Pecs
 

My pecs are not well developed in the upper and middle portions. Any advice as to how I can gain some muscel in those areas?

Benchpress and pushups. There are some machines in the gym as well that focus on your pectorals

I do incline presses for the upper pecs: a modified bench press done on an incline bench. They work well. You can use a bar or dumbbells. Some people do dumbbell flys on an incline bench, too, but I've never tried it.

Not pushups. (you wont get any gains doing those)

Bench Press, Dumbell Flys, Incline Bench. Those will target muscle gains in the area in which you are asking.

By the way, don't neglect your lower chest! (dips, decline press, cable crossovers)

butterflys and incline/decline/regular bench

I 100% agree with plan9. Do not believe that pushups will help because they don't. Bench(standard, Incline and decline) then move to the dumbells and do less weight a lot of reps. Also, do not over do the first two weeks because you can get hurt. Gradually, build a routine.

I'm just barrel chested, so if you look at me from the side, my chest looks well developed. But from the front there is no seperation.

Definetely the bench press. If I do it too much my peCs start getting TOO big !

sounds like you need to work on more incline presses & fly's, as well as some of the inner chest (flat & incline) which can be achieved through some closer grip presses as well as some fly's.

i find that turning the dumbells in (as in making the plates on the part of the dumbells that is closest to your feet come together and touch) during fly's helps to squeeze out the inner chest. this holds true for both flat & incline fly's.

also flexing your chest at the top of each rep will help to squeeze out that extra little bit from your inner chest.

The incline bench press works the whole chest, but it targets the upper chest the most. You should also do drop sets too, say if your using a 125 pound barbell and you do 8-12 reps and cant do anymore, thats your failure point, but its not your complete failure point. So then take about 20% of weight off the barbell and do another 8-12, then take some more weight off and do it again untill u reach complete failure. Ive learned that drop sets are the best way to gain muscle because they work out not just the surface fybers, but all of them.

Aren't you supposed to do each set just a few seconds after the last, so changing the weights would take ages and sort of ruin the work? I'm sure I read that somewhere here.

I disagree with the push-up-pessimists. Finishing a workout with a few sets of push-ups will insure fatigue. Taking a muscle to fatigue is the way to make em grow. Push-ups by themselves won't do it though.

so what pushups work..........?


didnt want to make a new thread


whats a major harm in working out day after day w/o breaks inbetween(right now im gon Mon/Wed/Fri)

thanks Plan9, you cut some 5 useless minutes from my workout. :)

theres no such thing as inner,outter,upper, or lower chest. those are all misconceptions, there is no way to work one part of the chest more then the other

there is the major and the minor pecs, the minor is worked out by dips, the major is worked out by press (compound) and flys (isolated)

some presses are harder then others such as incline, because the incline focuses more on your chest,and less on your triceps thats why incline is the best bench to use

dont use barbell,dumbells are better (balances out muscles, safer,less strain on shoulders, and more effective workout)

heres a great workout to improve chest

start out with Flys, do 2 sets to near-failure then immediatly(and i mean immediately, have the dumbells ready) do incline dumbell press for another 2 sets, once youre done with that do 2 sets of flat bench dumbell press (doesnt have to be immediately)

youll notice a difference in the first month, after a few months switch it up by doing flat bench right after flys




the most important thing to having a great chest, is a great back, so workout your back also!

rows,deadlifts, pulldowns are all a must

good luck :)