STOP, You’re Training Your Chest Wrong!

Are you training your chest wrong? You are about to find out in this video on how to get a bigger chest by implementing a chest workout strategy that may be completely new to you. We look to the teachings of the late goat Mike Mentzer to give us clues as to how we may want to switch up the way we do

[Video clip] All right, now, up slowly, 1001. See you through it. 1003. That’s better. 1004, 1005.

Hold it. 1001. 1002. Okay. Go back.

1001,  1002, 1003. 1004. Okay. 1005. [End clip] Well, that felt a lot different.

Actually, felt a  lot harder and that’s probably a good thing. Have I been doing it wrong all along? Have you been  doing it wrong all along? Well, maybe if your chest exercises in the temple that you performed  in that looked a lot like this up till now, but is it more effective? According to Mike  Mentzer, it is.

You see, Mike Mentzer made heavy duty training popular back in the day based around  high intensity training. And guess what? It’s made its resurgence once again. But was training at  the tempo Mike was showing here that critical to making chest gains, some would say no. Mike would  say, No Mo.

meaning no momentum allowed at all. [Video Clip] Momentum is an outside force  to the degree to which it’s brought into play reduces the force of the muscular  contraction, thereby reducing the intensity, thereby reducing the results. [End video] Well, he’s got a point because let’s face it, any asshole can move away from point A to point  B, especially if it’s the ass that’s moving the weight. What he’s trying to say, though, is what  matters most when you’re trying to make a muscle grow is the amount of tension you can deliver to  it. Remember, the language of muscles is tension, and you need to become fluent in that language  if you want to grow.

Here, what Mike’s talking about is not relying on momentum and not just  swinging the weight around but focusing on making that chest take over every single inch  of that contraction. It can only be done if you slowdown that repetition greatly and have control  over every single piece of the rep. And the good thing about this technique is that it actually  is really good for people who have orthopedic issues. If you have any type of structural issue  in your shoulder, for instance, it’s going to feel a lot better when you take away some of that  speed. The other thing it does is it negates the need for a long warm up to have a great chest  workout.

Speaking of that, what would Mike say about what a great warm up would look like? [Video clip] Generally, we have to do three warmups, a very light one just to get the  blood flowing. Then we move to a moderate weight to set him up neuromuscular and  then a heavy one to get him ready for the big set to come later. [End clip] And that couldn’t be any more music to my ears because you’d think as a PT, I might advocate  using like two or three of these to get ready for a chest workout. Not at all.

Just use some common  sense and this approach will work great. So, if I was following Mike’s heavy duty chest workout  training in that 6 to 10 rep range to failure, my first warm up set would be with very, very  light weights like 15 or 20 pounds just to get some of that blood flow going, like he said. The  second set I’d probably be going for about half of what I was going to ultimately use, maybe 40 or  50 pounds here to proprioceptively make my joints aware of the positions I’m going to need them  to be in to absorb that bench press. The third and final set for me is actually something I do  heavier than what Mike recommended. We call it a touch up set, knowing that I’m going to fail  in the 6 to 10 rep range in my working set, I’m going to pick a weight that’s going to make  me go no more than five repetitions to failure.

And I’m only going to perform two repetitions  here, because what that does is it prepares my body to make the working weight feel even lighter  than it actually is. But however, you get ready, the point is you need to be ready to perform what  Mike wants you to do next. And that is one high intensity combination of two chest exercises. [Video clip] For your chest. You start out with a set of Flat Bench Dumbbell Flys or Pec  Deck, that you have an option.

There, followed immediately by a set of Close  Grip Incline Bench Press. [End clip] Well, you know how I feel about the Unsupported  Dumbbell Bench Fly. Don’t do that exercise. I’m not a big fan of it. But we can get back  to that because I have a better option.

But what’s most important is understanding  why he chose those exercises, because that’s what led to the effectiveness of it. He set  them up as a pre-exhaustion. In other words, that first exercise was set to pre exhaust the  chest so that when we get to the second half, exercise the compound, exercise and bench press,  you can get some additional assistance from the triceps and shoulders to actually push  the chest even further to fatigue into that point of forcing muscle growth. Now, the unique choice of the close grip on the Incline Bench Press is actually done  for that reason to favor the triceps and put them at that mechanical advantage to assist in  pushing that chest all the way through fatigue. Now let’s go back to that fly.

I don’t like  it, I already said that, but in a less nice way. The point is the Unsupported Chest Fly  is not a great exercise, especially if you’re trying to train it to high intensity, in other  words, with heavier weights that you’re going to fatigue in the 6 to 10 rep range. Now the Pec  Deck is fine if you have access to it, but you want to make sure that you’re not setting the arms  too far back or that you’re using the foot pedal to get those arms out in front of you to risk  any additional compromise of the shoulder. But all those are really not the best option. I’d rather see you do a Cable Fly because here I can still limit the contribution of the triceps  by keeping the elbows in a relatively locked out position.

And because of the way we have the cable  set up here, there’s no risk of that overextension or compromise of that anterior capsule, do it’s a  lot safer. But we still want to do it the way Mike advised here, and this is where we need to slow  things down. Again, I admit it. I do most of my reps like this because I get lost in the desire  to push more weight. However, leave that aside, focus on getting the chest to do more of the  work and slow it down.

Four seconds up or five seconds up, a little bit of a squeeze at the  top four or five seconds on the way down. You will instantly find that whatever weight you are  using is going to have to be decreased, but the effect of what you’re feeling will be increased. Remember, the language of muscles is tension. Your tension will go way up, you will become much  more fluent in this language instantly. Now, when it comes to the back end of that  superset, the Incline Bench Press, you’re more than welcome to use a barbell.

For me, it’s just  not really a great option personally because it doesn’t feel so good. I have a torn rotator cuff  and labrum in my right shoulder and every time I try to do that exercise, it just doesn’t feel  right. But I can easily mimic Mike’s intentions by just grabbing dumbbells and performing it  as an Incline Dumbbell Bench Press. The idea is the same here though tempo and positioning. By keeping the elbows tucked, I’m going to allow the triceps to contribute a little bit more  than usual, and that’s a good thing, again, to back end this already pre-exhausted chest.

The second thing is the tempo. That tempo is going to once again force you, maybe you to drop the  weight a little bit from normal but again, drive more effective tension into the muscle you’re  trying to make grow. And by doing that, again, I’m making the exercise more effective. You can see  it’s taking me four or five seconds to lift the weight off my chest. I go for a slow, eccentric