Hi, on the one side its going great. I m becoming leaner, my shoulders are nicely defined. On the other side my chest is just not growing. I know many, many of the things people recommend for growth. "Lift heavy" being nr. 1. So my routine for chest right now incorporates the heavy factor but it also goes for really getting the muscle tired.

I do my first set by starting with Incline barbell presses (machine) with a weight for 6-8 reps. One set. Once done I immediately move on to flat bench presses (free). Again with a weight so I can lift about 8 reps. One set. Immediately on to seated forward press (One set, 8 reps) and finish with as many dips as I can do then.

Then I pause for 3 minutes and do the whole thing again.

Then the same with narrow grip pulldowns, then flat bench, finishing with plate presses. Once through those thats one set again.

My chest routine finishes with a 2nd set of the second routine.

Now as you can imagine that is quite intense. It tires the muscle. I never, NEVER get sore though (wish I would).

Do you think that is too much or too intense and I should stick with heavy sets of 6 reps with pauses in between every set (and less different exercises?)

Its really frustrating. I m paying attention to my diet, to my workouts but my chest will just not grow (I ve been working out for years - not always that intense though).

Thanks for any well-informed advice.

Hey man, have you seen my article on chest growth? If not here's the link Chest article.

In terms of your current workout it is intense, but for me it is the wrong style of intensity. With a chest workout you must be directly hitting all angles of the chest and focusing on your weak point. The style of which you are working out is smashing the whole chest without any specific direction.

Here's what I would suggest:

Reps Sets Rest inbetween sets

A 30ËšIncline BB bench press 8 - 10 4 60

B Decline DB press 12 - 15 3 60

C Incline Cable Flyes 10 - 12 4 60

D Chest Dips 8 - 10 5 60

E 45Ëš Incline Isometric DB Press 10 - 12 3 60

Another big part that people tend to miss is the mind muscle connection when hitting their chest. Can you physically squeeze your pecs so hard that it nearly hurts?

If I were you I would try and pick 2-3 exercises for your chest and do them twice a week. Do like flat bb bench, incline bb bench and decline bb bench or db flys. The second day you could do incline db bench, high to low flys and dips for example. I've always stuck to this and have gotten good results. You want good volume and frequency but you don't want to over due it or not get enough. 5x5's are good or 3x8's. I've always been a heavy lifting kind of guy, heavy weights mean more strength which means more muscle. It's obviously not the only way to build muscle and I don't always use that method. I do love supersets, however I was never a fan of supersets with my chest due to the fact that if you superset tris and chest you are fatiguing your triceps faster which help with doing forms of presses and taking away from some of the weight you could be lifting when doing presses. Same goes with supersetting chest and shoulders. If you were to superset chest with say upper traps it would be a slighlty different mix up because you wouldn't use those muscles in the same lift(I like to super set my main lifts with supporting lifts other than chest). Mix it up and be patient, they will grow. Don't forget your back either because a good strong back will add balance to your chest.

im sorry to be the black sheep here but are you sure your form is right... what are your measurements and could you provide a picture because if its in a beginner state and everything else is moving correctly and as you siad your shoulders and getting leaner etc then you're simply not doing the exercise correctly, but if you actually have a chest and you cant get it to get bigger then its a whole new ball game, so without anyone else answering for him could you answer for me this 1 question

how do you get your chest to engage when holding a barbell?

I was thinking the same thing @wilkinson207. The chest is a big muscle group and if you are not training with proper form, you may not be activating the pec major and minor enough to stimulate growth.

As far as "lifting heavy vs. super sets", this will come down to your gene type. Now without doing a test the only way you will really know what you better repsond to is to try both and see what gives you the best results. For me, I am a high volume guy so I need to do 25 - 30 working sets for my larger muscle groups to see growth an strength.

Can you post a video for us to see of your form. Maybe like 3 - 5 slow reps with light weight on each exercise you do on chest day? That could really help us out.

Being sore isn't an indication of a "good" workout, but it sure does let you know you hit the target area! lol

Also, try to stay away from machines and use more dumbbells and barbells unless you absolutely nee the machine.

Can you list for us your FULL chest workout and make it nice and neat.

For example:

1. Barbell Bench (4 sets, 8 reps)
2. etc.

Thanks!

It depends on your goal.

Lifting heavy is a strength training protocol and when done correctly will transfer skills and strength to all other aspects of your life.

Lifting in superset fashion is more of a muscular endurance and hypertrophy (bodybuilding) technique that does not necessarily elicit the same kind of universal benefit that a strength and conditioning protocol would but will definitely help develop a physique.

So what it comes down to is, are you concerned with increasing your absolute strength or just looking and feeling better? If you notice, no where in my post did I mention that it matters what you choose. Assuming you lift with proper form and give the muscle a stimulus to grow (then recover properly, food / sleep etc.) you will grow. It comes down to what Jake mentioned in that you may not have the correct form / technique or adequate mind-muscle connection.

Thanks Scott and everyone else for the answers. I will pay more attention to my form and to the mind muscle link during exercises. I will give the build up of the chest routine a think. Its hard as you ask three people and get four different answers as to the best routine.

I really appreciate the quick help. By the way - I live in Munich, Germany. So thanks to you guys from there!

One more suggestion...  :)

If you are feeling the bench press more in your shoulders than in your chest, you might want to consider adding in some shoulder work.  It was just a theory my friend, who's a trainer, had- that it might be my shoulders being a weak point.  After 3 weeks of putting a little more focus on my shoulders, the problem seems to be going away.  I've been able to go heavier on my bench press, and feel it more in my chest than in the supporting muscles like the shoulders and arms.

Yeah well as 3 of us said about the mind muscle connection I would focus on getting that and then try the routine I posted for you. Keep us posted on how you get on!

oh and dont go straight into full incline if you do incline stuff... work it up 1 notch at a time making sure you can feel the conection on each of them, even if its just a notch pyramid with dumbbells... say pick up a pair of 20kg's and knock out 10 flat, rest 15-45 seconds then bang it up a notch do it again, then keep going all the way to the top then back down again if you want or do flys on the way down, theres like what 4-6 notches on a bench? 4-6 sets of pressing and fly's... chest workouts almost complete, all thats left is to do some dips or cross overs or something...

best of luck to you sir

I second Eris's and Scott's posts - this is why I train more superset style versus heavy weight/low reps.

John

Jake makes a good point here - further supported by your statement that you are noticing your shoulders are getting leaner. Your anterior deltoid is involved in bench presses but it should not be growing more noticeably than your chest which is a much bigger muscle. Sounds like you may be using too wide of a grip or arm placement when you BB bench or DB bench. When you go wide like that it puts more emphasis on the shoulders and strains the hell out of your pectoral-humerus tendons.

John

just to expand on what john has said here, wider grip bench pressing is harder to get that mind to muscle connection which you seem to lack in the chest region, stick with a grip about shoulder width atleast till you get the connection sorted, this is narrower than usual but it will cover the range of tension that the fly or dumbell press will not, generally the inner contraction, when you go through the motion it is generally said that to engage your chest you need to try and slide your hands together till they meet in the middle, going to have to cut this paragraph shprt i need to head out, hopefully someone else can fill in the blanks or i will later

Thanks for that.

What do you mean with "sliding my hands together till they meet in the middle" ? At the lowest point? At the highest point?

In order to be able to do that (no matter if at the top or bottom) I will have to lift much lower weights. That means I ll be able to do the sliding bit but the lifting will be too easy. Is it still better than a normal lift with my hands shoulder width apart?

Anyone can help me out on that one?

I really think its great how people here are trying to help me! I m amazed. Great community.

Hi Daniel,

thanks for the infos. Interesting article.

Unfortunately my gym does not have decline benches (which is a shame as I like throwing it into the routine). What is a Isometric DB Press?

i do not mean actual sliding here friend, what i mean is when you hold the bar, picture in your mind your elbows and hands coming together at the same time, feels impossible which makes the chest activate to hold that, picture it all the way through the movement, as you press the weight press through your elbows, do a press the same way you would do a fly except forget what your forearms are doing, when you lift you dont focus on the weight you focus on the muscle, a curl isnt about where your hand moves its about which head of the bicep is contracting, see what i mean? every chest movement is effectively a shortened variation of a fly... in one direction or another, infact i would say the overall BEST builder for chest is manually assisted flys... basically what you do is you do the dumbell fly till the top motion then as you approach it your spotter puts pressure on your elbows to keep the dumbbells from touching, this means that tension is ALWAYS on your chest in every part of the movement as when the dumbells are directly above your chest there is NO tension on the chest at all and growth is all about time under tension

a good way to get this down would be to lay on the bench then do straight arm flys, nothing in your hand but just focus on doing them with your hands... put your hands together at the top and press them together then as you take your hands away from each other focus on keeping that feeling of contraction that you had at the top, then transfer that knowledge of how a contracted chest feels into your chest routine, god i wish i was better at explaining things :') i'll see if i can do a video or anything...