exercises for pecks?

[dot]

I just want some tone there, right now i have none at all. I dont have manboobs but I just dont have any tone there. It's not an issue of losing bodyfat either.

What exercises can I do to build them up? I heard push ups exercise those muscles. What other things can I do?

 

[danno1]

tone is a woman word for muscle

theres a million exercises. some possible ones are dumbell flies at flat ground, incline bench press with barbell, dips helped me out too, dumbell bench presses decline, etc

 

[EFFORT]

I It's not an issue of losing bodyfat either.

how do u figure

 

[blinkwatt]

Incline,bar or dumbells.
Flat bench,bar or dumbells.
Decline,bar or dumbells.
Flys,cable,machine or dumbells.
Dips,there is only one way to do dips.

 

[spesmilitis]

No decline presses and no fly's. If you want to do em, do em after the two below:

Press (flat, incline, db, bb (not all at the same time, pick one and work on it for a while before switching) )

Dips

Oh, and shoulder press for cool shoulders.

 

[shaunuk]

Hey dot, I guess by saying you have no tone there but no bodyfat to lose, you're just saying you have very little muscle on your chest (and in general)?

Then in that case, you can build some muscle by lifting weights and eating your arse off in protein. It's no good just doing chest exercises, if you're gonna do it, do it properly and do your whole body. Read the thread "Where to start" posted by our man EFFORT and get yourself on a good weight training program and look into nutrition

Anyway, chest exercises are as the guys said above, you wanna mainly focus on bench presses (inline, flat, decline - with barbells and dumbbells) and also dips. Pec decks and flies have their places too, for a good stretch and some size, but not for building strength..

-shaun

 

[mrRuckus]

No reason not to do decline. I wish I knew why people just make things up.

Hell, isn't decline the one that hits the chest most because it shifts the work away from the shoulders? Flat barbell is the one that leads to shoulder problems and pec tears.

"total chest destruction." - what's the point of this?

 

[speakeasy]

What do you guys thinking of doing pushups(till muscle failure) even on your non-chest workout days? Or should I just stick to working my chest at the gym on presses once a week? Say one day a week of 3 chest sets as heavy as I can do(without a spotter), then maybe 2 other days, do a set of pushups until I can no longer push out anymore, which for me as a beginner is around 50.

 

[Warboss Alex]

I like to walk out of the gym knowing that I gave it my all on each set. If I feel like I was slacking it gets me depressed, and I'll know that I don't deserve to get bigger. So I make sure to really make my chest work, especially since it's a lagging bodypart.

Given your latest pic I'd say your chest isn't a weak bodypart.. you have no strong or weak bodyparts, you just need overall size.

What do you guys thinking of doing pushups(till muscle failure) even on your non-chest workout days? Or should I just stick to working my chest at the gym on presses once a week? Say one day a week of 3 chest sets as heavy as I can do(without a spotter), then maybe 2 other days, do a set of pushups until I can no longer push out anymore, which for me as a beginner is around 50.

No.

 

[spesmilitis]

I rarely hear anyone recommend the decline press so I assumed its not that important. If you say it is i'll consider it.

Declines also seems to work the bottom part of the pecs; most guys want to built their chest upward, not down.

 

[mrRuckus]

You could get away with never doing declines but there's no reason not to do them. Most of these compound exercises you should be doing at some point. Adding weight to any exercise heavily tends towards bigger and stronger you. All exercises stall at some point. So do a different exercise. Or just change the grip to make it a somewhat different exercise. Sometimes neural gains just stop and slightly changing how the exercise is done sparks reason for your body to start adapting again.

This TARGETING nonsense when you're not even breaking a lean 200 lbs is a waste of time. Getting strong on all the big chest exercises is what is going to keep the gains coming indefinitely. Of course that doesn't mean switch constantly.

http://www.exrx.net/Lists/ExList/ChestWt.html
See flat and decline bench. They work the same muscles. The difference is the angle. Why wouldn't you want to get stronger in more than one bar path particularly when one exercise will carry over to the other? Do you think a guy decline benching 500lbs would only be benching 150 lbs?

I personally hate flat benching and welcome something different for almost that reason alone.

Flies do seem kind of silly to me. Maybe it's just me but they feel like the tricep kickbacks of the chest. I really don't know, but there are so many bar, dumbbell, and dip exercises for chest i doubt it will matter if i don't do them for a long time.

I like to walk out of the gym knowing that I gave it my all on each set. If I feel like I was slacking it gets me depressed, and I'll know that I don't deserve to get bigger. So I make sure to really make my chest work, especially since it's a lagging bodypart.

My gains accelerated when i stopped going to failure every set. Oh yeah, these gains accelerated after going on a calorie DEFICIT. Yeah, i got better strength gains eating less and losing fat than when I was draining my CNS by going to failure on every set and eating more protein and calories in general.

Mostly i'm doing 3 or 4 sets per muscle group now but only go all out on the 4th.

Example bench:
225x6, 225x6, 225x6, 225x7 <-- goal is 4 sets of 6... go all out on last. Steady small weight increases each week.

I used to do more like:
225x9, 225x7, 225x4, 225x2 <-- fried CNS for me. Harder to increase next week. Frequent 'bad' days of losing reps due to CNS not recovering. I remember days where i'd have six or SEVEN reps just vanish on me then come back the next week. That doesn't happen to me now.

 

[Warboss Alex]

Nothing wrong with declines, use a medium-narrow grip and they're a good sub for close grip benches, and helpful to those who do plifting style bench (the only way bench should be done).

 

[Warboss Alex]

3 or 4 sets per bodypart? So you do one exercise for chest, man? And what's CNS?

Right now, I stick with three sets per exercise, and 2-3 exercises per body part.

Like on chest/tri day, I'll do:

- Decline DB/BB Press (alternate week to week):
3 x 8-10 and 6-8 (alternating)
- Decline/Flat Flies
3 x 8-12
- Dips
3 x 8-10
- Seated Overhead DB Extension:
3 x 8-10
- Lying Triceps Extension:
3 x 8-10

..or something. That ain't too much, is it?

You do that much, and you think your chest is lagging .. how about cutting the volume down to like, a third of that?

CNS = central nervous system.

 

[Warboss Alex]

So you're saying that you can use the decline bench for both tris and lower chest or is it for people that can't do close-grips?

Why couldn't people be able to do close grips? And no, I just said they can be similar if you use a narrow grip (the angle makes it more tri-oriented - like inclines make it more chest oriented). Like if you have a close grip bench in your workout, you can rotate it with narrow grip decline bench for a similar exercise.

 

[Warboss Alex]

So you're saying that you can use the decline bench for both tris and lower chest or is it for people that can't do close-grips?

So two exercises? 15 minute workouts?

You know nothing about intensity if you think you can do two exercises in 15 minutes. My workouts take (or took anyway) 2 hours and I do 3-5 movements per session.

For chest one main movement PLUS one supplemental movement is more than adequate. You'd be surprised!

 

[Warboss Alex]

Rest depends on the exercise, generally 2-10 minutes. If it's squats or something like that it gets longer.. my squat warmups alone take 30-40 minutes (if going all out).

No, I still think that's too much. It should be something like that:

(example)
Incline press 2 x 5
Dips 2 x 8-10

After all that I might not even bother with direct tricep work, but an extension for higher reps would work.

Note the rep ranges are NOT set in stone.. they will vary according to your overall workout, goals, recovery etc. You can do anything from a near-max single to a 5x5 - knowing nothing about you I gave you a 'middle of the road' solution (erring on the side of caution as regards volume).

 

[mrRuckus]

3 or 4 sets per bodypart? So you do one exercise for chest, man? And what's CNS?

Right now, I stick with three sets per exercise, and 2-3 exercises per body part.

I didn't mean to recommend a number of sets. I was just giving an example of the number I'm doing now. Right now my volume is a littler higher than I normally do. Two or three sets probably is plenty for you. My main recommendation that i'm not positive about for everyone but worked wonderfully for me was to not going all out every single set, but rather just the last one for each exercise because it tends to wear on the nervous system pretty hard. Tired nervous system = strength loss.. no gains.

My normal training concentrating on strength is something like alex said.
Bench 3x3 (last set only to failure)
Dips 3x8 (last set only to failure)
or
Flat DB 3x5 (last set only to failure)
Incline DB 3x8 (last set only to failure)
or
...



There's an old addage that you shouldn't be training body parts but rather training lifts.

If you get the lifts up, the body parts will take care of themselves. Get your bench, squat, and deadlifts up any way possible both by directly training them and by using lifts that will help increase the big three.

Such as:
Bigger good mornings = bigger deadlift
Bigger decline bench = bigger flat bench = bigger chest

When I hurt my knee this past spring and couldn't squat down low enough to deadlift for about 2-3 months I was doing straight legged good mornings and when i could finally deadlift it had gone up while having not done a single rep in months!

Sometimes I just ignore flat bench completely and do some dumbbell, dip, and/or closegrip work and in 5-6 weeks go and do a 1 rep max of bench and it's gone up 5-10 lbs.

In the end you can really do WHATEVER YOU WANT as long as you're increasing reps or weight nearly every workout. Beginners and intermediates really should have some progression almost every time. The advice given out is what is most likely for the average person going to give you this progression every time given an adequate diet.

 

[Heart Break Kid]

Do you do dips? Those are my fav. 2 reps of 10 if you can manage.

 

[MrS]

Dips are crazy-cool.

 

[Kev07]

squats, incline//decline/regular bench press, cables, dips

switch up your routine

one day do heavy weights ~5 reps

another day high rep 10-20