moham123

I have a medium sized chest and i want to improve my pecs and make them bigger, i've tried so many exercises with dumbells and without them but nothin seems to be happening, infact my arms hurt the most. what can i do, am i doing the exercises wrong. Can anyone give me advice please.

noodlebee

I heard from a friend that barbells work more efficiently than dumbells. He does workout but I didn't ask him how much and how long.

My personal tip, even though I don't workout strenuously, is to have your mind focus on your chest. If you don't think about it, your arms will naturally do most of the work. When you consciously think "move the weights up with chest strength" and pay attention to the feeling, you get more burn from the workout the next day.

moham123

thank you for the help. i will definatly try it.

Siege

First off, technique is very important. It's not about how much you lift, it's about how you lift it.

That being said, make sure you're lifting enough weight to make it worthwhile. On your last rep, you should approach failure (ie: on the last rep, it should take all your energy to maintain technique).

Do the full range of exercises. A lot of beginners only know about the flat bed bench press. The incline/decline are both important to build the whole pec. Don't forget butterflies too.

Eat properly, yadda yadda yadda.


I don't have any science to prove this, but this is from a guy who went from flat-like-airport to having some pecs.

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moham123

i will keep that in mind.

aberkok

I may have shared this already, but a few months ago I was doing a kick-ass session with my personal trainer and he said that on the last set I should go "to failure." I was trying to be funny and said that's a pretty harsh term - how can you expect a positive outlook with terminology like that!? Then he told me the official term for that gym was "muscle success!"

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"Uhhhh.... failure sounds fine to me."

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thingstodo

One thing many people do is lift bench too high up on their chest. You end up working shoulders and not the chest. The bar or dumbells should come to or even below your nipples. Also, hard work on your tricepts will allow you to lift more on chest because your tris work with your chest. And in theory lifting more weight will make you bigger. Of course, genetics trumps all!!

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Siege

Agreed. I only approached failure because I didn't have a spotter. Which would result not so much in muscle growth as it would death

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Willravel

What if you have 3 nipples?!

Baraka_Guru

Where does it hurt in the arms exactly? Your problem could be that your arms are undertrained, which would mean you don't have the proper stabilization to grow your pecs further. You use your shoulders and triceps to stabilize the movement for many pectoral exercises. If you don't concentrate enough on building these, they could be your barrier to a bigger chest. In most cases, it is extremely difficult to focus on only one muscle group alone for any real improvement. The body thrives on synergistic action.

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moham123

i found that the day after doing the exercises my triceps hurt quite a lot. and my chest wasnt in pain. I have trained my arms more than anthing else in the past and they are resonabaly ok. yesterday, when i was doin bench press with dumbells, i tried something different, i tensed my pecs and abdominals and i actually felt a little bit of a burn but most of the pain was still in the arms.

Baraka_Guru

moham, it's possible your triceps are underdeveloped then. As a muscle, it can be hard to develop, relatively speaking. Try focusing on them in your workouts by doing pulldowns, skullcrushers, or extensions. It took me a long time to initially develop my triceps. If you think about it, when we're sedentary, we hardly use this muscle. I imagine you won't have this problem if you ensure proper tricep training.

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moham123

ok, i will surely try this out but i dont think there will be much affect but you never know. the exercises i normally do for my chest are bench press with dumbells, , decline dumbell flyes, press ups, and dumbell pullovers. I do all these in sets of two. I found that the dumbell pullovers are the most affective out of the lot and i do feel a little affect but not alot.

Baraka_Guru

If it's the pullovers that have the most effect, I imagine it's because your triceps are the weakest link. A dumbbell press is a complex movement requiring support from shoulders and triceps. If either of these are too weak, your chest won't be challenged enough because, as you say, they will hurt, leaving your chest untrained. When you train, you should be sure to maximize the load on all areas. As I mentioned, it's difficult to focus on only one area. For example, if you are certain that you're maxing your workouts on shoulders, chest, back, triceps, and biceps, you can be sure to maximize the benefits on all accounts. I'll say it again: the body thrives on synergy.

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thingstodo

Well, if I had three nipples I wouldn't work on chest, I'd just show off those bad boys!!

But that made me think...one thing a lot of people do is shorten their range of motion on many lifts. This short changes your development. And you might add in flat and incline flys for variation. Nothing works the tris like deep dips and you can also hold dumbells together and do flat bench tris.

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troit

To build mass you want to find a weight that you can do 8-12 reps for 4 sets. Once you can do 4 sets of 12 reps, increase the weight.

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Titan_Uranus

Try doing x-reps ,which basically means keeping constant tension in the muscle being worked ,it's worked for me check out X-REP.COM.

xepherys

All the above advice is sound, but i think technique is the most important, especially for someone just starting to try to build muscle mass. The supporting muscles will have to build up and fall in line, of course, but technique also helps that. Having the barbell slightly too high or too low, or not going through the full motion will weaken the building effect.

Try to make sure you don't do cardio on the same day you lift. Aerobic excercise will tend to prevent muscle gain, to some degree.

Diet is also important. A lack of protein intake will make it very hard to have noticable muscle gains, as protein is VITAL to muscle production.

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thingstodo

Not trying to start a debate but just interested where you heard that. Any difference before vs. after?

I've found cardio before (not just a 5 minute warm up, more a 30-40 minute burn) with a sports drink in between actually makes my lifting more enjoyable.

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Titan_Uranus

xepherys is right, when it's about gaining mass only about 20% of it is your training the rest is what you eat ,'eat or be eaten.'