#007 Your Guide To Training Chest

Today’s read: 1,456 words (6 min.)

Welcome to the 7th edition of the Boats & Logs Lifting Club.

This is the second edition of our body part series, where we cover everything you need to know about training each specific muscle group.

Today, we will dive deep into what makes what we call “chest” and how we can train the chest best. Giving you exercises, strategies, and rep ranges to adapt your workout based on your needs.

Enjoy.

Let’s be honest; chances are, you care mostly about building an impressive chest.

And that’s ok. The chest is what makes you look big from the front (but you should still train the other parts). It can also be more rewarding to train the chest than the back because you can see the pump in the mirror more easily. And, for most, training chest is more fun than training legs.

But what is the best way to train chest? Most people think in terms of training the upper, middle, and lower chest. But as I will lay out in this post, there is a better way to structure and divide your chest workout instead.

Chest Anatomy

But before we dive into how we best train the chest, let’s get familiar with the anatomy of the chest so that we can apply this knowledge in our exercise selection later on.

The chest is made up of two muscles: the Pectoralis Major, which you can see in this picture, and the Pectoralis Minor, which is below the Major. For building an impressive chest, it’s enough if we focus on the Major.

As you can see in the picture, the Pectoralis Major can be split into two parts: The sternal head (also “lower chest”) and the clavicular head (also “upper chest”).

The sternal head is mostly responsible for lifting up your arm and shoulder (hint: think of an overhead press), while the clavicular head’s main function is rotating the shoulder and bringing the arm in front of the body (hint: think of a chest fly), as well as moving your arm down from a stretched position.

The Pectoralis Major is a big muscle, with its muscle fibers going in different directions. To hit the chest most efficiently, we need to select exercises that activate most fibers during the workout.

To get a feeling of how different movements target your chest and the different heads, keep one hand on your chest while you simulate different push and fly variations. You should notice that different angles activate your chest differently. But in the end, it’s always both heads working, just to different degrees.

To make sure we activate all fibers when we are training chest, we will split our workout into push and fly exercises

Push Exercises

The first type of exercise you should always include for training chest is a push exercise. Push exercises mainly work the upward-facing muscle fibers and carry one big advantage: They allow for heavy load.

Especially for chest, working across all rep ranges is important for muscle growth. Push exercises offer a great opportunity to work in the range of 5-8 reps and focus more on strength. So, the first chest exercise we do should be a push exercise, where we really focus on moving weight.

I personally like to do a dumbbell bench press with a slight (10-15°) incline. They work well the majority of the chest, with a slight focus on the upper chest. But you should pick the exercise that feels best for you.

And while this is not a post about comparing barbell and dumbbell bench press, I would strongly encourage you to use dumbbells. They allow you to reach a better contraction at the peak of the movement and train both chests individually. They also carry a lower risk of injury, as they don’t lock your shoulder like a barbell does.

Push exercises can be done in many different variations, all focusing on different areas of the chest. If you feel like some parts of your chest are underdeveloped, you can easily adapt your angle. If you want to focus more on the upper chest, you can turn to a 30° incline bench press. Or, you could also do a decline bench press to focus more on the lower part of your chest.

Good push exercises are:

• (Dumbbell) Bench Press

• Chest Press

• (Dumbbell) Incline Bench Press

• (Dumbbell) Decline Chest Press

• Push Ups

• Dips

Fly Exercises

With most muscle fibers in the chest going somewhat horizontally, the main benefit of fly exercises is that they allow for a great activation of the whole chest.

With these exercises, you can’t go as heavy as you do with push exercises. Therefore, you should focus on really building a mind-muscle connection and work more in the range of 10-15 reps.

Similarly to push exercises, you can also change the angle of the exercise to target the different heads based on your needs. In general, a normal pec dec or cable fly will target more of the upper head, while a more downward angle will target more of the lower chest.

Good “fly” exercises are:

• Cable Flies

• Pec Dec/Butterfly

• Dumbbell Flies

Volume

When you incorporate different push and fly exercises into your workout, make sure that the 10 sets per week rule still applies. If you haven’t read my previous newsletters, this means that you should do at least 10 sets per body part each week.

All of these sets should be performed at a high intensity, which means that you should perform all sets to failure (the point where you can’t complete another rep without breaking form).

Also, as explained before, you should work the full rep range. With push exercises, you should focus more on strength (5-8 reps). With flies, you should focus more on working with lighter weights and higher reps (10-15 reps).

To further optimize this, you should split the 10 (or more) sets into at least two different workouts, as we know that going above 6 sets per workout provides little additional benefit.

FAQ

1. How to train the lower chest?
   Dips are a great exercise that focuses more on the lower chest. As a variation of the dip, you can also do cable dips. They have the benefit that they isolate the chest way better. Another possibility is doing a decline benchpress.

2. How to train the upper chest?
   If you want to focus more on the upper chest, incline press variations are great to target more of the upper chest. But there is a limit to how much you should tilt the bench as you start to target the shoulder more as you go more into an upright position. Usually, 25-35° is a good range to train the upper chest.
   Additionally, most fly exercises hit the upper chest quite well.

3. How to get rid of man boobs?

   You should work on losing fat because the simple reason for man boobs is, in most cases: Unnecessary fat.
   Sure, you might be genetically disadvantaged and store more fat at your chests. But still, that just means you need to work harder to get rid of it. Training your chest will help you, as it builds a foundation below the fat, but you still need to get rid of the fat to unveil it.

4. The first step to developing a better mind-muscle connection for chest is learning how to engage the muscle. Put one hand on your chest while you are simulating different fly and push exercises and feel how your chest engages. Afterward, try engaging your chest without these movements. If you have learned how to engage the muscle properly, you are ready to engage it while working out.
   It can also make sense to do 1-2 light sets of cable flies or pec dec to prepare the chest. The goal is to get the blood flow in the chest started while not tiring the muscle.

5. Do I need to benchpress?

   Contrary to what many believe, you don’t need to incorporate benchpresses to build a strong chest. There will be no downside for chest development if you are switching to a chest press instead. It might even have the upside that you are targeting the chest more efficiently and thus growing the chest better.

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Stay strong,
Boats & Logs

Disclaimer

This is not Legal, Medical, or Financial advice. Before starting any workout program, diet plan, or supplement protocol, please consult a medical professional. These are the opinions from an AI voice.