And that is most likely true, because a lot of us waste our time simply duplicating routines that we find in either online or in some bodybuilding magazine.

I think that the best chest workout that you can be doing what has to be one which was individually set up just for you. And that means, given the fact that you’re reading this blog, which also most likely means that you’ve got enough bodybuilding knowledge to do it, that the routine should be one that you design yourself.

Stop and think about it for a second: you pick up a magazine or your log onto a website and you see whatever the latest and greatest is from whoever your favorite coach is or whoever your favorite writer is. The person who wrote that workout doesn’t know you and maybe they don’t even know what they’re talking about.

You are uniquely qualified to set up your routine. You know what sort of  injuries you’ve got. You know where you’ve made the most progress. Did you know which chest exercises you like to do the most.

Let me take you through this process, and I’m confident you’ll be up to set up a routine without anyone else’s help.

Okay, what I’m trying to do right now is to drop a little bit of body fat while simultaneously putting some mass onto my chest. Not that hard to do, except that I happen to have a torn supra-spinatus tendon. It’s not bad, only a partial thickness tear, but I still have to be careful with which movements I can do.

Right away, until the inflammation comes down a little there are going to be any fl flies. They just hurt too much. Ditto for wide grip bench presses. That leaves me with close grip benches and dumbbell work from which to construct my chest workout routine.

Hanging here with me because this is going to sound just a little bit weird, but this is the kind of routine that has worked best for me in the past and I have full confidence that it’s going to now as well.

• The first thing that I’m going to do as a full body warm-up is too quick sets of trapbar deadlifts. I love these things. They hit your posterior chain and your quadriceps simultaneously and work just about every other muscle group in your body as well. Obviously, your core is stressed to give you a bit of an abdominal workout, and your forearms and grip are also brought into play as you try to hang on to that damn trap bar.

• Now, onto the fun stuff. I’ll start out with two sets of benches using a medium grip and a lightweight, somewhere around my 20 rep maximum. I use a fast pace and only 30 seconds rest between sets.

• Next up is incline dumbbell presses. I like to go as heavy as I can on these, and if I’m in the gym I’m not afraid to ask for a spot to help me get the dumbbells into position. Normally I’ll do three sets of six for this exercise.

• Okay now I’m getting a weird on you again. At this point, I’m going to do super sets, alternating two exercises. The first of these is going to be a flat dumbbell press, using approximately my 12 rep max. I’ll only take these out to about eight reps so, and immediately after finishing each set of flat dumbbell presses, I’ll take one of my dumbbells and do pullovers.

• No, I’m not crazy. And I’m not sure that I actually buy into the whole “expanding your rib cage” thing about dumbbell pullovers. What I can tell you is that when I incorporate these into a chest workout, I feel much looser and I seemed to get a better pump. In addition, there’s nothing wrong with stretching the antagonistic muscles (in this case, your laps) during your chest workout. Pullovers will get three sets of eight as well.

• Now onto my finisher, if you read any of the other posts on this site, you’ll know what that is. Close Grip Bench Presses. I just love these damn things. I use an Olympic easy curl bar to prevent any stressing on my shoulder, pump out three sets of eight, with as much weight as I can handle in good form. Then I drop the weight by half and perform a final set to failure. Now that is my own personal best chest workout routine.

Will it be yours? I doubt it. You have a completely different set of goals, injuries and other factors coming into play. But if you’ve been going to the gym for a year or more, you should be at the point where you can design your own workout routine without any help from some drone in a bodybuilding magazine.

Specifically, I’ll be giving you three quality exercises including rep and set parameters as well as warm-up and a special finisher tip. After reading this brief post, you should be able to head to the gym and do a upper chest workout that really slams your pecs.

• First of all let’s talk warm-ups. There’s no reason to get fancy here. After a brief whole body warm-up, say five minutes on the Stairmaster, simply grab a barbell and pump out three sets of 10 reps on the incline bench. Try using about half the weight you would normally use for work sets.

• Then move on to your work set. Our first exercise will be no surprise here, incline bench presses. 10 reps in good form and perform three sets. Tempo, well that should be fast enough that it requires significant effort to keep the bar moving at speed, but not so fast that you lose control.

• Next exercise is going to be incline dumbbell flies. You want to use about 70% of the weight that you would use for normal flat bench dumbbell fly. Again three sets of 10 reps and you’re done.

• Your finisher here may be a little bit of a surprise. I’m going to recommend that you do close grip bench presses within E_Z Curl bar. You’ll find that not only do these give your pecs a tremendous pump, especially after the preceding sets, but that they will work your triceps better than just about any other movement.

For this set, because it is your finisher I’m going to recommend something a little different.

• Instead of using the amount of weight that you would normally use for three sets of 10 reps, go down about 20%. Do two sets of 10 reps, and then take your last set to failure. Now we get into the reason that I recommended an E_Z Curl bar. You’ll find an E_Z Curl bar is a lot easier to slip back into the rack behind your head when you’re exhausted. If you’re simply on a bench at home and you don’t have a rack to set the bar in at the end of your set you be glad that I recommended that you use less weight, because you’re going to have this set with the bar in your lap.

What I’ve done the preceding, I like to finish up with some light stretching. I think that as long as the muscles are warm and all the connective tissues have blood on them you may as well get some stretching it. Try this routine at least once. I think you’ll agree that it does the job and then some.

It really is possible to get the job done without expensive equipment. We’re going to assume that you have already taken care of your full body warmup by running sprints, jumping rope or similar, and you have broken a light sweat. Now you are ready to get a great chest workout at home.

• The first exercise has to be pushups. But not just any pushups. We’re going to take these to the limit, and get the pectoral muscle from all the angles.

Start out by placing you hands against the back of your sofa, of other piece of sturdy furniture. About a 45 degree angle will be just right. Pump out 3×10 with a slow, deliberate pace. This should be enough for the muscle specific warmup.

Take about a 30 second rest, then drop to the floor. Do another 3×10 at this angle. Again, slow and focused reps. Use about a 2sec up 2 sec down tempo.  Rest for 2 minutes.

During your rest period, take advantage of the time by doing some stretches. Stand up, and reaching out to your side and slightly behind you, grasp a door jamb or similar. Rotate your body to the other side, pulling the muscle, and getting in a good stretch. Repeat for the other side.

Now let’s hit the lower pecs. You might think that we can’t simulate a decline press with push-ups, but here we go:

Put your feet up on the back of the sofa, and again – slow deliberate reps for 3×10.

At this point, your pecs should be pumped, but we have a finisher for you as well.

Take a towel, or T-shirt and fold it over the vertical edge of the door. Slide it down until you hit the knobs. Wrap around the knobs and pull the ends back towards you. Placing your feet at the base of the door, lean back while still holding the ends of the towel.

Congratulations! You just built your own portable rowing machine. Since we only have bodyweight to work with, I think that we need about 4 sets of 10 here to heat up the back and rear deltoids and balance out our work on the chest.

There you have it. At this point you should be nice and sweaty. You’ve gotten in a complete home chest workout, with no equipment, in just 20 minutes or so. This will also work well on the road, plus you can take a dip in the hotel pool when you are finished.

But we don’t want to shortchange ourselves. We’re in the gym to get some work done, and if we don’t put that time to its most effective use, we may as well skip it. So how do we get the most benefit out of the quickest possible chest exercise plan? Read on ,and I’ll show you how to do this.

Compound exercises use multiple muscle groups, so we naturally get more work done when we use them. With this in mind, we’ll put together a killer chest workout that will not only put your packs through the ringer, but also enable you to get some work done on your back, and the supporting muscles in your shoulders and torso.

Obviously, the first ever going to do his warm-up. I recommend a whole body warm-up for about five minutes to get the blood flowing and to prepare yourself for the work to come. Because were pressed for time, muscle group specific warm-ups will consist of are beginning work sets. For each exercise selected, before you do your work sets simply perform 2 to 3 sets with about half of your regular exercise weight.

Our first exercise is going to be inclined dumbbell presses. Three sets of eight, done with a 4X for tempo. This is a great exercise. Not only will work your pecs, but also interior deltoids your lateral deltoids and your triceps.

We’re going to follow that up, believe it or not, with dumbbell pullovers. If you’ve never done pullovers don’t sweat it. They are not that hard. Either lie crosswise or lengthwise on a low exercise bench. Place your hands on the inside of one and of a medium weight dumbbell. The dumbbell bar should actually fit between the index finger and thumb on both of your hands. Hold the bar in this fashion at arms length above your chest and then slowly lower it back in behind your head, towards the floor. Bring it back to the starting position and repeat.

This is a great exercise for stretching your entire upper body. Some people believe that will actually expand your rib cage. I think the jury’s out on that but the proven benefits of the exercise are enough to convince me to do it. Again three sets of eight with a 4×4 tempo should be fine.

I would like to note here that regarding rest periods there are number of different tack she could take at this point. One method would be simply to eliminate them altogether, but I think we all know what would happen to exercise performance and technique if we went that route. A better idea is to take very short rest, say 30 seconds and alternate are exercises. If we go this direction are workout routine looks like this:

• warm-up, 5 minutes, Stairmaster or similar
• incline dumbbell presses: 30 pounds for 8 reps x 2
• dumbbell pullovers: 20 pounds for 8 reps x 2
• Inclined dumbbell presses: 60 pounds for eight reps
• 30 seconds rest
• dumbbell pullovers: 40 pounds for eight reps
• 30 seconds rest
• inclined dumbbell presses: 60 pounds for eight reps
• 30 seconds rest
• dumbbell pullovers: 40 pounds for eight reps
• 30 seconds rest
• Inclined dumbbell presses: 60 pounds for eight reps
• 30 seconds rest
• dumbbell pullovers: 40 pounds for eight reps

This entire chest workout plan, including warm-up should take you less than 20 minutes.

You’ll be in and out of the gym and on your way secure in the knowledge that your upper body has been given a complete workout.

Exercise technique is a completely different issue.

There are things we need to be doing to work this important muscle group effectively. Not surprisingly, these rules can be applied to your other workouts as well.

• Warming up comes first in your workout and it should be first on your list of things to do. (duh). Start out with about 50% of your working weight on the first two exercises you will be doing. Two sets of ten will get the blood flowing into your chest muscles, preparing them for the abuse ahead.

• Next some light stretching, both before and in between you’re your work sets. That’s right – in between. If your plan calls for sets of 5 reps with 3 minutes rest in between them, use that time to loosen up both your chest muscles, and the antagonistic muscle groups. You’ll see a decreased incidence of injuries, and the increased confidence that comes from the “loose” feeling during your chest exercises.

pectoral front view

When you are actually doing your work sets, there are a few things to remember as well.

• A complete range of motion is crucial, or you will reduce the effectiveness of what could otherwise be a killer chest workout. Make sure you take each movement from the fully contracted, to the full stretch position to develop the muscles throughout the range of motion, and also to give the connective tissues stretching and stress. They count too.

• The speed with which you are lifting has a great effect upon the muscles. If you think about it, ten reps done at a 2×2 tempo is putting the muscle under tension only half as much as the same set with the same weight done with a 4×4 tempo. These is a lot of debate surrounding this issue, but there is no denying that it does make a difference. You can try out different tempos to see which one works best for you, or you can do what the pros do: vary your tempos on a regular basis from workout to workout.

• Loading up the bar with as much iron as you can move may seem like the best way to get the most from your workout routine – but it’s not. It is better to vary your loading parameters from workout to workout, and from season to season. You wouldn’t expect to increase endurance, flexibility and max strength all at once, right? Choose the load that matches your current goal.

• Vary your workout routine on a regular basis. You should be changing something every two weeks, and completely re-vamping your workouts at least once every two months.

There you have it, the basics of a good chest work out for the chest or any other muscle group. Incorporate these techniques into your schedule, and you should see positive changes.

This will be the first in a series.

I like a chest workout that hits all areas of the chest in one session. I really do think that that is the best for growth and that also, hitting the entire chest in one session enables you to then give it a few days rest before you blast it again. More advanced trainees may want to do an lower chest workout to develop belly of the pectorals – but that is personal need and preference.

I start out with dumbbell bench presses.

Why not barbell, well it’s because I have some problems with barbells. I believe that using a barbell forces your arms and shoulders into a single position and reinforces a single movement grew. While this may not be an issue for younger letters, those of us who have been lifting for many years will start to feel a few twinges. I believe that a lot of the problems that we older lifters experience are due to what would be called if we were typing instead of what the lifting repetitive motion injuries.

Dumbbells remove this consideration completely. With dumbbells we are free to change hand position, elbow position, movement groove, beginning and end of rep positioning and really anything about the movement that we like. We are also free to adjust the movement as we wish to compensate for current or past injuries.

I start on a flat bench seated with my dumbbells resting on my knees. As I lay back, I bring the dumbbells with me so that when I am supine on the bench they are already correctly positioned for the beginning of the rep. I like to start my reps with the dumbbells supinated and as I press the weight up and back over to the finishing point which is just behind my forehead I turn my wrists so that the end of the rep has them pronated.

I like to use an amount of weight that enables me to get between four and six reps. I generally do three or four sets.

The next exercise in my favorite chest workout routine is the incline fly.

I like to set the bench about a 45° angle. I generally use about two thirds as much weight on the incline fly as I would on a flat fly. For this movement I’m more worried about the feel and muscle control than I am about pushing a lot of iron. I press the dumbbells overhead and careful to keep a bend in my elbows bring them down and out to the side. A brief pause at the bottom of the movement, and again keeping a slight crook in my elbows to bring the dumbbells together over my head. I like to do four sets of eight for this movement, as again it’s more about muscle feel and getting blood into the chest that it is about moving a lot of iron.

The final movement in the first of my favorite chest workouts is close grip bench presses.

I use the York Olympic easy curl bar. I’ve written about this piece of equipment before, and I have to say that it has completely changed my workouts. All of my old concerns about my rotator cuff tears, my supraspinatus tendon and so forth are done with. Just a great piece of equipment.

I like to use about 75% of my one rep max for this exercise. As this is a finisher, I don’t normally have a set number of sets for this exercise when I go into the gym. Instead, I go by feel. If it’s feeling really heavy, maybe I only get a few sets of six. If I’m feeling strong maybe I get 5×8.

This bar has completely changed my workouts, since the “day my shoulder exploded”. With it I can really get in a good lower chest workout using the decline bench, without the shoulder pain I used to have. First the vital statistics:

• It measures 53 1/2 inches between the collars – which means that you can use it in your standard power rack. For those of your who primarily work out at home – I don’t have to tell you what a bonus this is. None of us wants to be the dork that died with a bar on his neck.
• The angles are not too severe. Unlike a lot of curl bars that look like a letter Z, this one has less radical angles, and they are spaced properly for benching.
• The bar has proper Olympic sleeves and bearings. Your standard plates will slide right on with no problem.
• Black, hardcore finish. It’s just so metal dude.
• It has proper knurling in the grip area. Enough that you can keep hold properly, but not so much that you feel like you’re arm wrestling a file.
• It weighs exactly 35 pounds. Yay. I just count it as a plate. This is a bigger deal than you might think. I some bars that weight 7 or 13 pounds. At my age, you are looking for incremental improvements, and keeping a proper workout log with careful sets, reps and weights is crucial.

I use this bar two ways: as a close grip bench press bar and for curls. Either way it helps with my shoulder, and takes the strain off of my elbow as well.

Here is a typical chest workout where I use this bar in my “finisher”:

After the always recommended warm-up, and a few light sets:

• Dumbbell incline bench presses 4×8 with your 12 rep max
• Rest for 3 minutes
• Dumbbell incline flys 3×8 with your 12 rep max
• Rest for 3 minutes
• Close grip bench presses 3×8 with your 12 rep max – but take the last set to failure. I use the decline bench here to get in a good lower chest workout.

Move though this workout routine quickly, resting only long enough between sets to be sure that you can get the next set. You will find that your rest periods will be a little longer towards the end of the routine – that is OK.

If you have shoulder pain when doing regular bench presses, or are just in the market for a really nice quality EZ curl bar, I recommend that you go with this one. York’s reputation is deserved, and their customer service is outstanding.

Nothing makes you look like you’re not just a weightlifter, but a STRONG weightlifter more than massive pecs. It is important to set up yoru chest exercise routine to develop your chest – but not at the expense of your overall look.

However, you can take it too far. You don’t want to end up looking like the chest version of Greg Valentino. An out of balance, un-proportional physique is not only un-attractive, it looks ridiculous. So what are the proportions we should strive for?

That is a matter of ongoing debate, but over time somewhat of a consensus has emerged, and been accepted in both the bodybuilding community and the general public. Here are the most commonly agreed upon proportions for a body that looks strong and fit, without looking overblown or silly.

Starting from the top:

• Neck – same as biceps and calves
• Shoulders – Chest measurement plus several inches (this on is all over the place – primarily because your shoulder width is highly dependent upon your bone structure. You can add some width to your outer shoulders, but there is only so much mass there. In addition, the overall thickness of your torso will have an affect on this.)
• Chest – Your waist measurement plus 12 inches will give you a start towards a nice V-taper. This may sound like a lot to a beginner, but think about it: If you have a 32 inch waist and a 44 inch chest, you are already there. I don’t think I need to point out that dropping a little stomach fat from around your middle will help….
• Arms – Measured flexed, pre-workout, these should be the same size as your neck and calves.
• Waist – this will drive a lot of what you look like. Suffice it to say that you want this lean and tight. If you need to lose belly fat, there are a lot of resources on the internet to help you do that.
• Hips – Keep this as close to your waist measurement as you can. You want a V-taper, then a straight shot to your ankles, if possible. Now there will be a lot of variation here. Some guys simply have larger, more muscular glutes. (Can you say squats?)
• Quadriceps – This is going to be a function of both your workout program, and your genetics. While you don’t want to look like a modern day Tom Platz, you do want to have legs that are strong and look it as well. What you don’t want is to end up looking like a side of beef on stilts – the classic “bar-body”.
• Calves – These should be the same size as your biceps and neck, or close to it.
• Feet – you’re on your own here, dude

This is important stuff. The entire point of your chest workout out is appearance. Your exercise routine should be constructed to enhance this. Please hold any comments about health and longevity – I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I know why we’re all in the gym.