Chest issues.

jwill0214 · Feb 11, 2010

My chest doesn't seem to grow as fast as my other body parts. I know that everyone has weak spots but I was still wondering why this might be for me. After my chest workouts I am hardly ever sore the next day and when I am I am more sore towards where my chest goes into my shoulder than the actual pec itself. Should I lower my weight to try to squeeze the pecs more? Should I move my hands in closer on workouts? Something wrong with my form? Anything?

Skeptic · Feb 11, 2010

What are you doing for it currently?

jwill0214 · Feb 11, 2010

flat BB press 4 sets
Incline BB 4 sets
DB flyes 3
Cable Flyes 3
Sometimes BB decline 3

Jaspar · Feb 11, 2010

What rep-range and what frequency? Have you also tried mixing up the chest-workout with different excercises? Also, have you tried hitting it with more complex methods, i.e. dropsets etc.?

MrChewiebitums · Feb 11, 2010

clearly you need steroids

looks like your going to much.. i`d get rid of the flyes and throw in a flat DB press
or switch in the flat DB press with one of the flyes.

then if you wonna do decline. alternate it with incline every so often...

thats how i see it

pingu · Feb 11, 2010

Try diffrent grips etc to feel the chest more.. For example in the dumbell press flat/incline/decline try to let your palms face each other.

And with the barbell, try a wider grip, and slow negativs...

jwill0214 · Feb 11, 2010

My rep range for bench is 4-12. flyes i stay around 8-10.
For my grip I normally put my pinkie finger on the outer ring.

pingu · Feb 11, 2010

Charles Glass may have some tips for you:

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/glasscut3.htm

Big_Guns_Lance · Feb 11, 2010

jwill0214 said:
My chest doesn't seem to grow as fast as my other body parts. I know that everyone has weak spots but I was still wondering why this might be for me. After my chest workouts I am hardly ever sore the next day and when I am I am more sore towards where my chest goes into my shoulder than the actual pec itself. Should I lower my weight to try to squeeze the pecs more? Should I move my hands in closer on workouts? Something wrong with my form? Anything?

Perserverance man. Things just take a while to come up sometimes.

Because your sore doesn't necerssarily mean your making improvments in muscle size/strength it can actually be a bad thing. I squat 3 times a week and i'm never sore now but i'm still making progress. I would'nt mess around with your grip on the bar, keep your grip 1.5 times shoulder width. How many times per week do your train your chest? if you train it once, then how about training it twice? Upping the frequency. I would drop the cable flyes, they'll do nothing to harness muscle growth, and maybe the decline presses too. Whats your rest periods between sets? they need to be short, 1 min rest to enhance muscle hypertrophy.

jwill0214 · Feb 11, 2010

Right now I only lift chest once a week. I might throw in a small chest workout on back day. I will keep my grip the same. I rest around 1-2 minutes between sets depends on with training partner or not. I think I will get rid of the cable flyes

MuscleMecca Crew

tim290280 · Feb 11, 2010

jwill0214 said:
flat BB press 4 sets
Incline BB 4 sets
DB flyes 3
Cable Flyes 3
Sometimes BB decline 3

Firstly you have copied and pasted this routine out of Muscle & Fiction, this is always going to equal fail.

My chest doesn't seem to grow as fast as my other body parts. I know that everyone has weak spots but I was still wondering why this might be for me. After my chest workouts I am hardly ever sore the next day and when I am I am more sore towards where my chest goes into my shoulder than the actual pec itself. Should I lower my weight to try to squeeze the pecs more? Should I move my hands in closer on workouts? Something wrong with my form? Anything?

Let me guess your shoulders and triceps seem to grow well.

(If my above statement is true

Basically you are not recruiting the chest muscle effectively and instead using the delts and triceps to press with. I have also had this problem after I stopped benching for a year. Now the trick is to get the chest to work.

You have a couple of options, change the way you bench or activation exercises. I'd recommend the latter as they are easier to explain.

You want to start with a general warmup for the upper body, including arms swings and cross overs. Next is a light cable flye, not a db or pec dec or any of that crap. The cable flye is done first with light weights for high reps for a couple of sets. At the end of the second set you should be able to feel the muscle contracting hard to hit the top of the motion. I was doing sets of 20-25 with rubber tubing, so you don't need much weight, just make sure that it is actually a full contraction in your warmup. Now flyes suck so you don't want to do them all the time, pushups are your alternate exercise that you will replace the flyes with as the second set once you get the feel for this activation (eventually replacing them alltogether). You can either do normal pushups or a lighter inclined pushup (go a close-ish grip to hit the clavicular head).

The next thing you do is a press. This can be rotated around between barbells, dumbbells and incline and flat. Don't waste time with decline. Now the trick here is that you are going to do bench and that is it. Low to medium reps with heavy weight, lots of sets (8-10).

The last chest exercise you do is a higher rep finisher. I like pushups as they are a closed kinetic chain movement, unlike bench. But it can be anything as long as the reps are over 15 done for a couple of sets. Chest is done so move onto stuff for arms or shoulders or whatever floats your boat. You can do this twice per week, in which case use a different main exercise on the different days (e.g. DB's monday, BB thursday) and preferrably a different rep range (e.g. 2-3 reps monday, 5-6 thursday).

jwill0214 · Feb 11, 2010

tim290280 said:
Firstly you have copied and pasted this routine out of Muscle & Fiction, this is always going to equal fail.

Let me guess your shoulders and triceps seem to grow well.

(If my above statement is true Basically you are not recruiting the chest muscle effectively and instead using the delts and triceps to press with. I have also had this problem after I stopped benching for a year. Now the trick is to get the chest to work.

You have a couple of options, change the way you bench or activation exercises. I'd recommend the latter as they are easier to explain.

You want to start with a general warmup for the upper body, including arms swings and cross overs. Next is a light cable flye, not a db or pec dec or any of that crap. The cable flye is done first with light weights for high reps for a couple of sets. At the end of the second set you should be able to feel the muscle contracting hard to hit the top of the motion. I was doing sets of 20-25 with rubber tubing, so you don't need much weight, just make sure that it is actually a full contraction in your warmup. Now flyes suck so you don't want to do them all the time, pushups are your alternate exercise that you will replace the flyes with as the second set once you get the feel for this activation (eventually replacing them alltogether). You can either do normal pushups or a lighter inclined pushup (go a close-ish grip to hit the clavicular head).

The next thing you do is a press. This can be rotated around between barbells, dumbbells and incline and flat. Don't waste time with decline. Now the trick here is that you are going to do bench and that is it. Low to medium reps with heavy weight, lots of sets (8-10).

The last chest exercise you do is a higher rep finisher. I like pushups as they are a closed kinetic chain movement, unlike bench. But it can be anything as long as the reps are over 15 done for a couple of sets. Chest is done so move onto stuff for arms or shoulders or whatever floats your boat. You can do this twice per week, in which case use a different main exercise on the different days (e.g. DB's monday, BB thursday) and preferrably a different rep range (e.g. 2-3 reps monday, 5-6 thursday).

Thanks for the advice. I think I will give your workout a try for a while and see how it goes. And your right about my shoulders growing plus my shoulders hurt when benching.

tim290280 · Feb 11, 2010

^^ Then make sure that you are keeping your shoulders contracted down and back when you are benching.

Deity · Feb 11, 2010

This picture shows it pretty well. Tuck in your shoulders, arch your back, keep your butt down, sternum up. Keeping everything tight is key.

> pushups will help activation.
> scapula retraction excersizes will help with activation aswell as shoulder rehab
> make sure you do some overhead pressing to strengthen your rotators
> listen to Tim

One last thing you could try is doing just a couple of sets of your favorite chest excersize each day at around 65-70% of your usual power, with obvious exceptions(deload). Just to get that feeling and activate the muscle. This worked wonders on my chest using db presses.

El Freako · Feb 11, 2010

Flies are gay m'kay. :borat:

Are you using any kind of rep/weight progression in your training? Or just walking in and lifting the same weight every day?

cereal · Feb 12, 2010

MrChewiebitums said:
clearly you need steroids

looks like your going to much.. i`d get rid of the flyes and throw in a flat DB press
or switch in the flat DB press with one of the flyes.

then if you wonna do decline. alternate it with incline every so often...

thats how i see it

yeah, whey too much

Flex · Feb 14, 2010

Keep your back arched. Many people tuck their chests in as their benching and see more results in their delts and triceps than their cheset. Make sure you feel a full contraction, without too much activation of your deltoids.

Zigurd · Feb 14, 2010

Flex said:
Keep your back arched. Many people tuck their chests in as their benching and see more results in their delts and triceps than their cheset. Make sure you feel a full contraction, without too much activation of your deltoids.

I have a question brosephinsky.

When I bench I fully feel it in my chest. And its growing like a madman, but what usually goes beyond fatigue and starts to pain a little are my frontal delts. Its as if my chest holds the weight well, but my delts hurt.

Is this because delts are a smaller group and catch up slower than the chest? Or something else, like too wide grip, always happens, etc ?

(I use an average-towards wide grip)

tim290280 · Feb 14, 2010

^^ Your elbows might be coming very low and causing a large stretch in the shoulder. Or you might have a limited ROM in the shoulder that is causing a problem. Or it may be something else entirely.

By delts hurting what do you mean? Sharp pain, overload pain, general soreness, lots of DOMS?

Zigurd · Feb 14, 2010

tim290280 said:
^^ Your elbows might be coming very low and causing a large stretch in the shoulder. Or you might have a limited ROM in the shoulder that is causing a problem. Or it may be something else entirely.

By delts hurting what do you mean? Sharp pain, overload pain, general soreness, lots of DOMS?

Its like fast acting DOMS. Not sure how to explain it, but when I work a muscle hard, through the last sets or exercises I can feel the muscle tissue is already hurting, but with delts its a sharper pain. Nothing close to actually making me feel uncomfortable but it doesnt help focusing in the lift.

Its a pain as if I can feel the tissues rupturing, its pain, but its good pain. Although the delt pain is a bit too much.

Chest issues.

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