The key to training each of your muscles is to understand their function and how they work. Your chest is no different. Here, we’ll go over your pectoral muscles, how to train them, and we’ll even dispel a few myths along the way.
Chest Anatomy:
The pectorals are your chest muscles. They begin at your sternum and connect to a tendon that attaches to the humeris bone in your upper arm. Each time your chest muscles contract, they essentially pull your upper arm bone forward and in front of you.
To get a feel for the full range of motion of your chest muscles, straighten your arms out to each side of you. Move your arms forward in front of you until your forearms cross. This represents the full and complete range of motion for your chest muscles.
We’ll just skip the rest of the anatomy lesson and get to what you really need to know. For your training, your pecs are essentially trained as a whole using exercises like the bench press, or you can use exercises that focus on your upper chest such as the incline bench press.
Aside from the upper chest exercises, there isn’t really as much specialization for the chest as one might think. Let’s take a look at the different chest specialization areas you might have heard of.
- General Pecs: You will train your chest muscle group as a whole using the flat level bench. This includes the flat bench press, flat bench flyes, dumbbell bench press, etc. Dips will also train your pecs with somewhat less emphasis on the upper chest.
- Upper Chest: You train the upper portion of your chest using an incline bench. Exercises such as the incline bench press, incline flyes, and incline dumbbell bench press will all emphasize the upper chest.
- Lower Chest: The lower chest muscle is a myth. It’s simply not there. The decline bench press will work your chest from a different angle, yes. But there is no such thing as a lower chest muscle that is distinct or separate from other chest muscles.
- Inner/ Outer Chest Muscles: Again, there’s no such thing as focusing on your inner or outer chest muscles. Many people believe that flat bench flyes will work your outer chest while the peck deck flyes work your inner chest. This is more of an illusion that comes from the fact that each exercise places greater stress on your chest at different points in the range of motion.
The whole idea of working the inner/outer chest is flawed because it assumes that you can flex one end of a strand of muscle and not the other end. When you muscles contract, the whole entire muscle contracts, not just one end or the other. You cannot contract the bottom of your bicep without the entire bicep muscle getting shorter. It’s just not possible.
There are generally two main types of movements that work your chest muscles:
Pressing Movements: These include the bench press, incline bench press, and all of their variations and different angles. Dips are also included in the category. Pressing movements tend to directly involve the pecs, triceps, and deltoids in the movement. Secondary stabilizer muscles include your lats, posterior delts, and other back muscles.
Leverage Movements: This means chest flyes. Flyes can be done using dumbbells on a flat bench, using a peck deck machine, or using the crossover cables. Flyes are an isolation exercise. Do your pressing movements first in your workout, and add in flyes only when you’ve progressed to the point where you’re ready for more.
A training program that uses a flat bench pressing movement, an incline movement, and some dips will fulfill your chest training needs for quite a while. Stick to these basic movements before you get too carried away doing cable crossovers or other flye movements.
And of course, I know I probably don’t need to keep saying this to you, but don’t get too carried away with working only your chest and your arms. If you want to be a bodybuilder, train your whole body. Don’t be a boobie-builder.
Focusing only on your chest and arms is bad for your body’s balance and posture. Paying attention to building a strong back will balance you out and even give you greater stabilizing muscles that will increase your bench press and strengthen your pecs even more.
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Related posts:
- Weighted Dips for the Pecs and Triceps
- How to Prevent an Arching Back on the Incline Bench Press
- How Workouts Work
Tags: bench press, chest, pecs
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March 31st, 2008 at 2:01 pm
Jason, this is great info about pecs. I just love the fact that you’re really starting to put like a bodybuilding bible up here – soon your blog archive will be invaluable! Just keep it up man! :)
March 31st, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Lol I love the “boobie builder” comment! Good way to put it. Like you said the basic compound movements will fulfill all the training needed for the chest (as well as the rest of the muscles). It’s funny seeing guys doing crossovers and flyes when they haven’t even developed any real pectoral muscles yet. The bench press is really all you need til you get to the advanced level.
April 1st, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Alex- Thanks man. I’ve been thinking about the archives lately and will have to make a guide so things are easier to find. That’s next on the list.
Sean- True, the flat bench is the basis of your chest workouts. I like to throw in incline benches as well. I think the reason some people do so many flyes is probably because the muscle mags or other materials hype up the idea of always changing your routine and using a variety of exercises. There are so many more machines and variations of isolation exercises than the basic movements… maybe that’s why. A good reminder to stick to the basics
April 22nd, 2008 at 12:44 pm
So, I am brand new to weight lifting and trying to keep in shape.
My first goal is to lose body fat, increase lean muscle mass and then to gain strength and stamina. I am not looking to be ripped like I should be on a magazine cover, downing my protein shakes 3 times a day.
I am starting out with dumbbell chest-presses and dumb bell chest flies. Is that a good point to start at to try and tone and build some upper body strength (doing other things also but this is specific to the chest). basically I would love to not need a “manziere” anymore ;)
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:50 pm
Mike- Those goals go right together. Eat enough food to feed the muscle. As you add more muscle, the muscle burns more calories. But even if you do try everything to look like the guy on the magazine cover, it will give you modest gains in the short term. The amount of muscle you build will never be faster than you’re ready for.
Focus on those dumbbell chest presses. That is probably the best exercise for building chest muscle mass. More muscle mass also burns more fat. The flyes aren’t going to harm you, but the multi-joint exercises (the pressing movements) are the best use of your time for where you’re at now. Build the muscle first, shape it once you have it. Best of luck.
April 30th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Wait a sec, how can there be an “upper chest” muscle group that is trained by specific exercises/lifts you listed when the “lower chest”, “inner/outer chest”, or any other grouping is a myth??? I am thoroughly confuzzled.
Made the connection while reading your latest “Prevent an Arching Back on the Incline Bench Press” article.
May 1st, 2008 at 1:12 am
Witmonger- Happy to explain.
We don’t really refer to flat bench presses as training the lower chest, but they train the chest as a whole. Your chest does have distinct muscles on the upper chest that can be specifically trained on the incline, but there’s no distinct or separate muscle group that is trained on the decline bench press. In other words, you have your general pecs (including all chest muscles), your upper pecks which can be isolated, but no separate lower chest muscle that can be isolated.
Similarly, there is no exercise you can do that will isolate either the inner or outer portion of your chest for the reasons explained above. You do have strands of muscle that extend from the inner chest to the outer, so the inner portion of your chest is there… of course. But there is no exercise that can contract the inner part of the muscle without contracting the entire muscle strand (including the outer) as well. So there’s really no such thing as training inner or outer chest, but it can feel that way because some types of flyes are hardest at the top of the movement (peck deck) while others are hardest at the bottom (dumbbell flyes).
Hope that helps to de-confuzzle ;)
July 16th, 2008 at 2:13 am
hello!
first of all ,i got here because i was looking for “inner” and “lower” chest exercises.
the problem is that my chest seems to be growing only from the uper/outer section, i can see a real diference there, but honestly i dont see any changes in the lower and in the inner part of my chest, so i really wanna know if that is normal or if i am doing something wrong.
tnx!
June 25th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
Jason,
I was happy to read your post because my chest/tri day is exactly what you prescribe. I do flat bench, then incline bench, then weighted dips. I have a question, though: Since these are 3 high intensity compound lifts, do you think I need to add anything else to isolate my tris or do you think they get worked enough with those lifts? I’ll be honest, they’re pretty tired after dips but I suppose I could burn out doing pushdowns or something. Thoughts?
June 25th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
@Joe – unless you are a competition level bodybuilder, you won’t need to do any additional work for your tris.
September 30th, 2009 at 7:09 am
How can one overcome the challenge of one side of the chest growing bigger than the other though he does barbell bench press?
October 1st, 2009 at 9:04 pm
@tomsea – that’s a tough call. First off, are you really sure one pec is growing bigger? Or did it start off bigger? Or are you saying the bench press is causing one side to get bigger? I’m not sure how that would be possible from the barbell bench press. In fact, barbell presses should even out any natural differences from side to side. If you are sure that one side is getting bigger, then perhaps it has to do with something else – job related maybe? The best thing would be to eliminate the thing that is causing the imbalance.
And how much bigger? Everyone has natural imbalances and unless you are competing in a bodybuilding contest, it really doesn’t matter. And you could do some real damage trying to “over-correct” and doing some really stupid exercises.
March 4th, 2010 at 11:56 am
Dear sir
Please see this site (www;ahsan-bodybuilding.itgo.com) and see my chest.
This chest is not balance please tell me good advice balance chest
Regard’s
Ahsan
March 4th, 2010 at 1:27 pm
@M. Ahsan Alahi – what about your chest do you feel is not balanced? Nobody’s chest is perfectly balanced. You seem to have good muscle mass in your chest but could stand to lose some body fat so that you could show off the muscle you do have. Is that what you mean? By the way – this would probably get more people commenting if you posted this to the forums at http://worldfitnessnetwork.com/forum/ .
March 6th, 2010 at 9:21 am
I too love that “boobie builder” comment. Those guys coming into the gym working solely on their vanity muscles focusing on only their chest and bicepts for years and years. So sad.
May 8th, 2010 at 9:46 am
I’m an experienced lifter, but I don’t look like one. My main problem is imbalances that ensure I keep the “pencil” look, even when I do gain weight. I’ve been training for over a year the “World Fitness” way, which is much like the “Scrawny to Brawny” way, except, in the latter, which is specific for ectomorphs, more emphasis is on eating more calories (which has not given me more relative strength). Since going to these basic movements (only), my imbalances are even worse. My upper body (from the front) starts to taper larger from the waist well until my pec minors; but, then my chest starts disappearing at about the point that my pectoral majors begin and I shrink up to my clavicals. If I stand with my side towards the mirror, my ribcage area is the most developed part of my upper body. This doesn’t look good.
From the posterior, however, I’ve developed pretty well, except my lats are rather small relative to my upper back muscles.
With respect to my lower body, it’s quite the opposite. I’ve developed pretty good quads and inner, front leg muscles, but my glutes and hams are almost nonexistent, even though I’ve tried to focus on squats and deadlift techniques that should stimulate these areas. W/o these major core areas developed, I stay weak on full body movements, especially squats.
This article confuses me, because I’ve been doing the basic, compound benches and dips recommended, and I’ve really gotten strong with respect to dips and flat dumbell benches (I weight 148 and d.b. press 140 for eight reps and dip with 210 including my weight for 8 reps), yet my pec-majors continue to decline relative to the rest of my upper body.
With respect to my upper body, this loss of upper chest development was not apparant until I reached 40. I’m now 45. Could this be age related? With respect to my legs, the glute/ham weakness has always been my case.
May 9th, 2010 at 6:37 am
@gregsfc – It’s hard to know exactly what’s going on (we don’t have a picture or anything) but I doubt it is age related. Some possibilities:
- are you overtraining? if you aren’t giving your chest time to grow, because you work it too many days a week, it could stall. same for your hams/glutes
- conversely, are you doing enough for your chest? enough for your hams/glutes? don’t be afraid of flyes just because they aren’t a compound movement. for hams/glutes, I like Romanian Deadlifts.
- for muscle size, the best rep ranges are usually 10 to 12, where you are lifting weight heavy enough to be failing on reps 10 to 12 – are you doing this range?
- for muscle growth, rest periods between sets should be about 60 seconds and you should to at least 3 sets per exercise
For more discussion of your particular case, we should take it over to the forum ok?
May 17th, 2010 at 12:27 pm
Thanks for the reply and sorry for the long post. I just searched for a specific article dealing with my specific weaknesses, and thought I’d weigh in. I’m not too familiar with the forum (I’m a new member), but I’ll check it out.
May 29th, 2010 at 4:26 pm
Excellent guide. The only thing is saying that lower chest doesn’t exist…
I agree with the idea that only the middle chest and upper chest exist, but ‘lower chest’ might just be what people are calling the middle chest, since it is lower than the upper chest, I guess?
June 3rd, 2010 at 11:00 pm
Many people are under the impression that doing decline bench will increase the shape of only your lower pecs. This isn’t true, that is what he was getting at.
August 12th, 2010 at 1:27 pm
Hello sir
My chest pecs is not balance, left pecs is down and good loocking and right pecs is up and small.
Please tell me good advices of my chest muscles
Regard’s
Ahsan