How a Skinny Guy Built a BIG Chest!

If you want to build a big chest and feel that you’re too skinny to do it, you need to watch this. In this video, you will see how a hardgainer built a bigger chest and be able to copy the exact same workout tips and tricks to make the same type of gains.

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 r