Sure, that big, muscular chest is cool, and some guys are gunning for massive, thick, striated pectorals. The funny thing is that despite all of your hard work, building the perfect chest isn’t as simple as lying on a bench and mindlessly pressing the biggest weights. It takes a well-thought-out, progressive, and meticulous approach. And most importantly, you have to stop making these classic chest-training mistakes.
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Failing to Set the Torso Correctly
This is one of the most common reasons people fail to build the kind of chest they desire. Before even beginning any set of presses or flye, you have to be sure to raise the ribcage, slightly arch the lower back, and shrug the shoulders down and back. This position must be held from the beginning to end of each set.
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Edgar Artiga / M+F Magazine
Utilizing Too Few Reps Per Set
For some reason, when it comes to chest training most guys worry more about how much weight they’re lifting than how they’re lifting it. While it’s fun to test your strength on occasion with a single or double on the bench or incline press, this will do little to stimulate actual muscle growth. Nearly 90 percent of the time, we advise seven to 12 reps of a lighter weight per set with perfect form if your main goal is huge pecs.
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Marius Bugge / M+F Magazine
Too Much Bench Pressing
There is no doubt that the barbell bench press is an awesome pec-building exercise. After all, some of the best chests ever created were on “big benchers.” However, we feel most trainees rely on this movement too much, which can not only hold back muscular development but also cause overuse injuries that lead to major shoulder issues. Make sure to use a wide variety of exercises in your chest program, including flyes, dips, pullovers, as well as dumbbell and machine work.
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Not Emphasizing the Negatives
In an effort to push up bigger weights, many guys let the barbell or dumbbells quickly drop to their chests so they can get a nice rebound from the bottom. Not only can this cause muscle tears and rib cage injuries, but it will also rob you of the most effective portion (as far as hypertrophy is concerned) of ever rep. Make sure to emphasize the negative (eccentric) portion of every rep by lowering the weight over two to five seconds for maximum pec development.
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Per Bernal / M+F Magazine
Missing the Angles
It’s important to change up the angles of your push and pull in order to hit a muscle in its entirety and recruit all sets of motor unit pools. When it comes to training the chest you can press or flye from a decline all the way to a very high incline, with so many angles in between. Vary these angles to knock off every muscle fiber and make your training more interesting.
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Poor Range of Motion
There’s definitely a time and place for partial reps, but you need to focus on utilizing your muscles’ full range of motion in each rep. This doesn’t mean completely contracting and extending your muscles on each move (in fact, “locking out” can take resistance off the move or even be dangerous in some cases), but taking care to hit the effective range of motion sweet spot. With each push or pull, make sure you’re stopping just short of completely contracting and completely extending to effectively keep your muscles activated throughout the entire set.
