The best way to make your chest look bigger and broader is to train the chest muscles. I use the following exercises to develop the pectoral muscles: Pushups Diamond pushups Chest expander exercises with dumbbells Bicep curls (yes, they do shape your chest) Dips.
For many guys, the lower pecs are the most difficult area of the chest to fully develop. In most cases, this has less to do with the exercises they're performing and more to do with HOW they're performing those movements.
Emphasizing your lower chest is vital for the overall appearance and functionality of the pectorals. The lower chest muscle fibers are more active during specific movements, which means two things: First, we can emphasize the lower portion through better exercise selection.
“Most people neglect their lower chest simply because they don't train it directly,” says Adam Enaz, an expert sports nutritionist and coach focused on men's health. “The problem is that most common chest exercises—like the standard bench press—primarily hit the mid and upper chest.”
After the abs, the lower chest is an area that many guys struggle to develop. There are some great exercises for lower chest training, but if you have excess body fat you may need to work on that first before you're able to see chest development.
The Incline Pushup angles your body upward, but angles your arms downward into that 45 degree angle to allow you to target your lower chest fibers.
The upper chest is typically one of the toughest areas of the upper body to develop. There are various reasons for this, and like most things, there are ways to work around it. Here are five reasons why your upper chest is lagging in comparison to the rest of the chest region.
If you're looking for a way to work on your lower chest muscles, the cable fly is one of the best exercises you can do. It's a chest isolation exercise that targets the lower pectoral muscles, which are often neglected by other chest exercises.
The time it takes to build pecs depends on things like how hard you train, what you eat, and how consistent you are. If you follow a good training program and do things right, you can start seeing serious changes in a couple months. To see huge results in muscle size, it can take several months.
Decline bench pressing targets the lower chest muscles by increasing the stretch on the pectoralis major muscle and reducing the range of motion. This allows you to lift heavier weights and stimulate muscle growth in the lower chest.
The Bottom Line
“Essentially, you can use the barbell bench press, pec deck or the cable crossovers interchangeably,” says John P. Porcari, Ph. D. “All three of those exercises are basically going to give you the same amount of muscle activation in the chest and are equally effective.”
The decline barbell bench press is a great move for strengthening your lower chest. Because it's more of a compound exercise, it allows more focus to be applied to the target muscle and less to the stabilizing muscles.
The 10-minute push-challenge is broken up into seven one-minute work periods, with 30 seconds of rest in between. The aim is simply to do as many push-ups as you can in each minute of work, resting during that time as required. Girvan says you can do any kind of push-up for the workout, including kneeling push-ups.
The first step to increasing the size of your pecs is to focus on chest exercises. Chest exercises are essential for building muscle mass and increasing the size of your pecs. Examples of chest exercises include bench press, push ups, chest fly, and chest press.
Many chest workouts start with flat-bench movements first, but every so often you should start with inclines, particularly if you're trying to bring up your upper chest.
Experts recommend 2 to 3 rest days between strength-training workouts like lifting weights. So you can plan resistance workouts that target different muscle groups. For example, you might do upper-body exercises on Monday and lower-body exercises on Tuesday.
For many guys, the lower pecs are the most difficult area to fully develop. That's about to change. Not because we're the proud owners of a magical exercise that'll finally build this hard-to-grow area, but because we've developed seven chest-workout strategies which take direct aim at shallow lower pecs.
Most people can reduce chest fat through a healthful diet and regular exercise. The type of exercise can take many different forms, ranging from HIIT to strength training. Usually, a combination of different types of exercise is best. Excess body fat might also be the result of a health condition.