You’re bench pressing, doing endless push-ups and yet your chest is still looking like a deflated balloon. We get it – there’s nothing more frustrating than when a specific muscle group is stubborn to grow, despite constantly giving it the attention it deserves. The chest (particularly the upper pecs) are one of those areas that can be notoriously hard to grow.
In a recent YouTube video, Physical Therapist and Strength Coach, Jeff Cavaliere, says turning your “pancake pecs to a chiselled chest” is a combination of doing the right exercises in the right way. Ready to pump up those pecs? These are his top five exercises…
1. Bench press
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“I assume you’re already doing a lot of dumbbell bench pressing right now, but your chest is still flat,” says Cavaliere. “Likely because you’re de-prioritising your chest and making your shoulders do more of the work.” So, how do you fix that? Cavaliere says two things: fixing the speed in which you perform your reps and the positioning of your head as you lower the dumbbells to your chest.
“You want to try and move the weight as fast as possible on the way up and of course, really control it slowly on the way down,” he says. “The chest is comprised of the third-highest percentage of type 2 fibres of all the muscles in your body. What does that mean? This muscle is geared to handle more acceleration during the concentric of the exercise.
“When it comes to the position of your head, you’re going to allow yourself to just lift even just one or two inches off of the bench as your lower the dumbbells down.” He says this will help put the chest in a prime position so that they’re the main drivers of the movement, rather than your shoulders.
2. Cable incline bench press
If you struggle to really feel it in your pecs whilst flat pressing, Cavaliere says this move is a “game changer”. “What you’ll find about setting the cables out wide and having to actively adduct them just to get them in position to press, is you’re almost pre-engaging the pecs and setting the stage once again for them to do more of the work and take the delts out of it. I guarantee you, with 100 per cent certainty, you will feel the pecs during this exercise.”
Also, he says not to get caught up on the fact that you may be shifting less weight with this exercise. he says the point isn’t about going heavy, it’s about developing better mind-muscle connection so that, when you return to those exercises you’ve struggled to feel anything on, you’ll (hopefully) get more out of them.
3. 1 and a half dips
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While some people may tell you to focus more on the upper chest and forget about the lower, Cavaliere disagrees. The exercise he suggests to hit the lower pec portion is one and a half dips. “It’s the classic exercise, but you have to do it the right way. I want you to make sure you’re not allowing your shoulders to shrug at any point during the exercise; if you allow your shoulders to rise up and shrug up, that chest is going to get hollowed out and most of that press is going to come through the front delt and the triceps.
“Then when you get to the bottom, you don’t try to escape the uncomfortability of the stretch, you actually try to wallow in it, by performing a one-and-a-half dip. Again, anything you can do to spend time in that lowered stretch position of the pecs is going to contribute more to growth of that lower pec line and one that looks less flat.”
4. Cable Y pullovers
That being said, a more prominent upper chest can instantly transform your chest from looking flat to full. One of Cavaliere’s favourite exercises for this is the cable Y pullover. “It’s very important that you set the exercise up properly; you want your bench far enough away from the cables that you can get your arms up overhead in this wide position and you pull your hands together at the same time that you drive your arms forward, like you would in a traditional pull-over.”
The benefit of using cables, as opposed to a dumbbell, is not only do you not have to worry about potentially dropping it on yourself, but you get a much bigger range of motion, which will help supercharge those gains.
5. Cable crossover
As well as exercises that involve dipping and pressing, Cavaliere says you also need to focus on exercises that move your arms across the body and, apparently, there’s no better than the cable cross-over. “The best thing about the cross-over is its versatility, either straight out here in front of your body, anchoring from a low position and raising your arm up and across your body, or anchoring in a high position and lowering your arm down and across your body.”
Going from high to low will hit your lower chest, low to high and across targets the upper pecs. “This is one of the few exercises that gets the adduction needed to start making that chest of yours become much more three-dimensional.”
