Listen, if you eliminate all the chest training mistakes I'm about to show you right now, you are guaranteed to grow your chest. Because the real reason why most people can't grow their chest isn't genetics. It's because they keep doing these trivial mistakes that just ruin everything.
And the saddest part of this all is that these mistakes are so easy to fix. So, let's take a look at the biggest chest training mistakes. What is, in my opinion, the number one chest training mistake is when you let your chest collapse.
This is literally such a big deal that I can't even put it into words because it's quite literally impossible to build a big chest if your chest is collapsed all the time. Plus, your shoulders will get absolutely massacred if you keep doing all the chest exercises with your chest caved in. So, what you need to do is push your chest as high up as you can instead of your chest being completely caved in.
Holding your chest up at all times is the main thing that makes it possible to build a big chest. And you will see that even more later when we get to the other mistakes because it's all connected. You can imagine having your chest up as the main building block that all the chest training is dependent on really because if you fail to keep your chest up, it's like a domino effect which will cause everything else to fall apart.
So this is the number one cue that you have to remember. Instead of caving your chest in and hurting your shoulders, try to push your chest as high up as you can. And it doesn't matter if you are doing a barbell bench press, an incline dumbbell bench press, or some kind of chest isolation exercise utilizing cables or machines.
You just need to push that chest up. It's really, really crucial because if you fail to do that, your chest will be small forever. Which segus perfectly into the next mistake, which is not getting the full stretch of the chest.
You know, that's the moment at the bottom of the rep where you really just feel all the chest muscles activating. But this is once again only possible if you already have your chest up and you utilize the full range of motion. I challenge you to try to get a full stretch of the chest when your chest is collapsed.
It's physically impossible, but immediately when you push your chest up, your chest instantly activates and you can enjoy all the extra gains that the stretch brings with it, which is another thing that you should drill into your head. The stretch of the muscle is one of the biggest factors when it comes to building muscle. And not only just for chest building, but pretty much for any body part.
But you can only get the maximum stretch if you utilize full range of motion. If you do the bench press, for example, you have to go all the way down and touch your chest because that bottom part of the rep is where you get that incredible stretch. And this is especially true when you are using dumbbells because when you bench with a barbell, you can see really easily that you are hitting the full range of motion because the bar has to touch your chest in order to achieve a full range of motion.
But in the case of dumbbells, it's not that simple. And I'm pretty sure that most of you right now who are benching with dumbbells are not going as deep as you could have. So the next time you go bench press with dumbbells, try to pay attention to the bottom of the rep and see if you can manage to go just a little lower than before to get more out of that stretch.
It might not seem like that big of a deal, but those couple of inches that you are missing out on is exactly where most of the gains are hiding. So, don't miss out on that because I already told you how big of a deal the stretch of the muscle is. This is not the place to take shortcuts because skipping the most important part of the exercise is a guaranteed way of keeping your chest small forever.
But if you don't want to keep your chest small forever, I would highly recommend taking a look at some of my training plans. They will give you a great structure that is super easy to follow and understand with thousands of satisfied users. You can just take a look at couple of the reviews and I'm sure that you will find it very helpful as well.
So, if you would like to join thousands of people who have already made the decision to stop guessing and get on the routine that will give them results, then check the first link in our description. I'm sure that you will not regret it. All right, now let's go back to the video.
The next thing that is a crucial mistake also stems out from your chest just being completely caved in. You absolutely need to get into the arch position which will prevent your chest from caving in and also it will protect your shoulders from getting completely slaughtered because when you get into the arch position you push your chest up as high as you can and all the load will get shifted to your chest instead of your shoulders which is exactly what you want. To get into the arch position, push your chest as high as you can and squeeze your shoulder blades together while pushing your traps into the bench.
And then you hold this position for your whole set. If you do this correctly, your back won't be laying flat on the bench like before. But it's going to have this nice little arch.
Then you just have to be careful to hold this position for your whole set. Because a very big mistake that people that try to learn how to arch make is that yes, they get into the correct arch position at the start of the set, but as soon as they do one rep, the whole arch position just falls apart completely. So, make sure that you stay in that position for the whole set.
In the best case scenario, you can just whip out your phone and film your sets. That's always super helpful. The next mistake I want to talk about can be very dangerous if neglected, and that is flaring out your elbows during pressing exercises.
in the most extreme cases to almost a 90deree angle, which means that your body will be in this weird T-shaped position. To be honest, just talking about this makes my shoulders hurt because this is a super fast way of messing up your shoulders forever, and shoulders is something that you really don't want to mess up because sadly, the damage is usually lifelong. So, doing exercises correctly should be your number one priority.
Not only that, it's literally impossible to train your chest in this weird T-shaped position because all the load is being put directly on your shoulders, but just the overall position of the shoulder is so awkward for pressing that you are basically guaranteed to injure yourself. And I don't think I even need to mention that if you press like that, you can't even really press any respectable weight and you will get absolutely zero stretch of the chest. So instead of benching in this awkward T-shape, try to imagine it as an arrow instead.
This is heavily reliant on your scapula being tucked in, aka getting into the arch position because that is basically half of the job. And when you get into the arch position, you just tuck in your elbow slightly to form the arrow shape and you are ready to go. Now, we need to talk about the bar path because this is a mistake that goes so overlooked it's absolutely crazy.
When you are pressing, you should never push the bar forward because this is just going to completely mess up the whole press. Not only that, the leverage is just so much worse when you press the bar forward, but you are also in a much bigger risk of injuring yourself. So when you are pressing, you need to press the bar up and slightly back and not forward.
But when you lift the bar off of your chest, don't make the mistake of going back immediately. You first need to go up and then slightly back and not the other way around. Because if you just put the bar on your neck right away and then press up, it will be much more difficult to lift and you are just waiting to get injured.
So, if you follow all the tips I laid out in this video, I'm sure that you will finally start seeing some great chest gains. But I don't want you to just acknowledge these tips. I want you to go ahead and drill them into your head and actually use them.
The next time you go work out your chest, you should knowingly think about what you learned here today and try to apply it in your own workout. just completely dismiss the attitude of course I'm not doing these mistakes and actually be honest with yourself because I can guarantee you that you think that you are not guilty of any of these but if I saw a video of you bench pressing I would be like dude you are literally doing half of the mistakes I said in that video. So try to keep your head open because there is always something that you can learn.
Even I tried to do that well after over a decade of going to the gym because none of us will ever be done learning. That's the beauty of bodybuilding. Thanks for watching.
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