Chisel Your Chest

From an aesthetic standpoint, a great chest isn't just big and massize. It's big and well-proportioned through the upper, middle, lower, inner and outer sections of the pecs. Balance is critical here – you don't want your chest to be thick down low and thin up top, nor do you want a densely muscled chest that has no width or detail to it. You want pecs that look great from top to bottom and side to side, particularly when it's time to take off your shirt at the pool or beach this summer.

Achieving this requires a well divesified chest-training protocol. And the below three workouts represent just that.

What I've put together here is a routine that encompasses three weeks of training – training chest once a week during this period – and targets all major areas of the pecs with a variety of equipment and from a multitude of angles. Let me break it down exercise by exercise...

Bench Press – Arguably the most identifiable chest exercise there is (aside from maybe push-ups), bench press shows up in all three workouts as a means of building overall size and strength in the chest. But bench doesn't always show up in the same place every week. In Week 1 it's the first exercise performed, and with a pretty straight-forward set/rep scheme (4x8-10) that promotes hypertrophy (muscle growth) above all else. In Week 2 bench press is done as the second component of a superset after pre-exhausting the pecs with a flye movement. Pre-exhaustion ensures that the pecs will get thoroughly fatigued without the triceps giving out before that. In the final week, bench press moves back to the first exercise, but this time with sets of 6-7 reps to put more of an emphasis on strength. But don't forget, strength begets size. The stronger you are in your chest, the more weight you'll be able to use on all exercises for greater overload on the muscles and more mass.

Reverse-Grip Press – This exercise, done in Week 1, hits the triceps more, right? Wrong. This is all about targeting the upper chest, a trouble spot for many people (men and women alike). Reverse-grip bench press, when performed with a shoulder-width grip, has been shown in studies to increase muscle activity in the upper chest by around 30% as compared to using a standard overhand grip. This has become one of my favorite exercises for chest, as I'm always trying to hit those upper pec fibers.

Incline Dumbbell Flye – I included this move in Weeks 1 and 2 for one major reason: to completely isolate the upper pecs with a single-joint exercise. (A secondary reason is that flye hit the outer pecs nicely as well.) In Week 2 I use it as a pre-exhaust in a superset with incline dumbbell press.

Cable Crossover – Crossovers show up twice in this routine, in two different forms. In Week 1 you'll be doing crossovers with the pulleys set midway up the cable column. This hits more of the middle portion of the chest. In Week 3 you'll move the pulleys down low and pull the handles upward to target the upper pecs. Both crossover variations, however, will sufficiently hit the inner and outer pecs for greater width and detail. 

Dumbbell Flye – Here we have a single-joint free weight movement performed on a flat bench that will isolate the pecs and hit the outer areas. Dumbbell flyes lead off the Week 2 as a pre-exhaust before bench press. This is a pretty intense way to start a chest workout!

Incline Dumbbell Press – This is truly one of the best mass-builders you can do for the chest, particularly the upper pecs. In this routine, incline dumbbell presses show up in Weeks 2 and 3; in the latter workout, they're done immediatley after pre-exhausting the upper pecs with incline dumbbell flyes. We're talking about a real bread-and-butter chest exercise here.

Pec Deck – I mention this exercise last because it finishes off all three weekly workouts in this program. By the time you reach the pec deck, your chest will be pretty fried. So put a relatively light (but still challenging) weight on the machine and bang out one set of 30 intense reps. If you can't get 30 reps consecutive, no problem – rest-pause until you get there. I actually prefer a rest-pause set set here versus a continuous one. Just means 30 reps done with a heavier weight! The pec deck hits both the inner and outer pecs and is yet another isolation move for the chest.

So try this routine out to spark new pec growth. Implementing it easy – just plug it into your current training split where chest shows up. If you prefer to train chest twice a week, do these workouts the first day of the week and do a lower volume chest workout later in the week.

Chest Chiseling Routine

Video demonstrations of selected exercises:

Cable Crossover

 Reverse-Grip Bench Press

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