Bulk Up Your Chest

For most regular gymgoers, one of the main workouts that features heavily in their training plans is a good chest workout and they usually feature some of the most common exercises such as bench press, incline press and flyes with the odd one or two exercises added here and there. Whilst there’s nothing wrong with this exactly, the same routine can get boring quickly and might also struggle to yield real gains in the development of your chest muscles.

If you want a bigger, more defined set of pectorals then you’ll need to vary your chest training and perform exercises that not only challenge them but also hit them at different angles to ensure all over growth. Repetition speed and amount is also important and there is no set preference as a variety of them should be included to improve results.

To get started, as a good warm up you can do some dynamic exercises and a great one to include would be some push ups. You can choose from a variety of push-ups to challenge yourself such as standard, close grip, narrow, diamond, explosive, side-to-side and clap. All of these will range in difficulty and we recommend up to 3 sets of 20 reps.

FLAT BENCH & INCLINE PRESSES

You can include the usual exercises such as bench press and incline press. These are staples that are proven to aid muscle growth however keep these varied and alternate weeks in your training plan between doing them with dumbbells and barbells. The weight tends to feel different and you can also use the dumbbells to work on muscle imbalances.

DECLINE PRESSES

This exercise will also help you hit a different area of the chest and again can be done with either dumbbells or a barbell. You can also add decline push ups to your workout if not adding this exercise to ensure its kept in your training plan.

FLYES & ALTERNATIVES

To hit the middle of the chest and achieve the line separation, most people tend to do a kind of flye exercise such as dumbbell or cable flyes, but there are also more old school exercises such as chest dips and dumbbell pullovers that are excellent at helping add growth and development in that area.

All in all, aim to perform up to four exercises in your chest workout with a maximum of three working sets and one warm up set. Keep the tempo and total number of reps varied and a good way to do this is to go a bit lighter on your last sets and up the reps for burnout.