Hey, what's going on nation? I'm Scott from Muscularstrength.com and in today's video
I'm gonna show you how to build a nice big thick chest now
the reason why this video topic came up
Is because a lot of you asked me how to fix uneven pecs and I just want to start this video off by saying
99% of the time when someone tells me they have uneven muscles it has to do a lot with how they flex in
Lighting and how they're posing in front of the mirror
Most of us don't really have one side that looks way bigger than the other side
it's very
minut details that only our crazy minds pick up on
And it mainly stems from a position of if you're thinking your chest is uneven. You're probably looking at it all the time
And it's an area where you just want to see improvement
so
I want you to kind of take this video in as whether you think your chest is uneven or you just want overall
Improvement the solution to both is the same thing
You need to do more work on your chest, but it doesn't mean go to the gym for three hours longer
It means more work overtime throughout the week
You just want to get in stimulate and get out and I'm gonna provide you guys with the two workouts
You should be doing in order to make that happen
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first things first if you need to stimulate more chest
and I mean you want to warm up before you do any kind of exercising but when it comes to the chest more
Specifically the biggest issue I see is that a lot of you guys don't know how to properly activate your chest
Alright, the mind muscle connection isn't as strong
And for those of you who don't know the amount of weight
You can lift highly depends on how strong of a contraction you can get out of the muscle
So if you can't send those signals to your chest to contract harder and harder
You're not going to be as strong not gonna be able to lift as much and then you're not gonna see as much growth
But some things you can do before you start your chest day. I want to do three quick warm-up exercises
All right
first thing you want to do warm up the shoulders and what you're gonna do is take a band
You're just gonna do some shoulder breakers
I show this all the time
Because it's super easy to do and it works no matter how tight your shoulders off. You can adjust the band
You can stretch it
You can grab closer as your as your shoulder joints become healthier and you can get nice deep stretch
Back and forth and I usually do about ten to twelve back and forth for one maybe two sets depending on how tight I am
Next thing I want to do is a t-spine mobility drill
Or mobility stretch and this is gonna really helpful for you guys to help
Stretch the chest out and also stretch your lats a bit as well. And for this one
All you're going to do is get on your knees like this put your hands out in front of you
It's more of a Y than a T
but it's known as the T spine mobility drill and what you're gonna do is just simply come down like this and
Dip as far as you can
and
Then come back up
So dip down as far as you can and you'll feel that chest
Really stretch out and what we're doing is we're activating the area and we're letting our brain know that's the area we want to work
Anything you can do to focus on the area you're trying to train is great
down and up just like this guys and for this
Again, I would do probably like eight to ten repetitions
maybe one to two sets and then for the last one, we're gonna do some scapular retraction and protraction because a
Lot of the times when you guys go to bench you are not
Properly retracting your scapula if you can't properly retract your scapula
You can't get into the proper position
In order to bring the weight all the way down on top of your chest
And what ends up happening is you're pushing a lot through your shoulders, which means you're not lifting as much weight
Which means you're possibly damaging your shoulder joints and you're not
activating your chest as much as you could if you're doing it the right way, so
It's gonna be really important for you guys to take some time and work on your scapula retraction and a lot of times too
When I see you guys benching like this, it's because you know how to retract your scapula
But you don't know how to depress it
So what we can do here and if you can look in a mirror
I have a mirror over there
If you're in this position with your shoulders high this can kind of give you a good indication of what it feels like
When you're retracting your scapula, but not depressing. Okay
So this is what it looks like when you're retracting your scapula
But not depressing it if you kind of roll forward and arch your back and then do scapular retraction
You guys see the big difference here. This is how you should look when you're benching
All right. This is what your back looks like on the bench if you're here, you're doing it wrong
So this is what it feels like this is what it should look like take a look in the mirror all the way up
All the way down
All the way up
All the way down just like this and if you guys do about eight to ten sets of that
Eight to ten reps of that maybe one to two sets
It's gonna prime your body and get you ready so that when you go bench
you know exactly how to position yourself and you know how to activate the area now as
You get better and you get stronger, you won't have to do all of this all that often
You can probably get away with just doing the shoulder breakers then maybe a few warm-up sets on the bench
But if you have if your chest is lagging and you think the sides are uneven you need to do everything you can
to know how to stimulate that area
So put the work in there's no shortcuts in fitness
Especially when trying to build muscle this workout is gonna be geared towards more
those of you who are going to the gym probably doing the five day bodybuilding split and
What you're gonna do is your traditional chest day whatever day that is and then pick another day during the week and do the second
Workout that I'm going to show you
For the first workout. I want you to focus on overloading. There's three muscle building mechanisms. We talk about this all the time
mechanical tension
metabolic stress and muscle damage
Mechanical tension how much overload you're doing metabolic stress
Total amount of work you're doing within a certain period of time which usually means volume
So more reps more sets less resting and then muscle damage
The muscle damage is gonna happen no matter what you're doing whether it's overloading or volume
So muscle damage is gonna be a part of both equations. So on day one, you're gonna do two exercises
I'm gonna do ten sets of a barbell bench
Press and I prefer doing it with the plate underneath we've talked about this before gets the best of both worlds
Not flat not incline, but somewhere in between there and then what you're going to do is you're gonna do a pyramid structure
We're gonna focus on mechanical tension. We're gonna try to overload with more weight. So for set one you can do 10 repetitions
Then you're gonna do eight sets
I mean 8 reps then 8 reps again then 6 then 6 then 5 then 5 then 5 then 4 and then 3
And as you're decreasing the amount of reps per set, you're increasing the weight
But no matter how much you increase the weight your form better be perfect
Just because you're increasing the weight is not a free pass to have absolute garbage form. Okay, guys
Perfect form all the way down to the chest all the way up and now that you've done those activation drills
You should be able to depress and retract your scapula so that when you bring the bar down
You can touch your chest and you're comfortable in this position
You feel zero strain on your shoulders. And as you press up you're flexing and activating your chest
now an added tip to do in
between all of your sets
I want you guys while you're resting and on these ones you're gonna rest
About 90 seconds to two minutes max because we're lifting heavier weight in between those sets guys
I want you to stretch and then squeeze your chest
Stretch and then squeeze your chest push your hands together
force that mind-muscle connection
to the area
Flex and squeeze that chest as hard as you can in between every single set do it like four or five times
Just keep the area active focus on it. That's what you're trying to do
That's where you want the stimulation and by flexing your teaching your brain
Okay, I'm working my chest the bench is working my chest I'm gonna contract that area harder
It's very simple as soon as you finish the barbell bench press
You're gonna do your 10 sets here
You're gonna come over to some flies and again and do 6 sets of 12 repetitions
Now you can do cable flies or you can do dumbbell flies depending on what's available to you in your gym
I'm just gonna show on the cables. We've talked about this as well
Cable flies this is not an exercise where you overload
Overloading on flies is stupid because it's not the most advantageous
Position to put your body in to stimulate your chest with heavy weight
That's what the bench is for, we're gonna use the flies for is now that we've pre exhausted our chest and broken it down
We're now gonna add some more stimulation focus on more mind muscle connection and work with high volume
Which is one of the muscle building mechanisms metabolic stress
We're gonna fuse metabolic stress by doing a high volume and short rest period so 6 sets about 12 repetitions
30 to 45 seconds rest in between your sets and you're gonna do it just a very simple high to low just like this again
Depressing and retracting your scapula all the way back all the way forward
12 repetitions
And as soon as you're done
30-45 seconds rest if you want to take advantage
And do some more chest flexing and squeezing in between your sets to help with the overall activation
You can do it here as well. This is gonna be day one, day two is gonna be two maybe three days later
So if you need help figuring out your workout schedule
Go to my website Muscularstrength.com
Go to my forum section and you can put your entire
Workout there and I'll be able to help you figure out the best way to align all these workouts. Okay, but on day two
you're gonna follow
Basically the same structure except now we're not overloading on the bench
press we're going to do 10 sets of
10 repetitions and we're going to use dumbbells. Alright now this is gonna get a little different
you're going to obviously make sure you do the warmups that we talked about in the beginning of the video and
As you're benching again you want to make sure you're arching your back
retracting and depressing your shoulder blades all the way down
all the way up on every single rep and
you're gonna do 10 repetitions and you're only going to rest for 60 seconds. Now the difference here is
With a 60 second rest period and doing 10 sets of 10 repetitions
By the time you get to set 5 or 6
You might have to actually lower the amount of weight you're using
So let's say your dumbbell pressing 80s
you might have to lower to 75 you might have to lower to even 70s you might have to lower as far down as
65 or 60s, if you're not used to doing this much volume with such short rest periods, but that is what
Metabolic stress is all right
It just blows my mind when I see dudes go to the gym and they start with a weight
They know is light just so they can
Ego lift and add weight every set. Well, it's like if you already know how much weight you can lift
for 8 to 10 repetitions
That's where you need to stop right? It just makes sense
The only time at that point you should be adding weight is if you're decreasing the reps because you're working with mechanical tension
Today we're working with volume metabolic stress
If you have to lower the weight to get those 10 repetitions in and keep that rest period 60 seconds
That's what you need to do
Okay, you would have to train smart training hard is great training smart is better as soon as you finish your 10 sets here
Right back over to the flies again you can do cables
If you want you can do dumbbells if you want to you're gonna do another set of 6 sets
12 repetitions
resting only 30 to 45 seconds in between those sets and that's gonna be your workout and
I guarantee you if you do this for 4 to 6 weeks, you will see a massive change in your chest because
We're not spending an extra two hours in the gym on one day beating the crap out of our muscle
We're getting in we're stimulating
We're getting out and then our chest has time to heal and then we're back in the gym a couple days later
Stimulating again in a different way mechanical tension day one metabolic stress day two
Leaving and then repeating the process week after week
if you don't have a lot of time to train what you have to do is just make sure you're training smart and if you're
training with a 5 day bodybuilding split
You're not really in a position where you can get multiple growth periods throughout the week because you're only hitting everything once a week
So instead of trying to fix every body part at once
Focus on one so for now we're gonna focus on chest and then in four to six weeks
Switch to another body part whether it's biceps legs calves traps triceps, whatever it is
in fact
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