What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
Today we're going over four reasons why your chest may not be growing.
Now, I get it.
Some people say "Chest?
Chest is the easiest thing in the world to grow."
There are a lot of people that cannot grow their chest, and I'm going to cover four of
the reasons why, and what you can start bringing into your training right away.
First up we have to attack the setup.
I don’t care what chest exercise you're doing, it's always going to matter.
There are two things you can do to make sure that you're setting the stage properly, before
you even do the exercise.
One good reminder that you can do during every, single rep that will reinforce the fact that
you're doing it right.
I say "chest out, and traps down".
What I mean by that is, you've got to at least put the chest in a position to initiate the
push.
That happens by making sure that it is out in front of the shoulder.
No matter what exercise you're doing, if the shoulders are in front of the chest you're
going to cost yourself an opportunity to allow the chest to initiate the contraction.
At this point, the shoulder wants to try to do the work for you.
We know that's a tendency of chest exercises because the shoulders, the triceps, and the
chest all like to work together.
You're going to initiate that contraction now, right here, from the chest, as opposed
to letting the shoulders dominate.
Now I said "traps down", too.
Traps down is just a postural thing that we do, just because of how much sitting we do,
and all the time we spend this way that allow our traps to overcompensate and lift as we
elevate our arms.
You can notice this yourself.
If you just raise your arm up, look in the mirror.
You likely have some sort of a shrug going on here when it should really look like that.
It should be depressed.
So if you can actively depress that, what you've done is allowed yourself to get more
adduction of the arm here, down at your side, which allows for a stronger chest contraction.
We're going to talk about adduction in a moment, but you want that chest out, you want the
traps down, and then during every, single rep you can reinforce this by actively pulling
down on the weights that you're using.
Even if you're doing a pushup you can actively attack the ground.
Not just passively fall down toward it, or don't allow the dumbbells to passively fall
down toward you on the bench.
You can see me pulling the dumbbells down, which forces the chest out again, puts it
in that position on every, single rep to initiate the next contraction.
The combination of these preset rituals, and these interest rituals will do wonders for
you when it comes to getting more results from every chest exercise you do.
Next, as the saying goes "It doesn’t matter how good you start.
If you finish like crap, you did a crap set."
Well, we're going to finish right.
The way you do it on a chest exercise is changing your mindset on what you're doing.
Forget the word 'push', or 'press' and replace it with the word 'squeeze'.
So instead of doing pushups here, think about doing squeeze ups.
And instead of doing bench-presses, think about doing bench-squeezes, if that helps
you to visualize what's actually going on here.
That is, you're not just pushing the weights away from you.
You should be squeezing the weights together.
If you have to visualize your biceps moving toward each other, then that's what you should
do.
Again, the fixed exercises don’t make an excuse for not doing this.
I could do this on a dip as well.
I don’t just push out of a dip.
I'm actually squeezing out of a dip.
As I push down, I'm trying to get my biceps, again, to approximate and come closer together
at the top to ensure that I'm getting a strong contraction.
That one change in mindset will get you much more out of every, single rep of every exercise
you're doing for your chest.
The third thing you must do is take it beyond what I just told you to do, and learn to adduct,
adduct, adduct.
We talk about it.
Yes, you want to approximate, and come closer together, but at some point this adduction
that the chest will assist in is going to be limited by the fact that you can't cross
over midline.
Horizontal adduction is where our chest is best worked.
If we can get ourselves to go across our body, take that arm, bring it across midline, now
we're really doing something, and now we're really activating those muscles.
We can do it only with very specific exercises.
Here's the problem: if you don’t have the biggest chest in the world, and people see
you doing these things in the gym they might tell you "What are you doing?!
Why don’t you concentrate on bench-presses, and some of the bigger lifts?"
I'm telling you guys, you don’t want to listen to that advice because you're missing
out on the opportunity to create the adduction that only comes from these exercises.
So don’t worry about what they're saying.
Instead, focus more time doing the exercises like this – the UCV raise – that allows
me to work on that upper chest, along the fibers in the same direction that they flow,
and I'm bringing it up, and across my body using a single dumbbell, or even better, with
a cable.
Or I could do the Cavaliere crossover here, as some would call it.
We take the dumbbell, we bring it up, and across our chest.
We're trying to drive that dumbbell up, and across, and over midline, and squeeze as hard
as we possibly can.
You'll feel the heightened contraction because the chest is literally contracting harder
by exploring all ranges of motion here, and operating in all of its functions.
We can also do a cable crossover.
Again, this is not just a definition exercise.
I can't stand when people say that.
It does much more than that.
It's taking the chest through its full function.
So why not utilize it?
Bring your arm all the way across the chest, go for that heightened contraction, and use
it.
Of course, even if you're doing pushups here, you can do the same thing.
You don’t have to just push straight up and down.
You can actually cause little bit of a rotation in there with our twisting pushup, which gives
you more of that relative adduction of the arm across the chest.
Last, but not least, the one thing I think you might not be doing enough of is drop sets.
Drop sets, when it comes to chest training, is one of the most valuable tools in your
arsenal to get more out of it.
Why?
Because, as I said in the very, very beginning, your shoulders, your triceps; they all want
to help, and assist, and dominate chest movements.
Well, it's okay only if they come after the chest has already been fatigued.
So if you've been doing everything I just showed you – you initiated the contraction,
you finished the contraction, you were adding adduction exercises – well, when you're
done with those pushing exercises, don’t stop there.
Immediately drop to the floor.
Let's say, on the bench-press.
Start cranking out pushups.
Why?
Because at this point, even though your chest is fatigued, it's got the help of the shoulders
and triceps that will allow you to push even further.
This is where the fact that these muscles like to work together start to work in your
favor.
If you're not allowing yourself to do these you're costing yourself a great opportunity
to get more out of your chest exercises.
Here's one word of caution, though.
A lot of people will approach a drop set, start to fatigue on that secondary portion
of it in the pushup, and then hold back because they'll say "Well, there's no way.
If I push myself any further here I'm not going to be able to go back and use the same
dumbbells I just did on the last set, and complete it with any effort because I'm going
to be too fatigued."
Screw that mentality, guys.
That 'save it' mentality is probably what's holding you back even more than anything else.
Go for everything.
Do as much as you can on the drop set.
Go to failure and if you have it adjust your weights, do so because your muscles will only
ever recognize the amount of tension that they're being subjected to at the end of the
day.
They're not necessarily worried about the number on that side of the dumbbell.
Aim for more tension every step of the way and you're going to get more out of every,
single chest workout you do.
So there you have it, guys.
There are four things you can start doing right now to start getting more out of your
chest workouts.
Don’t tell me the chest is so easy to grow because if it was there wouldn't be so many
damn people looking for chest workouts.
It's one of the most requested things we get here, on this channel.
I feel your pain.
I get it.
It's not my best thing either, but I've worked hard to try to bring mine up, and you can
do the same thing, employing these same techniques.
As a matter of fact guys, we go the extra mile with every one of our programs.
We put all the extra tips in because these are the things that make the difference.
When all else has failed, it's these next level tips that make the difference in helping
you to finally bust through.
All of our programs are available over at ATHLEANX.com.
In the meantime, if you've found the video helpful leave your comments and thumbs up
below.
Let me know what you want me to cover in a future video and I'll do my best to do that
for you.
All right, guys.
See you soon.