Chest of The Gods

The Chest of The Gods

The starting point is obviously to describe what exercises is to be used in order to build a highly magnificent chest.

Bench press: The king of chest exercises, and for a reason too, in my view this is the number 1 mass builder for the chest and upper body in general. My chest session is essentially a bench press session. One of the reasons I love the bench is due to the amount of weight you can put on the bar. Heavy weights do indeed stimulate growth and thus will a heavy bench press stimulate the chest.

Incline bench press: This is an exercise that you can add to your routine, preferably after the regular bench press. There are, however, plenty of examples of bodybuilders who have centered their chest sessions on this particular exercise. I really like it as well but prefer the regular bench since you can handle more weight with it and also because a good bench press record is more important for my ego than a good incline bench record. This might sound irrelevant for out hypertrophy goals, but there is a point (further down).

Dumbbell press: A great alternative to the regular bench. This exercise might be preferable under a few certain circumstances. First of all it should be a better alternative if you find imbalances in your body, eg your right side is stronger than your left side etc. When performing a regular bench press it is not all to uncommon that one side takes more of the weight, dumbbell presses, however, eradicates this problem. Furthermore, if you find yourself without a Brother in Iron, dumbbells might be a bit handier as you can simply drop the weights upon failure. I switch to this exercise as my main movement if I have stalled on the bench for too long.

Incline dumbbell press: Yet another viable option. I sometimes use this exercise to complement the regular benchpress. Or sometimes when I know there is no possibility to progress in my main exercise (bench press or dumbbell press) I do a session with only inclines. This might be the case if I have a deload type of session.

The best chest

Progression is as always the key to Glory. Being constantly on the road to a next personal best is paramount to your progression.

A new PB in the bench: Is of course a great source of joy, one can also argue that this is your most important lift, after all nobody really cares how much you front squat, whereas the first question you will get from a random person is usually how much you bench. And this is good! Why? Because it drives us to constantly strive for a higher number which we can tell to those who admire us! This motivation should not be underestimated.

Now of course none of us care about what beta non-lifters think. I am simply trying to illustrate my point, which is: Constantly seek that new personal best! It will aid you in you muscular development as well! A big pb in the bench = a big chest. I always use the thought of hitting a new personal best in my bench as a motivator.

So much Glory and epicness

Avoiding trouble and mistakes is of course also an important aspect of the game.

Be careful with your shoulders: I will quote from The Book of Madness “If thine shoulders are fucked up, thou shalt not be able to acquire an Epic chest”. Now of course the Book of Madness always blends us all with it’s unimaginable wisdom and this is no exception. If you have problem with your shoulders you will have a very hard time training your chest. So be careful with the shoulders!

Targeting the chest: A mistake I made in the beginning of my Epic Ascent was that I had the bar to high up in the bench press, which led to a larger taxation on my shoulders, eg they took all the work of the chest. I solved this by lowering my arms and shoulders to let the chest do the work. Now of course bench press is a glorious exercise that will put strain on a large part of your body but its primary mover should be the chest.

Spending time on blasphemous exercises: Never revolve your exercises around lesser exercises, pec dec, flyes, cable cross, declines etc. You may, at the end of the session for the lols and for the pump, do additional exercises, alas you should spend all energy you got on progressing in your main movements.

The Chest

Final words: Choose any of the main chest exercises, strive to progress in that particular exercise, if you have stalled for a few weeks, switch to any of the others. Variation has its place, but make sure that you keep your progression goals in mind when you enter the gym. And lastly, all the energy goes into the alpha main exercises, never hold back because you have some beta exercise scheduled.