What's up, guys? Jeff Cavaliere, Athleanx.com. Jesse Laico, Athleanx.com.
Today we're talking about how a skinny guy built a bigger chest.
A big chest. A bigger chest.
Big chest. --er.
Big. --er.
Big. Okay. How to grow your chest.
And let's face it, he looked like this before, and there's no denying the fact that Jesse has grown
his chest. I want to share with you what exactly he did, because we can learn from everybody. Let's
go into the mind of a skinny guy and help these guys out to see exactly what you did. All right,
so if you want to start building a bigger chest, then you need to start at least understanding the
difference between these two steaks. Oh, those look delicious.
You really are becoming the Liver King, aren't you?
No, like I said, I don't eat baloney sandwiches.
Well, actually, what you see between these two steaks is a difference in size. One is about
a 12-ounce steak, and the other one over here is like a six-ounce steak. Clearly, there's more meat
in the 12-ounce steak. And if you want to build your chest up, you better start learning how to
pack on more meat to your chest. And the way to do that is by relying on that big compound lift. And
when it comes to the chest, we're talking about the bench press, something you did more of.
Exactly. The bench press, which is obviously not my strongest lift
compared to my squat and deadlift, which are pretty impressive, if I do say so myself.
They are impressive, I won't lie. I did increase the frequency of how much I
was benching through an A/B/A structure, which is in our Old School Iron Program, which you can find
at Athleanx.com. Nice plug.
Thank you. And I found that by increasing the number of times I was benching from,
let's be real, zero times a week to 1 to 2 times a week, depending on that split.
Yup. I found that I was getting more progress going
with especially my strength and then how much I was able to progress with weight on the bar.
So, for those that don't quickly understand the A/B/A structure,
if you put your bench press in your A workout and did it on Monday and Friday, A/B/A the B
workout would be Wednesday, you wouldn't be benching. But in the next week it goes B/A/B.
And you mentioned one time that week, so it's one or two times. Then you did something else too.
Well, the other thing I did was I added in some bodybuilding movements,
some accessory exercises. Like you see here.
Which I found to be extremely helpful with the fact that when I stalled on my bench press,
which happens pretty often. Yeah, a lot of people
will have that happen, yeah. I found that it was still a good avenue
if you really go through different movements that would allow for more chest growth.
Yeah. Well first of all, other than the bench press allows for a complete chest contraction
in a lot of these cases Adduction.
--through all these exercises, adduction. And also, it gives you the opportunity to use more
hypertrophy techniques. Yeah.
Because let's face it, progressive overload, while important, is only one hypertrophy technique. And
when building a bigger chest is the goal, you need to explore all of them. So eccentric focus
exercises here, the ability to perform some of these for higher reps for metabolic overload,
but not discounting the effectiveness of those other techniques and the ability
to incorporate them with the power building approach was really key.
So, the next thing you want to do, if you want to build up that skinny chest,
is you're going to want to bump up the angle of that bench, do more upper chest work.
Did you know that your body actually sort of has a growth limiter effect built into
the upper chest fibers? In other words, if you don't train them enough, the sternal head is not
necessarily going to continue to grow because it has an effect on the biomechanics of the shoulder.
Having both heads equally developed is going to be very important. So,
what do we do? We bump up the ratio of upper chest work to lower chest work because we tend
to not get enough focus on it, as is. Jesse, you did a lot more of that.
I did. I did for every one flat chest exercise or lower test exercise,
I was doing two upper chest exercises. So, what were some of your favorites?
Some of my favorites were the Low to High Crossover, which I thought was an awesome
exercise. And I was able to move a little bit of weight with it, which was pretty good,
and I get a really good contraction. Next was the Incline Dumbbell Bench Press,
which I love as an exercise because again, that allows me to move a little bit more weight
than I would with the cable exercise. Again, going back to what we said in the
beginning, if you did two workouts for your chest in a week, you'd be benching
with the incline twice in both workouts. But with the flat bench you did once.
Yes. Okay.
So, then another exercise that I really love to do was the Upper Chest Pullover. I developed that
kind of chisel at the top, you know. Little inverted heart shape, right.
And another one that I love to do was the Decline Pushup as one of my metabolic
exercises as we talked about before. Right. So, in the last part, we talked about
exploring all the different avenues for growth. Well, the metabolic options here as a pushup
is great because you could do the higher rep totals. But of course, if you switch the angle
to the decline, you're actually ironically working more of the upper chest.
Yup. So, you've got to focus on that upper chest. Don't
just look at it as an afterthought, make it a key part of your approach to building a bigger chest.
All right. So, we talked about adding more meat, we talked about adding more to the upper chest.
What about if you just want to kind of broaden that chest out, get that bigger,
wider chest? You do have to realize that there are techniques that we can incorporate that help this
along. And for me, that's full range of motion. Full range of motion for sure. I found that
especially on exercises like the Dumbbell Bench Press, getting the dumbbells all the way down,
you know, touching the outside of my chest and making sure I'm getting to that good stretch
position. Especially on a Crossover too, you know, when I got my arm all the way back,
could I go back another half an inch, maybe an inch more. And when I did and I realized,
yeah, I could get a little bit further back, I did get a greater stretch on.
Again, any muscle that you want to develop through a full range of motion is going to be
more developed. You have to take it through and apply that tension through the entire
range of motion that it allows for. It's not unlike any other muscle group, guys. The chest
is also responsive to stretch tension like the traps are. Or even the calves are responsive
to stretch tension. But here you just have to be a lot more mindful of getting yourself there.
Yeah, and it kind of demanded a little bit more of a focus that
I wasn't kind of putting there before. Right. So focused effort through all the
exercises that you're doing, but that full range of motion is definitely critical. And that brings
us to technique number four and actually pairing up hand in hand with what we just talked about.
If you want to make sure you get into full range of motion, then give yourself a chance to assess
whether you're through full range of motion. And the best way to do that is how?
With a pause. Right. If you could just
pause at the bottom of the rep, you get a chance to say, am I in the position I need to be and if
I'm not, it gives you that chance to adjust. Exactly like on the Dumbbell Bench Press when I
get the dumbbells down to the bottom of the rep or give me a chance to assess just for a second,
am I deep enough and if I got enough stretch there? And then I d be able to press from
there. Or like on a Dip when I can get to the bottom and really assess where I'm at.
Yeah, I mean, and that's the thing like with a Dip too, you don't want to go too low. I've
talked about so many times going to low on a Dip places too much stress on your shoulder.
So it even gives you a sense to be able to keep yourself in a safe position at about of
that exercise. One more you did, too. This one is actually one of my favorites and this
is the High to Low Crossover. Right.
I found myself, when I got to the top of the rep, I found that I was really getting a good
stretch. And when I paused there, I was able to really, you know, lean forward just a little bit,
get an extra bit of stretch on it. And this is something that you actually
do almost in every one of your chest workouts. Admittedly so. It s one of my
favorite chest exercises of all. He just likes the way he looks in it guys. So,
you obviously get the additional benefits of the pause reps too. You get more time on retention,
you get more focused strength from the muscle you're trying to build. You take away momentum
when you use pause reps. So, for all those benefits, you're going to want to make sure
you incorporate them as well. And I found that they were
Were you going to say something? Oh, I was going to tell a hilarious joke.
What was it? Well, it's not
really appropriate for camera, so proceed.
When you're a skinny guy, you can't build your chest it can be very frustrating, right, Jesse?
Very frustrating. Doing the right things,
though, can help you to unlock more growth if you're looking for how to actually solve
that lower chest problem where you kind of don't even have any line down here at all. We have the
lower chest solution you're definitely want to check out. If you're looking for a program like
the Old School Iron one that Jesse did, you can find it over at Athleanx.com. Make sure you click
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What was that joke again? Oh, so two gym bros walk into a bar,
and they try to lift it. See you soon, guys.