 Stop bench pressing for chest growth. Most people don't actually have a difficult time building up their chest as a muscle group. This is because most chest movements make it mandatory that you activate your chest. A bar over your chest has one place to go up and down. Unlike certain exercises such as many back rowing movements where you can have a hard time activating your back and are instead using biceps and forearms. The same problem can happen with chest, although usually to a lesser extent. Everyone loves hopping on the bench press on chest day and working their way up to their rep maximum in some capacity. But doing heavy weight is not conducive to optimal muscle recruitment from a hypertrophy standpoint. You are not regulating which muscles are getting stimulated. And if the focus is chest for the initial part of your workout, you want to take your chest to failure, not to shoulders or triceps. My general training philosophy is time under tension. High volume, short rest time, moderate repetition tempo, and taking the muscle to failure nearly every set. However, I do this with a light weight to isolate the muscle, so the rep range is usually 15 to 20 for the lighter sets and 10 to 12 for the moderate weight sets. With this technique, you can even perform compound exercises without using accessory muscles. But we will focus on exercises that most people can execute without advanced training knowledge. The most important aspect being that you are feeling the muscle contraction during the movement. If you want to work out your chest, make sure you feel it in your chest, not your triceps or your shoulders. Most of these exercises will stimulate your shoulders to some degree, specifically the front delts, but you can make it so your triceps are not activated at all. Three very important things here. One, you're reducing the stress on the shoulders and triceps, allowing more chest stimulation and the ability to take the muscle to failure. Two, you're reducing your risk of injury, but this can also be achieved by lowering the weight. Three, muscle fibers in the chest run laterally and it's much easier to squeeze and stretch, to optimize the mind muscle connection, you feeling that flex in your muscle. The first exercise is a cable crossover with several variations. The first is my favorite where I love to bend over and I'm really able to squeeze and work the upper chest. This can be done facing away from the machine as most people do, but you can also face towards the machine for exercise variants, showing off your glutes to a gym full of sweaty dudes. Here I switched to a low crossover, squeezing my lower chest instead of my upper chest and then I started doing a regular cable crossover for the middle of the chest, alternating legs after five repetitions. Normally you would split your set. So if you're doing 12 reps, do six reps with the left leg, six reps with the right leg, finishing with my legs together and doing a high crossover for upper chest. At least 50% of my chest workout is actually composed of just variations of cable flies. Sometimes I only do cable flies during a full body workout. Dumbbell flies are a popular exercise, but you can overwork your shoulders very easily. So by using a light to moderate weight, we are able to take the shoulders out more and focus on the chest. I prefer flat dumbbell flies over the incline flies, usually using 10, 15, 20 pound dumbbells throughout all of my sets. The pec deck is very popular. I am not a fan of it in general, but I try it out once every few workouts. I really like this machine for rear delt work, doing reverse flies, but I never get a good chest pump or chest stimulation from this machine. Here you can see I'm really trying to stretch my chest, keeping my arms static, not stimulating the triceps as we are minimizing the tension on the shoulders. The issue is with a pec deck, it's hard to stimulate your chest with a low amount of weight and if you increase the weight, it puts too much stress on your shoulders. Definitely opt for cable flies or dumbbell flies. I think they're a better exercise in general. Although not a lateral movement, dumbbell pullovers are also good for stimulating the chest without triceps. These are an exercise I usually incorporate into every single chest workout with a dumbbell around 20 pounds. Dips are actually the only pressing movement I still do. I find they stimulate the upper chest very well. By using an assisted dip machine, I can lighten my body weight enough so I don't have to activate my triceps too much. Once in a while, I will do a chest press or even a barbell bench press, but it's usually with a very light amount of weight. Typically on the barbell bench press, maybe 65 or 85 pounds, I'll take one or two sets to failure, but I find that the pressing movements, whether it's a dumbbell bench press or a barbell bench press, really overwork the shoulders and by sticking to these lateral movements, we are able to optimize even muscle development and overall hypertrophy. So thank you guys for joining me. If you could please like the video, subscribe, hit that bell icon, share the video if you can. Let me know what other fitness videos you guys would like to see. If you would like to support me further, definitely check out Frankie's Free Range Meat.com providing you with high quality, nutrient dense animal foods at an affordable price. You can also check out Frankie's Naturals for minimal ingredients, minimally processed hygiene and cosmetic products. If you guys would like to reach out to me for one on one consultations pertaining fitness or health, send me an email frankatofanoatgmail.com. 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