What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
Yes, it's true.
No gimmick.
You actually can make your chest look bigger instantly.
The key is: can you keep it there?
If you don’t do what I'm showing you here today regularly, you're not going to be able
to.
If you want to start getting your chest to look bigger you've got to start getting into
a better posture to allow it to be as big as it actually is.
The issue is that our pec minor becomes far too tight with everything we do every day,
and we have an imbalance of strength between the tightness here and the strength of the
backside.
Upper back muscle, rotator cuffs, scapular retractors – that will keep our shoulders
back where they need to be.
So here's the difference.
Look at the first video here – a picture of me – and this is with the normal posture,
right?
Allowing our shoulders to become rounded and roll forward because we never really address
this imbalance.
It may not be as extreme as it looks here, but the idea is, the pecs don’t look all
that big.
They may look saggy.
They may look small.
They're not really covering a large area, but if we get in this band situation here
– which I've shown you in a previous video, I'll actually link that here if you want to
see how to do that band setup – but the idea here is that band is creating the perfect
positioning of the shoulder.
It's pulling my shoulder blades back and down.
It's allowing my head of the humerus to relocate back into the socket more and allowing the
chest to look a hell of a lot bigger, as you can see from any angle.
So if we're going to do that, we're going to do it step by step.
Let's start with the stretch because the pec minor – which I've broken out the muscle
markers for – is going to cause your shoulder blade to tilt forward and down; or your shoulder
to tilt forward and down.
It's pulling on your shoulder blade like this.
What we want to do is, we want to make sure that we can stretch this the right way.
So the pec minor, you want to put your shoulder here – the front part of your shoulder – up
against something sturdy.
So here, I put it right up against the squat rack.
So I'm positioning this against this firm barrier so it’s not able to be pulled forward,
around it.
People always stretch their pecs like this, but all that does is shoots the head of their
humerus forward here, causing an anterior capsule weakness, which is not what you want.
So you put it here, and then we go and we retract our shoulder blades.
So we've got the scapular retraction, we've got the head of the humerus positioned back,
and then we want to get some upward rotation here.
So all I have to do is just raise my arm up, and you can see that we're getting a nice
stretch here on that pec minor.
Now, look at the difference if you're someone that needs a little bit of extra proof to
show you that this is actually working.
If I were to measure here, from here to here, we're looking at about 5" or so for what this
looks like in this position with my shoulder, sort of, naturally forward.
If I come back here into the stretch and then I come up, now you can see the distance is
at least 7" – if not more – almost 7-1/2" or so, just by getting into that stretched
position.
I'm allowing it to get back here.
Okay, now I have this much longer muscle that's going to look bigger, and better.
Now, that's only part of the equation.
Stretching this out, we need to strengthen the imbalance in the back side.
So we can do that by just taking a band.
There's two things you can do here.
Number one: wrap it around your hands and then stretch it apart here so you have some
tension.
You're getting your scapular retractors awakened, okay?
You take that here, take it apart, raise it up over your head, come all the way back down,
here, and down.
So again, in the bottom position not only are you getting some activation here of those
muscles on your upper back.
So you come up and over, and we come back.
We just do this about 10 times, or so, really focusing on the quality of the contraction.
We do the same thing – quality – when we come to this other exercise.
You take your bands and you cross them up in your hands this way.
Wrap around something sturdy.
What we want to do here is create a "W".
By getting into this "W" position we're getting a retraction of the shoulder blades – which
you'll see in one second – and then when we're here, we want to get an elevation.
So we're looking like to trays in our hands.
A waiter's tray here, and a waiter's tray here, and we're just lifting.
So the retraction pulls against the resistance of the band, and then lifting here while trying
to get my thumbs back is going to cause the rotator cuff to be activated, as well as the
upper back.
So we're actually doing the exact opposite of the pec minor.
So here, traction, and then lift it up, and back.
How many reps here?
Quality is what counts.
I'll say it one more time.
I don’t want to see you do one set of 20 here.
I'd rather see you do 20 sets of one because we're trying to really go for the quality
of the contraction here to make sure we're activating the right muscles.
So your three step plan to getting this chest to look a lot bigger is to start relieving
those tightness here in the pec minor, on both sides, obviously, and then strengthening
those muscles on the back side.
If you stick to this, three, four times a week at least – it's not going to take long,
but it's going to take consistent effort – you're going to see a major difference in how your
chest looks without even really having to touch a weight.
You want to add the extra bonus to it?
Go touch the weights.
Then you're going to have a bigger chest that actually looks bigger all the time.
All right, guys.
If you're looking for a program that shows you how to lift the weights no matter what
muscle group you're working, head over to ATHLEANX.com.
I'll show you how to lift them the right way to get the best results.
In the meantime, if you've found this video helpful – if you liked the muscle marker
– leave your comments and requests below and I'll do more videos like this in the future.
All right, guys.
I'll be back here again soon.
See you.