Building a Super Hero Chest
I’m sure you're familiar with the traditional approach of building size and mass and then leaning out. Well, I’m here to break that inefficient approach and give you the tools you need to build lean size.
There are three important components at play here:
- Body fat
- Training
- Nutrition (eating, drinking, and supplementation)
Body fat
The key to a lean anterior upper body (mainly chest and abs) is your total amount of body fat. As you know, you could do thousands of the best abs exercises in the world, but you won't see anything unless the body fat above the abs is reduced. Similar to having a massive, lean chest, you'll just have a big chest that will most likely be mistaken for man boobs unless there's separation between your lower pecs and your upper abs.
But aren’t decline presses and pull-thrus designed to work your lower chest? While this is true, the lower pec muscle alone won't give you the super hero chest separation that you want. You must have a systematic, full body fat burning plan in place to keep your body burning calories while at rest.
The best ways to burn fat are by performing finishers and metabolically infused bodybuilding workouts.
Finishers: Finishers are movements at the end of your workout designed to crank your heart rate and rip muscle tissue. They shouldn't be any longer than five minutes. For example, for a chest finisher after your workout, you could do plyometric push-ups with sprints. For the first set, start by doing ten plyometric push-ups immediately followed by a 10-second sprint in place. Rest 20 seconds. Then do eight plyometric push-ups immediately followed by a 10-second sprint. Rest 20 seconds. Continue in this manner until you've worked your way down to one plyometric push-up followed by a 10-second sprint.
Metabolically infused bodybuilding workouts: I love yoga pants, too, but checking out girls while you workout is a waste of your gym time. Save it for later. Sitting on the bench talking to your buddy is for fat people. Stay active in between your sets!
Here are some examples of active rest movements that you can do during your chest sets:
- Isometric push-ups
- Chest flexes
- Chest dips for stretching (not to fatigue)
- Core workouts
- Soft tissue workouts
- Mobility work
- Dynamic stretches
- Paces for the length of the gym floor
Training
There aren't any surprises here. The chest is a big muscle group and requires a healthy mix of volume and heavy weight. If you’re training correctly, you should barely be able to do your last set and you should have to struggle to position yourself to stretch where it’s normally effortless for you.
Your training program needs the following:
- Push-ups
- Traditional variety of planes plus some in betweeners
- Heavy lifting
- Drop sets
- Force reps
- Negatives
- External resistance
Push-ups: Two common mistakes I see are skinny guys overarching their backs to put up weight they don't have any business touching and guys with good size doing the standard barbell/dumbbell fly routine. Neither party ever does push-ups. Why? Mainly because they’re perceived as easy because they're so simple. Yes, the push-up is simple and can even be described as a “basic” movement, but it shouldn't be easy.
If you can’t crank out fifty with two seconds down, a one-second pause, and two seconds back up, you shouldn’t even touch the bench press. No matter how strong or “advanced” you are, there are variations of the push-up that can make it challenging for you:
- Decline (feet elevated)
- Plyometric
- Three-point
- Isometric
- Low isometric
- Super slow (4:4:4)
- Band or otherwise externally loaded
- Suspended via rings, TRXs, or a combination of other objects
- One arm
Push-ups should be a staple in your workout, not just on chest days. Think of it like this—if you want to get better at golfing, you need to work on your swing as much as you can. If you want to bench press more weight, you need to build strength and efficiency through your pressing motion. Push-ups are great because you work against your body weight and use your full body (triceps, delts, hamstrings, entire core, ankles).
To incorporate them into your training, make sure to include push-ups in your daily warm up. Have at least one set of a push-up progression in each chest workout, and do them randomly throughout the day.
Traditional variety of planes plus some in betweeners: To build size, you need to work on the flat, incline, and decline plane. We all know this. But you should also cycle in variations of each plane with obscure angles and by using other modes of each lift:
- Use suspension trainers or bands for presses
- Set the bench at angles different from the norm
- Perform unilateral (one dumbbell) presses
- Press off the floor
- Press kettlebells instead of dumbbells
Heavy lifting: There isn't any way around this. To get size, you need to lift heavy! Therefore, make sure to include five, four, three, two, and one rep maxes into your program.
Drop sets: With drop sets, you'll perform the desired amount of reps for a given weight and then immediately drop the weight to get more reps. I recommend doing drop sets after the last heavy lift of the day. Depending on the amount of reps you do on a given day, you can do one to four drop sets.
Force reps: With force reps,you'll leverage one to twenty percent of your spotter's strength to help you press a weight that you otherwise wouldn't be able to do by yourself. This method is great to use with weight that you can barely lift or to get in more reps once you've fatigued.
Negatives: With negatives,you're essentially performing half the lift—the negative or eccentric part of the motion. For example, you can press up the weight and then let the bar drop under control. You can do this by having your spotter control the weight on the way down or by slowly resisting the weight on the way back down.
External resistance: To build size you need to think beyond the barbells! There are numerous types of external resistance you can work into your set:
- A spotter's body weight pushing or pulling against you
- Fat Gripz to help improve your grip strength
- Bands or chains to attach to the barbell
Sample chest workout
Full body, dynamic warm up
1A: Bench press, 45% for 10 reps, 65% for 8 reps, 75% for 6 reps, 80% for 4 reps, 85% for 2 forced reps with drop set one to 60%, drop set two to 45%
1B: Reverse crunches, 20
2A: Heavy dumbbell flies, 75% for 6 reps, 80% for 4 reps, 85% for 4 reps
2B: Single leg glute bridge, 10 reps each leg
3A: Unilateral incline dumbbell press, 55% for 10 reps, 60% for 8 reps, 65% for 6 reps, 70% for 4 reps
3B: Chest dips without exertion
4A: Decline push-ups, 25 reps
4B: Pulley pull-thru, 20 reps, 18 reps, 15 reps, 12 reps
Finisher: 10, 8, 6, 4, 2, 1 plyometric push-ups followed by a 10-second sprint in place with a 20-second rest
Nutrition (eating, drinking, and supplementation)
You can never fully reach your potential with the training side of things without proper nutrition, and you will never drop body fat unless you have your nutrition in check. I hate using the word 'diet' unless I'm referring to an actual restrictive diet.
Drinking: The rules of drinking are far easier, so let’s start there. Drink 0.55 times your body weight in ounces daily (at least). Only drink water, a post-workout shake, and one coffee or tea on a daily basis. Limit yourself to one to two alcoholic beverages a week. Of course, drinking calories is a bad thing, but nowadays there are all sorts of drinks that read “zero calorie” or “low cal” that are full of artificial sweeteners. By sticking to the rules above, you will keep yourself away from these deceptive drinks.
Eating: I’ve found great success for my clients as well as myself by eating five to six small meals per day and three bigger meals a day. I also graze on something healthy as needed. I recommend that you do what works for you. First try eating five to six times per day. If you aren't seeing results or have a hard time sticking to it, switch your approach.
As I alluded to earlier, gaining size always has to come before leaning out, and part of gaining size is eating more calories. Rather than bulk up with more calories, eat only lean proteins, healthy fats, and fibrosis non-gluten carbohydrates on a daily basis. Consume regular carbs on days when you train chest or nights before you train chest.
Supplements: I recommend building a solid base through working out hard and eating right before you use supplements. I see too many guys turn to supplements as if they're magic pills. The reality is supplements only improve a disciplined training and nutrition attack. They can't replace either of the two. When you're ready, I recommend the following:
- Protein isolate: Protein will help rebuild and repair muscle tissue and give you more muscle definition, strength, and size.
- Creatine: The most researched supplement on the market has proven to build lean mass and strength and enhance performance.
What now?
Get to work, baby, and enjoy the journey. Apply these principals right away and commit to only having good or great workouts and nothing less!