. The difference between doing flyes and bench press are important to think about. When doing flyes you will get a very focused chest exercise but in doing bench press you will be heaving more weight and most people seem to agree that the increases to your chest size will be higher.

I know that I have glossed over the exercises for increasing your chest size but there are a couple of issues that are almost as important as the exercises and that is the shoulder influence as well as the frequency of the workouts for your chest.

Most of the time in magazines you are told to do 12 – 16 sets to work your chest muscles but no one really looks at the mechanics of how your shoulder muscles will really influence your chest workout and this is critical. After you have finished your chest workout you should work your shoulders, I say this because a tough chest workout of nine sets or so is really going to burn your shoulders and if you try to isolate your shoulders again in the next couple of days then you really do risk overtraining your deltoids.

Work Chest and Shoulders Together

Make sure that after your chest and shoulder workout that you rest at least two days before hitting pecs and delts again as you will really need the rest to let your chest and shoulders heal. I do not want to dwell on nutrition again but it is very important to eat lots of protein, 30 or so grams of high quality protein per meal.

There is always an urge to workout more often than this but I really believe that if you really nail all of the angles of your chest and do all of your sets to failure then you are going to have a good chance to getting a big chest.