There are some problems you want to have, like being irresistible to women or making more money than you know how to spend. For lifters, one of these is not being able to find shirts that fit. Having an upper body that’s so broad no shirt can contain it is a satisfying confirmation that you’re making progress in your workouts—and that you’re not like those prissy models you see in clothing ads on whom even a size small looks baggy.
In six weeks, we can help you add up to two inches to your chest, solving one problem and creating another. On the one hand, you’ll never have to worry about your physique not showing through your clothes again. On the other, every shirt you try on will be skintight.
But you don’t mind, do you?
How It Works
Building up your chest means focusing on your pecs, and you’ll prioritize them in three different workouts per week. You can fit your other training in the same sessions, but do it after your chest work or on separate days (and go easy on shoulder work—you’ll get plenty of indirect shoulder training just by focusing on your chest).
The rate at which your muscles apply force determines the number and type of muscle fibers that are recruited, and recruiting them all is the path to complete growth and development. We’re prescribing speed bench presses, done with light weight for maximum velocity, to target your most explosive muscle fibers. (These also happen to be the largest.) Speed training serves another purpose too: training you to blast through sticking points in your bench press so you can lift heavier weights in subsequent workouts and therefore apply a more intense muscle- building stimulus.
Apart from speed work, you’ll do slow, heavy lifts that keep the muscles under tension for a while, inducing exhaustion that results in muscle growth. Finally, you’ll emphasize the eccentric (lowering) portion of your reps on a flye movement done with sliding disks on the floor. (You can use furniture sliders, available in hardware stores.) This turns conventional chest flyes into a gymnastics-type movement, recruiting more muscle and intensifying the contraction in your pecs more directly than you’ve ever felt it before.
Directions
Frequency
Perform each workout (Days 1, 2, and 3) once per week, resting at least a day between each session. Follow this pattern for six weeks.
How to Do It
Alternate sets of exercises that are paired (marked “A” and “B”). So you’ll do one set of A, rest, then B, rest, and repeat. All other exercises are done as straight sets.
