67% Faster Chest Growth!

Today I’m going to teach you a technique to help you maximize your time and gains when it comes to training your chest.

Personally, I hate wasting time in the gym. I’d rather put all my energy and focus into movements that are going to give me the most reward for my time and energy. So when it comes to training chest, lately I’ve been sticking to 1 exercise for my main compound movement. No more FLAT bench followed by INCLINE bench.  Just 8 – 10 sets of an incline bench, but with a modified incline of only 10 – 20 degrees.

Now I say modified because most benches don’t have a setting for this degree of incline so you’ll have to modify the bench by taking either a THICK 45lbs bumper plate, or two regular 45lb plates, stack them, and then place the back legs of the bench on top of them. So what makes this so much better? I’m guessing you’re all asking that right now, so, let me explain.

The Phrase “If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It” DOES NOT Apply Here

Guys, if what you’re doing right now is giving you great chest growth, then by all means, you don’t have to change a thing. However, all I’m suggesting is that you keep an open mind. After all, even if what you’re currently doing is working fine, it doesn’t necessarily mean it can’t be improved upon even further. It’s just like the elite controller for my XBOX – All of my friends say the OG controller works just fine, and it does, but being able to reload and switch guns in Black Ops with my pinky and ring finger lets me keep both thumbs on the joysticks. So I’m JustSaiyan, it could be better!

So what’s the “Problem” with the Flat & Incline Press? Or to be more specific, why switch to JUST a 10 – 20 degree incline? Well, ever since I can remember I’ve started my chest workouts with flat bench and then moved to incline after 3 – 4 sets, never really THINKING about what I was trying to achieve. It was just something we were taught never to question. It was chest day law!  

We perform a FLAT press to emphasize spreading the load across the entire chest and then switch to incline press to emphasis more of the upper chest fibers. However, that’s not entirely true. We know that ALL presses will target the entirety of your chest since ALL available muscle fibers will contract to move the weight. For example, even if you are incline pressing to try to emphasize more of the upper chest fibers, all the muscle fibers in the entire pectoralis major are still firing. This is because your pecs contract as an entire muscle group and not as isolated muscle fibers.

The problem, however, with incline pressing, is that even when you’re using the first incline setting on the bench, the angle is still a bit too steep which leads to more deltoid activation. As for the FLAT bench, in my opinion the angle is a bit too “flat” which leads to more TRICEPS activation throughout the movement and that’s because the more “decline” you go, the more this movement resembles the dip.  Also keep in mind, we are talking about CHEST ACTIVATION here, not how much weight you can put on the bar. But even if you think about that for a moment, the reason you can bench more flat than incline is because of the reasons we just mentioned. Incline brings more shoulders into the movement and flat brings more triceps.

So What’s The Solution? 

Well, it’s easy. Let’s go ahead and split the difference between FLAT and INCLINE by literally cutting the incline in half by placing a bumper plate under the bench and as a result, you’ll get the best of both worlds. A lot of you might even find that this technique will also help alleviate some shoulder pain you might feel when benching as well.

So quick recap – why do 6 - 8 sets of this and not 4 sets of flat pressing followed by 4 sets of incline pressing? It’s really very simple. Are you here to impress a bunch of dudes with how much weight you can flat bench? Or are you trying to build muscle so when you walk in a room all eyes are on you…or…more like that THICK chest popping out of your shirt?!

Too often I think we forget that for the majority of us, BUILDING MUSCLE is our main goal, not impressive weight on every lift which is why I read a lot of ignorant comments when I suggest new and different techniques like this.

Why do TWO ALMOST perfect exercises when you can do ONE PERFECT exercise that will

1. Allow you to lift maximum weight, especially if you have shoulder complications
2. Enable you to target your upper chest fibers JUST AS MUCH as the lower chest fibers.

Conclusion

And now to address the final question I bet you all have been waiting for throughout the entire article – why a 67% increase? Well, nowadays you have to use gimmicks to get people who don’t know you to click on videos and articles. So will this technique help you build a bigger chest?  Of course it will, I just explained how and why. But can I confirm an EXACT 67% increase? No, but I can guarantee that after a few weeks of training YOU WILL be convinced that it works and you’ll come back for more!