When it comes to chest exercises, there are no shortage of options. However,
which exercises do you focus on? If you're struggling to build your chest right now, you're
going to want to watch to the end of this video because I'm going to give you the two exercises
that you need to focus on if you want to start seeing your best results. Now, others may want
you to believe that there are only two exercises that you need and that all other chest exercises
just don't provide any additional benefit. That's not what I'm saying. But if you don't have these
two boxes checked in combination with each other, you're going to struggle to build your best chest
possible. With this bare minimum approach, you can be assured of the fact that you're going to
have an effective combination of exercises to use and more so be able to focus on fewer things so
you can get to where you want to be faster. What's up, guys? Jeff Cavaliere, Athleanx.com.
Look, you might be surprised when you hear me say only two because when it comes to chest
training options, you know we've got quite a few of them. And what further complicates this is that
anatomically, we know the chest is a three headed muscle. We have the upper or clavicular head,
the sternal or middle head, and of course, the lower or abdominal head that might actually
force you to make a couple personal choices. But the first thing you're not going to have to
choose is whether or not to do a bench press, but rather what version of a bench press,
if it's strength or overload that you're seeking. Then of course, the barbell variation gives you
the best ability to do that. But if the fixed hand placement on the bar presents
some orthopedic issues to you in either your wrist, your elbow or your shoulder, well,
you've got to have another alternative. And that's where we've got to head to the dumbbell rack.
And in truth, I actually prefer the dumbbells for more than just those orthopedic reasons. But yeah,
I mean, obviously if I have one dumbbell in each hand, I can slightly tweak the position here and
to a point where it's very comfortable. Even though I have a torn rotator cuff
in my right shoulder. On top of that, we know that with the dumbbells we're going to expose
any of that left and right sided weakness. I can hide that more easily in a barbell,
and that could just further exacerbate a problem when there's one already there. But there's one
other thing we can do here. Again, the independent movement in the hands allows me to do this,
and that is to point the inside portion of my hands or my thumbs up as I come up.
What does that do? It gives me more adduction of the dumbbells as I get to the top. For those of
you out there that are struggling to build your chest, adduction is your best friend, and if
you don't know it, you need to start learning. So, if I can get my dumbbells to be pointing a
little bit up on the inside, as I get to the top, my biceps will be able to come closer
together and I'll get a better chest contraction. That being said, I do have another choice here,
and that is you have to pick the angle of your bench regardless of which version you use. Because
we talked about the anatomy of the chest. If your lower chest looks saggy and underdeveloped,
then you're going to want to take this down to a decline bench because here we're going
to target more of that lower chest line. Of course, if we have a shelf less upper chest,
then you're going to want to increase this angle to about 30 degrees. Now,
don't make the mistake of continuing to go higher and higher and higher because all you do is start
shifting the focus away from the upper chest and more towards the front delts, probably
contributing to more of an imbalance that's already there. If you've got decent development
of both your upper and lower chest and just want to seek out some more overall size, then of course
the flat bench setting is going to be the best for you regardless of what choice you make here,
you don't really have a choice of including the press in your first of two chest exercises.
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Speaking of exercise number two, in building off of the adduction we talked about in the last
exercise, we have to train adduction directly and we do it best with a crossover. Now,
if you don't have access to this machine, hold tight because I have another option for you. But
we have to train our adduction. This is not an optional exercise if you want your biggest chest
because we look at the chest orientation and the fibers, they run literally east to west.
They are designed and built for this purpose. And we don't have all exercise options that you might
think. I don't like the unsupported Dumbbell Fly, it actually creates a lot of instability at the
shoulder and just isn't even the best choice. When you take an option like the crossover,
you not only have the ability to get good hand over hand cross, midline adduction. But we have
the flexibility of doing it either straight out in front of us to work again, more of that sternal
middle portion of the chest. Or from a high to low angle, almost mimicking a Dip to hit more of that
lower chest line or hitting the upper chest by going from that low and away to up and in angle.
Again, there's a lot of flexibility here. Speaking of flexibility, you could do this at
home with a band. And what's nice about it is it frees you up from having to buy this machine or
even a lot of space because you don't need to do two arms at a time. The tradeoff might be a
little bit of extra time so you can work one side at a time. But again, you're getting the adduction
that you're missing right now, which is going to provide you the opportunity for the biggest chest
possible regardless of which version you use. Be sure to do this when you do the exercise, and that
is drive your shoulders and head back as you bring your arm forward. What this does is it places
that chest prominently out in front ensuring that the delts are doing a minimal amount of
work and the chest is doing most of the work. Far too often people chase their hand out in front
of their body, or they don't even get their hand across midline. Those are two big mistakes. If you
can get the arm across and keep your body moving back at the same time, you're going to hammer the
pecs the way that they should be. And again, it serves as the perfect complement to your press,
hopefully leading to more compliments on your pecs. So, if you have a particularly fucked
up chest and more than one area, it looks pretty bad, how would you put this into practice? Well,
just pick two exercise variations or angles. In other words, if you did an Incline Press,
you do the high to low on the crossover. The next time around, do a Decline Press and
a low to high on the crossover. If you're looking for more exercises in The Only 2 series, you can
find the triceps and shoulders here. If you're looking for full programs guys, you can find
them over at Athleanx.com. If you haven't done so, make sure you click Subscribe so you don't
miss one of these videos or any other that we put on the channel. All right, guys, see you soon.