dogma13554u

Hoping I could get some advice. I've been doing the same chest workout for over a year, and I'm still seeing no real development or tone. I do bench, incline, devline, fly's, and cable crosses. Any ideas as to what might help?

obsvr

There are a few things that might work for you that I have found useful. The most important thing to remember is to change things up. I do this often:

1.) Change up the order of your exercises. If you do bench, incline, flys, decline one week, then do bench, decline, flys, incline the next week. Just mix things up.

2.) Change around the weight. Say if you're doing 3 sets of 12 reps, try upping the weight so you do 3 sets of 7-8 reps one week. Then change back another week. Another idea is to increase the weight for each set. Start out doing 12 reps, then for the 3rd set you should only be able to do 6 reps for instance.

Other people might have better ideas, but I think this is a decent start.

Mixing things up is the key.

seizei

obsvr said some good things.

I do the same chest exercises you do... 3 sets of 6 or 8 reps each. A few tips I can think of are:

-don't forget about the negative motion. For example, in bench press, going up is positive, down is negative. Make sure the negative is slow and controlled - you almost get more benefit from it than the positive. In general, make your negative for every exercise slower than the positive, expecially on the last rep.

-you can only get the most out of your chest exercises if your triceps (back of upper arm) are rested. I do triceps right after chest, on the same day, so they're healed by the time I do my chest again.

-your pecs should be tender the day after your chest workout. You need 2 full days rest before you work out your chest again. Example, work out chest on monday, don't do it again until thursday.

-eat lots of protein, especially in the hour after your workout.

-do enough weight so that you have trouble or can't do the very last rep of the last set (ex. the 8th rep of the 3rd set)

-the basic rule is: low reps + high weight = muscle mass; high reps + low/moderate weight = muscle definition

-like obsvr said, try to mix up your exercises. hit as many different angles on your pecs as you can.

good luck!!!

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terpie

sets of 6-8 reps to build muscle
sets of 10-12 to tone

Bobaphat

Go heavier and go until exhaustion. If you can have a friend help you out by spotting you on a few extra reps then do it.

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Rwingman98

if you do your exercises mostly using barbells, try doing the same exercises with dumbbells. At least, for me, it seems to work better.

ronan

try pre exhusting your pecs first by doing flyes first then your presses or superset them works good, also try to keep ur shoulders back as u dont wont ur front delts doing all the work for you

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fantazio

theres no such thing as muscle definition hahaha.
.you always do low reps high weight. high reps does jack shit for you. you need to do cardio and lower your bodyfat to get "muscle definition"

geez

fantazio

great advice

i do a mike mentzer heavy duty routine which is primarily based upon pre exhaust sets they work wonders

ronan

pre exhausting has done wonders for me

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water_boy1999

A lot of good advice in here. I switch up barbells and dumbell workouts each time. One week I will do incline, flat, decline, flys and light cable work.....all the bench stuff I will do with barbells. The next week, I will do a similar workout using dumbells. I switch up my routine quite frequently as well. This helps keep the monotony out of the workout so I look forward to trying something I haven't done in a few weeks.

Happy pumping!

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trialzin

Try this, was suggested to me by a bodybuilder friend. Every day at the gym do a set at the peckdeck plus your normal chest routine once a week, do this for one month and then just go back to the regular routine and watch the chest grow.

fantazio

no do not do this.. doing chest everyday is stupid since it takes your chest about 72 hours to recover. .. and recover = grow.. doing it every day for a month is very very stupid since your chest will have no time to grow and youll just screw yourself up
its called overtraining

Ilow

Variety is important, it can help to change excercises between dumbell, olympic bar and machines. I always recommend that my clients to incline, flat and decline presses in that order because it goes from what people generally find the most difficult to the least. I also usually do fly's on an incline bench because the upper chest (clavicular pectoralis) is harder to build. Don't be afraid to do high reps (over 15 reps). This builds the slow twitch muscle fibers and builds muscle density and will make the muscles look fuller. Don't work chest more than 2 times per week, I have seen great results with 12-15 sets one time per week.

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alec

chest press and flies twice a week doing 5 or 6 sets has made my chest grow a lot in the past 2 months

ill probably have to add alot more exercises in the future to continue the growth though...

pezking4

Good advice so far. Just remember, if you want to get big you have to lift big, eat big, and sleep big. Good luck.

bobw

alter your workout occasionally. your body gets used to a workout after 4-8 times and development drastically slows. You are doing a lot of different exercises, I would suggest never doing more than 3 or 4 exercises for a body part, and occasionally rotating the others in and out for a few weeks at a time.

winsecure

Probably the most important and most overlooked aspect is adequate recovery time between workouts. Working out causes microscopic tears in the muscle fibers. It is the repair of these micro-tears that leads to strength and mass gains. More than 3 workouts of the muscle group a week will prevent you from having adequate recovery. Sleep is also hugley important. 8 hours a night is highly recommended.

Rodney

Recovery time is important. This last year I wasn't able to get to the gym as often, so my five-day series of workouts stretched out to eight days, ten days sometimes and guess what? I started making better gains.

tigerkick

same training methods.. and "proper diet"