Bigger and Badder

So you want a big chest? You’ve been bench pressing for years and can push some good iron, yet your chest still sucks? Maybe you’ve got big shoulders and triceps from all the big benches, yet your chest won’t grow? Maybe your genetics aren’t what you hoped? Maybe you’re just letting your ego get in the way? Next Monday, when you hit the gym for International Chest Day, give these tips a thought.

1. Increase Your Range: The best exercises for true full range for the pecs are dumbbell presses, Hammer Strength machine presses, and flyes. Barbells limit you to the bottom two thirds of the movement. So if you have a problem with your chest, consider focusing on exercises that allow your hands to move together at the top of the rep.

2. Keep Your Shoulders Down: To put the most stress on a muscle, we need to create a very stable base to press from, and get the muscle as short as possible in the contracted position. For chest, this requires you to keep your shoulders down and back. This is easiest to see when you watch people on the Hammer Strength incline. Lots of guys rep out with a lot of weight, but they let their shoulders rise up to their ears. The body’s way of compensating for the strength it needs to move the weight is to keep the muscle from getting short. Keep your shoulders down on the presses and see how much harder they are.

3. Load the Stretch: Loading a muscle in a stretch position is very important for maximum fibre recruitment. To make sure of this, I like to incorporate flat or incline dumbbell flyes, as well as make sure my dumbbell presses are taken low enough to be full range. These are movements that feel heavy at the bottom of the rep.

4. Get Narrow: This is a great mental cue to activate the pec to the max. Here’s a good example: Watch people do cable crossovers. Their hands may come together at the bottom of the rep , but their elbows are sometimes still really far apart. If that’s you, try dropping weight and focusing on trying to get your biceps to touch at the bottom. It’s impossible to do, but it’s the idea of it that can really take the quality of the contractions up tenfold. You can also apply this to any pec movement. It’s the intent to get narrow that squeezes the pecs so damn hard.

5. Don’t Forget Declines: In all the focus to get thicker upper pecs, too many guys are obsessed with doing incline work. While that will bang the shit outta the upper pecs, decline movements take the entire pec through its fullest and truest range of motion. Think of a gymnast working the pommel horse or holding himself upright while on the rings. These guys haven’t done a single rep of an incline movement in their lives, yet they sport deep, thick pecs all the way up to their collarbones. My favourites for this are decline Hammer Strength machine presses, dips, and dumbbell presses with a plate under the foot of the bench for a slight decline.

For more tips on how to get bigger and badder, check out Ron's column here!