9 Tips That'll Help Your Chest Grow

building up your chest can be very challenging for many guys especially the upper portion of the chest but developing your chest will enhance your physique and it'll make everyday tasks like opening a door getting up off the floor and lifting heavy objects much easier unfortunately many guys are stuck unable to add any more muscle mass to their pecs so today i want to go over some solid tips that are backed by science and proven to help your chest grow and the first one is to use a bodybuilding bench press style rather than a power lifting

one now i know i might get some flack for this since bench pressing like a power lifter seems to be very trendy lately but i'd like to go over some of the differences the main difference between the two bench pressing styles is that with the power lifting bench press you would focus on keeping the range of motion as short as possible because that helps you lift the most amount of weight possible the two main ways that you can decrease your range of motion are by either using a wider grip or by creating a more pronounced

arc in your lower back to bring your body closer to the bar on the other hand a bodybuilding bench pressing style would still require you to keep your back arced but much less of an arc in order to increase the range of motion that's because for maximum muscle growth it's simply better to train your muscles through a full range of motion thanks to three main benefits the first is that a full range of motion on the bench press will produce higher levels of muscle activation second different parts of a movement emphasize different parts of a

muscle and by going through a full range of motion you're able to train the muscle in its entirety and third it's beneficial to overload your muscles in their stretched position and going through a partial range of motion isn't able to do that quite as well as a full range of motion so if your goal is to maximize muscle growth a bodybuilding bench pressing style is more effective than a power lifting one another thing that will help is to focus on pressing your hands inwards during barbell bench pressing and dumbbell hex pressing movements this is a

simple technique adjustment that you can use to maximize chest growth when you're bench pressing imagine that you're trying to bring your hands together this obviously won't happen because the barbell is fixed and it won't bend but by focusing on squeezing your hands together it'll increase chest activation because one of the primary functions of your chest is to perform shoulder horizontal adduction which is basically a fancy way of describing bringing your arms from really wide out at your sides in together towards the midline of your body so by squeezing your hands together on the bar even

though your hands will stay in the same fixed position it'll increase the tension placed on your chest the next thing you should do if you've consistently been training for some time now is to increase chest workout frequency or in other words simply train your chest more often this doesn't apply to beginners because if you're new to the gym research shows that you only have to train each muscle just once per week for optimal gains so as a beginner you can follow a typical bro split by for example training chest shoulders and triceps on monday legs

on wednesday and back and biceps on friday you can also spread the training volume out over more sessions and just focus on one muscle group per day the point is that as a beginner hitting each muscle just once a week is enough to grow however once you've passed the beginner stage and you can no longer increase the weight you use almost every workout you'll need a higher training frequency to maximize gains as shown by 2016 systematic review and meta-analysis the researchers concluded that training twice a week promotes more muscle growth compared to just once a

week and another analysis found similar results attributing much better muscle and strength gains for each additional workout per muscle per week even when total training volume was similar between the groups the groups that trained each muscle more frequently outperformed the ones that crammed the same number of sets and reps into fewer sessions throughout the week now whether you should train your chest two three or even more times per week depends on your particular situation and how much training volume you currently do per workout some people recover faster from their workouts than others and some people

need more overall volume per week to stimulate chest growth but overall as an intermediate or advanced lifter it's ideal to train each muscle at least twice per week if you've been doing that and your chest still isn't growing you can try to add a third chest day this should help because as you get closer to your genetic muscle building potential you'll have to find ways to increase weekly volume to make additional gains another thing that many people do wrong is they don't go low enough on both dumbbell presses and barbell presses many people only lower

the weight down until their arm is just about parallel to the floor and sometimes they won't even get to parallel before pressing back up it's important to understand that when you perform a pressing exercise the lockout portion of the movement is primarily done by your triceps instead of your chest which is more engaged during the lower portion of the press so if you only lower the dumbbells halfway down you're not going to optimally stimulate your chest instead you're going to place most of the emphasis on your triceps so make sure to fully lower the weight

unless you have some shoulder problems that lead to pain when you bring the bar or dumbbells too low otherwise if you have healthy shoulders you should try lowering the bar until it touches your chest when you train with dumbbells you can actually lower the weight even further so make sure you take advantage of that if you're trying to add muscle to your pecs the next chest growth tip is very important for those of you that are stuck at a plateau you'll want to alternate the amount of weight and reps that you do for your major

chest exercises research suggests that training with a wide range of different rep targets produces more muscle growth than always sticking with the standard 8 to 12 reps per set for example in a study published in the internal journal of sports medicine researchers divided men into two groups one group performed a constant rep resistance training routine where they performed each set for 8 to 12 reps meanwhile the other group performed a varied rep routine participants in this group switched up their rep ranges each workout so they would perform 8 to 12 reps on one day then

20 to 30 reps the next day and finally only 2-4 reps on the following training day both groups did this for eight weeks and even though both groups gained a significant amount of strength and muscle mass the researchers noted that muscle growth effect sizes were more favorable for the varied group over the constant group while the differences between the groups weren't huge and the researchers concluded that both options can be effective for muscle growth based on the study it seems varying your rep ranges has a slight advantage this fits very well with my personal experience

and it makes sense because the data shows that you need a variety of rep ranges to maximize growth in all types of muscle fibers remember you have type 1 slow twitch muscle fibers that are more responsible for endurance based activities and type 2 fast twitch muscle fibers which are more for explosive and heavy lifting activities by varying your weight load and rep ranges with your chest exercises you'll get more strength development out of the low rep heavy weight sets meanwhile you'll develop more resistance to fatigue from the high rep low weight sets my personal recommendation

that has worked well for me is to stick to one rep range for a few weeks before switching to a different rep range as that will give you enough time to master that rep range and get stronger at it before you switch my favorite rep ranges to switch between are a low three to four reps a moderate six to ten reps and a high 12 to 20 reps another tip is to not go overboard with incline presses it's all too common for someone to have a lagging upper chest because in almost all lifters the upper

chest is underdeveloped compared to the lower chest the common advice for this issue is to just raise the incline on the bench to put extra emphasis on the upper chest and even though this is a good strategy many people go overboard with the angle because they think that the more inclined the bench is the more they'll hit their upper chest but a steep incline isn't necessarily better for upper chest development or for chest growth in general for example a recent 2021 study looked at the effects of five different bench pressing angles on muscle activation these

angles included zero degrees or flat 15 degrees 30 degrees 45 degrees and 60 degrees the results showed that an incline angle of 30 degrees was able to produce greater activation of the upper portion of the chest however the results also showed that inclining the bench higher than 45 degrees produced significantly higher shoulder activation while decreasing chest activation and the funny part is that most gym equipment manufacturers haven't caught up to the science after all this is a pretty new 2021 study so most of the fixed incline barbell bench pressing machines that you see in gyms

have too steep of an angle to maximize chest activation if that's the case in your gym which it probably is i recommend you take one of the regular adjustable benches and set it up at about a 30 degree angle inside of a squat rack another thing that you should do to help your chest grow is use cables specifically perform cable presses you see one of the limitations of barbell and dumbbell presses is that you push your hands straight up instead of inwards and if you squeeze your hands together like we talked about earlier it definitely

helps to target the chest but it still only creates an isometric contraction meanwhile cables allow you to incorporate that horizontal adduction component that we were talking about earlier automatically throughout the entire movement because your hands are literally being pulled apart cable chest presses also provide other unique benefits for example cables allow you to train your chest through a full range of motion cables also provide a more favorable strength curve where the resistance is the same throughout the entire exercise and cable exercises allow you to take smaller steps up in the weight load that you choose

this is beneficial because sometimes you won't be able to jump up in dumbbell weight by five pounds in each hand but you'll be able to slightly up the weight on the cable presses this is why i encourage you to mix some cable pressing exercises into your routine with that said cable chest presses should be done seated or laying down if you stand while doing them the weight will pull you back and you're going to be challenged more so with stabilizing your body rather than actually training your chest the next tip is to upgrade your flies

most people perform flies with dumbbells on a flat or inclined bench with their hands in a neutral position and even though this is totally fine and it will help with your chest development you can get an added benefit by also performing cable chest flies with your hands in a pronated position so your thumbs would be facing each other instead of your palms facing each other believe it or not when your palms face each other the chest muscle is in a disadvantageous position from a mechanical standpoint because the muscle fibers of the chest don't have a

direct line of pull by mixing in cable flies with your palms facing down you can train your chest from a position that makes it easier for your chest muscles to fire from keep in mind you don't have to give up regular flies with your palms in a neutral position but it's great to mix in this variation with your palms down as well also there's a reason why i keep specifically referencing cables when it comes to flies and that's because cable flies have a more favorable resistance curve than dumbbell flies when you use dumbbells the bottom

portion of the fly requires a lot of effort but as you get closer and closer to the top of the movement you lose almost all the tension on your chest using cables fixes this by keeping the tension on your chest the whole time finally i saved the most important tip for last and that's to make sure that you're consistently trying to increase the weight load that you can lift for a particular rep range that you're targeting without applying progressive overload you won't be able to add much muscle onto your chest past those initial beginner stages

so regardless of which rep range you're targeting you need to use a weight load that's challenging and you need to try to increase that weight load over time even increasing the weight by five pounds is a huge step forward if you've been training for a while upping your weight by just five to ten pounds can take weeks or maybe even months but by being consistent those little increases will add up to big gains over time position your barbell and dumbbell pressing exercises towards the beginning of your workout and try the variated rep strategy that i

talked about from earlier to help you build up your pressing strength doing that in combination with a good diet where you're taking in enough protein should lead to muscle growth so that about wraps it up guys make sure you subscribe to the channel also if you're stuck right now and you're having trouble adding muscle it may have just as much to do with your diet as it does with what you're doing for your workouts my team and i have helped a lot of people add muscle in a relatively short time frame so if you want

any extra help we have everything from recipe books to courses to one-on-one coaching just click the link below in the description or you can head on over to my website directly at gravitytransformation.com i'll see you guys soon [Music] you