Help with chest?

[InTraining]

It seems that I have hit a plateau when it comes to growth on my chest. Wondering if people could give me some ideas as to how to illicit some new hypertrophy.

I use incline BB and DBs as the cornerstone of all chest workouts, and throw in things like flat bench with DBs\BB(never really felt flat BB hit my chest well, more in the tris and front delts), machine press etc to keep things fresh..

Maybe I should try pre-exhausting and\or using a limited ROM on pressing exercises?

 

[guldukat]

It's hard to say, IT. What's your chest workout look like right now? Sets, reps, frequency, etc.?

 

[Lee]

try slippin some incline flies and decline press in there and see what happens.

 

[view]

Your exercise selection is fine. i would try drop sets, supersets, giant sets, speed bench, whatever, but keep the exercises the same.

 

[Allon]

Are you doing cable crossovers, flies, machine flies, dips?
Also, try to keep changing rep ranges, like once a month.
6-8 reps, then 12-15 reps, then 4-6 reps.... or even use all those rep ranges in one workout, different rep range for each exersize.

 

[wnt2bBeast]

It seems that I have hit a plateau when it comes to growth on my chest. Wondering if people could give me some ideas as to how to illicit some new hypertrophy.

I use incline BB and DBs as the cornerstone of all chest workouts, and throw in things like flat bench with DBs\BB(never really felt flat BB hit my chest well, more in the tris and front delts), machine press etc to keep things fresh..

Maybe I should try pre-exhausting and\or using a limited ROM on pressing exercises?

what rep range have you been using?
my guess is that your weights have prolly stagnated..a strengthening phase would be optimal then go back to your 8-10 or whatever rep range is better for size for you..

 

[ChinkNasty]

recently went from 5x5 for about 6 months and gradually transitioned into a 15, 10, 8, 8, 6 set scheme and my chest growth shot up...give it a run

 

[Akerstei]

Try changing your workout for a week- do some puch-ups, ball pushups, and other unstable chest exercises. The point is to work the chest in a totally different way for a week, maybe 2 weeks-shock it with some instability. You may also want to do dips for reps and such things. This way when you go back to your traditional exercises, the body will handle them in a differrent way and this will stimulate growth. Also, changing your workout in such a way will help lessen the likelyhood of future shoulder injury from repetitive use.

 

[B0dybuilder]

Do you mean with your chest growth, or your Bench Press weight?

 

[wnt2bBeast]

Do you mean with your chest growth, or your Bench Press weight?

its the same question..if you do your pressing with 225 for 3 sets of 10 sooner or later you willnot grow you need to keep adding weight (meaning you need to get stronger)..otherwise your just maintaining

 

[B0dybuilder]

I'll have to agree to disagree bro...well party at least

There is definatly correlation in both growth and ...well... no growth ... but i found when i did some more pec specific work, more towards isolation, rather then compound i got a greater growth in Chest then Bench.

What i would lead to recommend would be as a basic step....

Bench: Weighted Dips, Close Grip Bench, Incline first
Chest: Weighted Dips, Pec Dec / DB Flys, Xovers

As with any advice, this is what worked for ME

Good luck anyways

 

[wnt2bBeast]

I'll have to agree to disagree bro...well party at least

There is definatly correlation in both growth and ...well... no growth ... but i found when i did some more pec specific work, more towards isolation, rather then compound i got a greater growth in Chest then Bench.

What i would lead to recommend would be as a basic step....

Bench: Weighted Dips, Close Grip Bench, Incline first
Chest: Weighted Dips, Pec Dec / DB Flys, Xovers

As with any advice, this is what worked for ME

Good luck anyways

rather than argue with you..im jsut gonna say i completely disagree with everything you said LOL..ill leave it at that

 

[B0dybuilder]

lol.. sounds fine by me... you look bigger then me!

 

[H_T_]

make sure you press with your pecs and not with the delts or tri's and lats........do some deep flat flyes can help to it'll stretch that fascial membrane and give you more room to grow.

 

[InTraining]

Thanks for the suggestions everyone! Here is what my last chest workout looked like

Cable Crossovers 3 sets on high pulley
Incline DB press 3 sets
Machine Press 2 sets
1 burnout set on free motion machine

Definitely felt like I was targetting the pecs more this way vs. doing incline db first

 

[Guinness5.0]

For the last three weeks I have been flat benching with my upper arms at 90 degrees to my torso, which puts the bar close to my delts at the stretched postion. It was closer to my nips before. This has helped immensely. I used to think the same thing you did about flat bench, but this new way has changed my mind. Hope this helps.

Oh yeah you'll have to go much lighter but you'll feel it so much more.

 

[curgeo]

What Want2 is talking about is the Law of Accomodation. Bear with me, I am typing this out of Vladimair Zatsiorsky's book, "Science and Practice of Strength Training."

"If athlete employ the same exercise with the same training load over long periods of time, performance gains decrease. This is a manifestation of the biological law of accomodation, often considered a general law of biology."

"Because of accomodation, it is inefficient to use standard exercises or a standard training load over a long period of time. Training programs must vary."

"To Avoid or decrease the negative influence of accomodation, training programs are periodically modified. In principle, there are two ways to modify training programs:

Quantitative - Changing training loads (for instance, the total amount of weight lifted) and

Qualitative - replacing the exercises"


Which is exactly what wnt2 was saying.

 

[bignate73]

For the last three weeks I have been flat benching with my upper arms at 90 degrees to my torso, which puts the bar close to my delts at the stretched postion. It was closer to my nips before. This has helped immensely. I used to think the same thing you did about flat bench, but this new way has changed my mind. Hope this helps.

Oh yeah you'll have to go much lighter but you'll feel it so much more.

when you start feeling pain in the front of your shoulder and have to rub it after each set...

sorry bro, i've seen too many people bench this way fall to the wayside. it gets perpetuated on here through bodybuilding dogma. not saying going light isnt valid but there are other ways...

 

[curgeo]

I still don't understand why people do things that cause joint pain. If it hurts, there are a million different ways to stimulate the muscle without that exercise.

 

[wnt2bBeast]

What Want2 is talking about is the Law of Accomodation. Bear with me, I am typing this out of Vladimair Zatsiorsky's book, "Science and Practice of Strength Training."

"If athlete employ the same exercise with the same training load over long periods of time, performance gains decrease. This is a manifestation of the biological law of accomodation, often considered a general law of biology."

"Because of accomodation, it is inefficient to use standard exercises or a standard training load over a long period of time. Training programs must vary."

"To Avoid or decrease the negative influence of accomodation, training programs are periodically modified. In principle, there are two ways to modify training programs:

Quantitative - Changing training loads (for instance, the total amount of weight lifted) and

Qualitative - replacing the exercises"


Which is exactly what wnt2 was saying.

thnks bro..even science agrees with me

 

[TRUEsoldier]

start hitting some RP sets, that will stimulate the hell out of the ol' chest!!

Peace