How To Build a Massive Chest
Posted: Tuesday, January 27, 2009
by Bill Davis
The first question on many beginning bodybuilders' minds is, How do I build a massive chest? Well, you've come to the right place!
In the guide that follows, you'll get specific exercises that have been responsible for creating some of the biggest, broadest, and best chests ever. Chests like Larry Scott, Steve Reeves, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Franco Columbu, and Lou Ferrigno. The way they build their pecs were remarkably similar: They all used a few complex movements as well as isolation exercises.
So the flat bench press is a MUST-DO exercise if you want to fully develop your pectoral muscles. It will also help to build powerful arms and strong shoulders. In short, the bench press is for the upper body what the squat is for the lower body.
There are a few variations on the flat bench, too. There's the incline, which stresses the upper chest and the decline which stresses the lower pecs, giving that fully-developed line defining the pecs and letting them stand out from the rib cage.
But the best exercise for truly massive pecs is the parallel bar dip, or dips, for short. This exercise is a winner for two reasons: First, it develops the pecs, delts, and triceps all at once, giving you a great foundation on which to build a killer upper body. Second, because it develops those muscles to such an outstanding degree, it lays the ground work for really heavy benches.
In short, dips make your bench press stronger, which makes your chest, shoulders, and arms bigger.
Include both of these exercises in your weight-training routines if you want to build a massive chest!
Two isolation moves that you'll want to include are flat bench flyes and bent-arm pullovers. The flyes give a degree of separation to the pecs that no other exercise can match. The pullovers build a bigger rib cage, as well as develop the lats and supporting muscles around the pecs like the intercostals and serratus.
Think of the rib cage as the foundation on which you place slabs of chest muscle. Without an enlarged rib cage, you simply will not be able to carry the added pec mass. And the pecs look best if they're surrounded by developed, striated, and well-defined supporting muscles!
One way to incorporate these exercises into your chest-building plan is to warm up with the pullovers and then do the flyes and flat benches in a superset. The flyes pre-exhaust the pecs such that it's the pecs that fail during the bench rather than the usual triceps or delts.
This gives the uncanny result of bombing your chest like no single exercise can do. Of course, you could do tri-sets or even giant sets to really beat the tar out of your chest. In fact, the chest, being so big to begin with, can take most anything you can give it!
Finally, add in a few sets of dips and you've made yourself a well-rounded chest program.
In a matter of just about six weeks, with proper diet, supplementation, rest, and the right attitude, you can gain 3-4 inches of pure muscle on your chest.
You have to place an emphasis, though, on really blasting your chest every workout with these simple exercises, if you want to build a massive chest.
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