3 Movements to Blast Your Chest

By: Tony Schwartz Click author's name for more of his/her articles

A thick, hard, muscular chest is right up there on the list of most body builders, both pro and amateur. Unfortunately, there is so much poor info out there when it comes to properly training the pectorals that chests like I just described are becoming a thing of the past.

The big key to building the chest you want is to select exercises that maximally activate the pectoral motor units. The first movement that springs to mind for most people when they think of pec exercises is the flat barbell bench press. But the bench press is not a great pec builder unless you happen to have the optimal leverage for it. In addition, most people do the bench press incorrectly. If you put together poor leverages and poor technique it is no surprise why you feel the bench more in your front deltoids and triceps than in your chest!

Let's take a look at 3 of my favorite chest building exercises. But keep in mind that if these are done with poor technique you are cutting your muscle growth short and may be setting yourself up for injury. To prevent this from happening make sure to get some technique advice from an expert so that you can build the pecs you want without getting hurt.

Flat Paused Bench Presses
I know I just finished saying that the barbell bench press is not the best chest building exercise, but there are particular variations that work the chest well, assuming you perform them correctly. The paused bench press is one such variation. By pausing the bar on the chest for one to ten seconds before pressing it back up you eliminate the stretch reflex and lose any stored energy you created while lowering the weight. This makes pressing the weight back up much more difficult, but it will also require your pecs to create a massive amount of force in order to launch the bar from your chest back to the starting point.

Incline DB Bench Press
One of the most common complaints of body builders is not just their overall chest size, but their upper chest mass in particular. Incline exercises are a great solution to this because they target the upper portion of the pectorals, which gives the appearance of a higher chest, without giving you a saggy looking chest. The use of dumbbells is a good idea here as they will allow you to get a deeper stretch at the bottom of the exercise. This deep stretch activates a lot of untrained muscle fibres in the upper chest which can jump start new muscle growth.

Standing High-to-Low Cable Crossovers
Even though variations of the bench press are good for variety, to really focus on the pectorals you need to work on the flying motion. This can be done with a variety of exercises, but I really like the standing cable crossover here because of the consistent tension the cable gives you during the entire exercise. The key is to focus on getting a good stretch at the beginning and keeping tension on the pectorals during the whole set. This is a fantastic ending exercise to any chest workout.

Keep in mind that while these exercises are fantastic for building a muscular chest, they must be done with the right technique in order to get the most from them.