The chest is one of those body parts that draws a lot of attention, the other being arms, from everyone that looks at you. But from a bodybuilding perspective we know that bodybuilding is much, much more than a big set of arms and a big chest. But nonetheless a nicely developed chest is necessary to compliment the rest of the physique. Luckily, my chest is one of my easiest muscle groups to get to grow. Only in the past year has the rest of my body really caught up with my chest growth. For the first couple of years I looked like I was walking around with my chest sticking out on purpose. In this article I will tell you what I did in the beginning and what I do now, so get ready to put your pecs through hell.

When I first started training my chest was an eye popping 39". Now after a few years of hard work it is a little above 50". The approach I took is just like all my other articles state "Think Big, Eat Big, Lift Big, Get Big". So I took the lift big approach and stayed really basic with my chest movements.

In the Beginning this is the Chest routine I used:

• Flat Bench - 12,10,8,6,6
• Incline Bench - 10,8,6,6
• Pec Deck Fly - 12,10,8,8
• Cable Crossovers - 12,10,8,6
• My chest work out now:
• Incline Bench - 10,8,6,4,10-12
• Flat Bench - 10,8,8
• Pec Deck Fly - 12,10,10

As you can see it's basically the same routine except for the change in reps and sets. Now I will throw in some dumbbell presses, both incline and flat bench, from time to time just to change things up a little bit but I see better results from using the barbell for my pressing simply because I feel it's a better mass builder. Now, if you are preparing for a show I recommend using the dumbbell presses in your exercise due to the fact they are a much better shaping exercise and the risk of injury is lessened a lot.

I am also not a big believer in doing a lot of decline work, now from time to time I will do some but your lower chest development is more determined by your body fat levels rather than the actual exercising of it.

The main thing that you need to do to develop a nice full chest is focus on proper form on the incline/flat bench press. That means no bouncing off the chest and don't worry about how much you can bench just worry about getting a good pump and breaking down the muscle. Also, like I said above, stay very basic using power movements: Flat Bench and Incline Bench these are the two movements that will bring the most mass, basically all other chest movements are only shaping movements.

After a few weeks of going heavy on chest I will take a couple of weeks off from going heavy and do high reps or superset and believe me the pump is out of this world. Here is a sample change of my routine:

• High reps
• Flat bench - 20,20,20
• Incline bench - 20,15,15
• Pec Deck fly - 20,15,15

The only thing I can really stress before I close is just stay basic, I see way to many people trying to do to may sets and exercises and they never experience growth. Just go heavy on your power movements and really squeeze on your shaping movements and you should experience some good pec growth.

On a side note:
If you really want to increase your bench press, really work on close grip bench press when training triceps and military presses when doing shoulders, if you can get those two exercises up your weight on your bench press will go through the roof. But remember don't sacrifice weight for proper form.

Good Luck

Todd Blue
Mblue533@cs.com

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