How to Improve a Small Chest
This article is not going to be one like you would typically find in a popular muscle magazine. What I mean by that is I am not going to give you a bunch of crap about this or that training variable that is supposed to make all the difference in your workouts. At the end of the article you will also not find an outlined program in which I guarantee will add “x amount of inches on your chest in 6 weeks”. Instead, this article is going to focus on why you are not achieving the best results with your chest training. In my opinion it really boils down to two groups of people.
1- People who don’t bench
2- People who do bench but bench incorrectly
People Who Don’t Bench
I used to be part of this group, well not originally. You see when I first started out at 14 years old, like most young teenagers, benching was all I really cared about. For the first 6 months of training I focused on primarily improving my bench press. The newbie gains in my chest were great! I went from a completely flat chest to having a little meat atop my ribs and increased strength tremendously. But then something terrible happened, I became at least what I thought was “educated”. I started reading magazines like Flex, MD, etc, and realized Phil Heath doesn’t bench press so must be I don’t need to. So I started using more machines and only really doing one non machine movement for chest and that was usually incline dumbbell press. I laughed at guys who were pounding away on the bench press although; they all had bigger chests than me. Looking back I wish I had known someone that could have pointed out how stupid it was for a 15-16 year old kid with limited training experience to be cutting out compound movements for any muscle group. The good news is I did not stay with this method very long. I soon realized that I did not get the same stimulation and growth from just using dumbbells and machines. I have been benching heavy ever since.
The typical reasons why one decides not to bench press are usually because it puts a lot of strain on the front delt and rotator cuff or because of a preexisting injury. Now if you have an injury that does not allow you to perform the bench press then by all means find another way. I am not saying you absolutely NEED to bench press to develop a big chest. What I am saying is that the majority of people who have a small chest typically do not bench or bench wrong. If your goal is to improve your chest do not limit yourself from performing a great compound movement such as the bench press. I have found doing a well designed warm up that includes some rotator cuff stimulation before bench pressing really helps save the shoulders from some of the pounding of heavy benching.
People Who Bench Wrong
The number one way people bench wrong is due to the amount of weight they try to use on the exercise. It all goes back to the famous saying “what do you bench?” Since the beginning, the bench press has been used as a measuring stick. Guys always want to compare their bench press with the next guy at the gym. If you are a powerlifter this makes sense because the bench press is one of the three competitive lifts. However, if your goal is size its best to lower the weight, use good form, use a full range of motion, and focus on contracting the muscle. Going down half way and doing mini reps with about 150% of your max is not going to help you very much. Likewise, if you want to put on size you don’t necessarily need to max out all the time. I recommend testing your true max every 3-6 weeks as a way to determine if you are getting stronger. A great way to build muscle it to create a stronger muscle.
Take Home Message
If you don’t currently bench press try adding it in to your training program.
This is me testing my max at around 160lbs.