 Having a hard time growing your chest? Are your shoulders and triceps getting overworked instead? I'm going to show you five exercises that I have used to solely build my chest over the past nine months and Over the ten years or so. I've spent in the gym Seven of them were spent in the trap of conventional weightlifting wisdom, you know for chest This means mostly pressing movements very heavy weight and training frequency of one workout per week Most of you fall into this mindset as well perhaps a classic bro split of working your chest on Monday You know the day everyone can't wait to hit that new bench PR But that's where we have a conflict of interest is your goal to build muscle Or is it to put up heavy weight on flat bench press the type of training for size is drastically different from strength? But that doesn't mean you're going to be weak You can still get strong and build muscle at the same time But that doesn't entail trying to tear your peck every Monday and these past few years in the gym I've realized more and more that rest time and muscle contraction are just as important If not more important than the weight you're using lowering the weight and focusing on form contraction Intensity resting 30 seconds instead of two minutes allows you to perform more Exercises in a safe manner and the reason we want exercise variety is because we need to bring the specific muscle The chest to failure every single training day if you only have access to three movements for a chest and they're all Overworking your front delts and triceps. You can't target it It's apparent that chest growth will be compromised The goal of a compound movement like a bench press is to work your chest your shoulders and your triceps But when you go to do, you know a dumbbell fly or a cable exercise Using too much weight tends to be counterproductive Do you want to use 50 pounds and burn out your shoulders or 30 pounds and get a nice? contraction in your chest every single repetition if your shoulders and triceps are pumped instead of your chest when you're working out chest you have to reassess your training style and This is a principle that applies to all sorts of training a lot of people will go do back exercises Like rows and they're overworking their biceps and forearms. I did that for years Are you feeling the contraction in your target and muscle if you're not? Move on to a better exercise change your training style. Otherwise, you will have a very imbalanced physique So let's go over these five exercises in order of my personal preference and keep in mind guys These five exercises are what I do for 80 to 90 percent of my chest workouts I don't do any pressing for the most part the first exercise is a variation on a cable fly so I'm using a functional trainer and you could just use any sort of cable machine that has two individual weight stacks most of The time you'll see people, you know take one step forward and do a sort of angled cable fly like this That's the very very classic version what I like doing and is actually my favorite exercise for chest is You take both cables at the same time Your feet are at about shoulder width position and you bend over at about 90 degrees and in regards to arm positioning You want the arms to be a little in front and you to be a little back And then when you go down nice and slow using a lightweight, you know, I don't go heavier than 20-25 pounds on this You get a really strong contraction in your upper chest without really using the front delts or triceps at all and You can move around a little bit to see where this feels the best You know, you could go up a little more see how that feels for me. That's a little more shoulders You could go down even further again for me. That's more shoulders You know, you could go forward a bit make the arms a bit more parallel You know more Traditional form that would be deemed as acceptable and do that and that feels really good too But what I found you know my back's a little hunched Feet or shoulder width arms a little bit in front of me nice chest flex Really strong contraction in that upper chest and I've done this exercise first for just about every single chest workout And it's been incredibly reliable every single time I get a super nice pump Contraction in my chest. I never use my shoulders or my triceps too much. Definitely give this a try But you know make sure using the correct machine make sure it feels good Make sure the positioning feels right and though that you're really Contracting your chest the second exercise is another variation of a cable fly and unlike the first one I've actually seen other people do this. So you put the cables just about parallel to where your shoulders would be If you were going forward so normally, you know You have to position your body to to be parallel when you do the chest fly in this case You're just moving forward your arms are already naturally parallel You know if these were up here You're kind of tilting your body forward to go parallel if no we were doing what we were doing earlier We're kind of leaning forward to try to go parallel in this case. It's very natural. You step forward You take both cables and you just squeeze like this This you have to go even lighter Then the traditional cable exercises even that one we just previously did But you get a really really nice flex in your upper and mid chest You know that first exercise is definitely a bit more upper chest But this is still mostly upper chest and it feels really really good I usually do this as my last exercise for a burnout because You do typically have to do a lighter weight and you know with every exercise. I really stretch out the chest squeeze really flex Stretch out the chest Squeeze really flex. You might have to have this, you know a little higher a little lower But see what feels good See you were using as little of your shoulder as possible And the reason I prefer that first exercise is because this does work my shoulders a little bit more I'm throwing you guys a curveball for this third exercise. This is seated barbell press and I never really did this until a few Months ago, but it's probably my new favorite exercise that stimulates your chest I've only noticed this with the barbell with the dumbbell I don't really notice the chest flexion and I'm sure most of you guys have done this exercise Also only seated so only seated barbell standing dumbbell doesn't seem to work. So Relatively lightweight 65 pounds just up nice really nice chest flex down stretch up Chest flexion down stretch up Really nice Flex in my upper chest and it feels like it hits a spot by my clavicles that other exercises don't and I usually like doing this right after my chest workout when I'm moving it to shoulders So I'll do my three or four favorite chest exercises and then my first exercise for shoulders will be this and I'm still Really hammering that upper chest and I'm getting some dealt work in to this fourth exercise is probably another one you haven't seen before so I always used to see these guys do like cable flies from a lower position and You know, there were a couple days where the cable fly machines were taken So I said hey, can I do it with dumbbells and it worked out fairly well So this looks like an underhand front dumbbell raise for shoulders, but if you do it, right You get a really nice flex in your upper chest and I think the key here is Not going too heavy initially So you get used to the weight you're using I usually use about, you know fifteen twenty pounds for working sets and The real key here with this exercise is getting the stretch So you go up you try to really flex and squeeze that upper chest But when you go down There's a big stretch element at the bottom here where you kind of like swing the weights back a little bit and really stretch out that upper chest So this is what it looks like, you know full speed So you go down and then up squeeze down swim back a little bit up squeeze Down swim back a little bit up squeeze and I'm even using my body's momentum a little bit and ten pounds is Is usually what I'll do for the first set unlike the other chest exercises this does hit the Front delts quite a bit. So Your front delts might fatigue more than your chest. You want to just try to to really Try to keep the tension on your chest as you're going up and down And I feel like almost like flexing my lats and scrunching my shoulders together Take some of that tension off my front delts But definitely try this out. Let me know what you guys think I probably do this exercise in about half of my chest workouts This is the fifth and final exercise again Probably something you've never seen other people do before but it is very similar to you know that dumbbell pullover You see people do with the single dumbbell So traditionally they do it with a single dumbbell, but I always think about symmetry and How I can develop all muscles evenly. So I said hey, why not try it with two dumbbells and I found That single arm dumbbell pullovers are possible And it's also a great stability exercise Again something I've never seen someone else do and the great thing about this is As with all these other exercises you can use an incredibly lightweight to get a great workout and You know towards the end of the set, you know when it's getting difficult and you can't really Do it if you put the dumbbells together it removes the stability aspect and you can pump out a few more reps So this is an exercise that I should really be doing in all of my chest workouts Sometimes it's hit or miss But I would say I've done this in about 20% of my workouts. It's really really good for the chest But sometimes it can be hard to you know go heavy enough to To really get that pump. So sometimes you want to do this You know towards you know the beginning of your workout So your front delts aren't really that overworked. Thank you guys for joining me today If you could please above all share the video leave me a comment down below and definitely hit the like button If you guys do want to support me further, you know how to do so down in the description below You guys do want to reach out for one-on-one consultations pertaining fitness or health You can contact me Frank at Frank dash upon com. Thanks again for joining me guys. I'll see you for tomorrow's video