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Need inspo for your chest workouts at the gym?
Personal trainer and online coach, Mike Thurston, is here with an easy-to-follow guide to help you build a bigger chest. He demonstrates 4 key exercises for you to incorporate into your training and gives an in-depth explanation of how to execute each of them correctly to maximise your results.
Try them in your next arm day session and see the difference they make to your progress.
What workout content would you like to see from us next? Let us know in the comments!
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0:00
all right guys welcome to today's video
0:01
my protein athlete mike pearson here and
0:03
i'm going to be taking you through
0:05
a number of chest exercises which you
0:07
can perform to build a bigger chest
0:09
i'm going to teach you exactly what you
0:11
need to do so that you can execute them
0:13
to your very best ability
0:16
[Music]
0:19
so the first exercise we are going to
0:22
discuss is
0:23
the flat barbell bench press the most
0:26
important thing
0:27
the number one rule which you need to
0:28
bear in mind when doing this is to keep
0:31
your scapula fixed in place far too many
0:33
people
0:34
push and move the tension onto their
0:37
shoulder
0:37
minimizing the effectiveness of the
0:39
exercise potentially running the risk of
0:41
injury and
0:42
not really getting a huge amount of
0:43
tension on the chest so
0:45
let's talk about how we properly set up
0:46
for this exercise i'm going to start off
0:48
hands i'd probably say wider than
0:50
shoulder width apart
0:52
take it off the rack and this is what
0:53
you need to do straight away pin your
0:55
shoulders back a little bit
0:57
so pin your shoulders back expand the
0:58
chest and keep this position fixed at
1:01
all times
1:02
you're going to make sure that your
1:03
wrists are in line with the forearms
1:05
so like that then you slowly lower the
1:09
weight down
1:09
i would recommend pointing the elbows
1:11
inwards ever slightly just to
1:13
ensure you are safe when doing this
1:16
pressing movement
1:17
you bring it down to your sternum up
1:20
to the top and try and contract your
1:23
pecs as you do this
1:24
if you can't it may require a little bit
1:27
of practice
1:28
i'd recommend slowing down the tempo so
1:30
you can really concentrate on everything
1:32
you're doing
1:32
and so that you have control over the
1:34
pectoral muscles
1:35
if you need to you feel as though your
1:37
shoulders are creeping forward during
1:38
the movement just pause at the top
1:40
and reset again so all the way down
1:44
up and squeeze the pecs if you want to
1:49
maximize the tension which should be one
1:51
of your goals if you are
1:53
trying to grow your chest i would
1:54
recommend when pushing to have the
1:56
intention
1:57
of bringing your hands together you're
1:58
not actually going to be moving your
1:59
hands together because of the
2:01
friction and the fact you'll be holding
2:02
the bar that intention of trying to
2:04
bring your hands together
2:05
is going to help with improving the
2:06
tension on your pecs
2:08
the next exercise we're going to talk
2:09
about is the dumbbell bench press we're
2:11
going to do it flat
2:12
once again similar principles apply the
2:15
focus is to attract scapula
2:17
keep your shoulder fixed in place and
2:20
maintain as much
2:21
tension as possible on your chest
2:24
so first thing you need to do get into
2:27
position
2:29
start at the top retract scapula
2:33
and you're gonna keep it fixed now my
2:34
recommendation would be to keep your
2:35
hands above your elbows at all time
2:38
as you lower the weight bring your
2:41
elbows in slightly
2:42
just for safety come down
2:45
to the point where you feel stretching
2:47
your pec you don't want to come too deep
2:48
because you may injure yourself i would
2:50
say around about here
2:51
and then you're gonna press but as you
2:54
press don't think about pushing the
2:55
weight directly
2:56
in front of you think about bringing
2:57
your elbows together okay whilst keeping
2:59
the hands with your elbows you're gonna
3:01
press
3:01
have the intention to bring your elbows
3:03
together and then squeeze
3:04
at the top okay all the way down
3:08
stretch the pec and then up elbows
3:11
together
3:12
and squeeze so the dumbbells are above
3:14
your chest they're not above your head
3:16
okay above your head you lose that
3:18
tension keep it above the chest
3:19
all the way down stretch it out up
3:23
and then squeeze okay if you need to
3:26
reset
3:27
do that if you need to do something
3:28
wrong we're doing that in the middle of
3:30
your set
3:32
and squeeze the number one mistake i'm
3:34
going to show you now what happens when
3:36
most people do a pressing movement
3:38
as they bring the weight down they fail
3:40
to keep the shoulder fixed in place
3:42
and they protract protract protract and
3:44
they end up in this position here
3:46
so if you compare to my shoulder in a
3:47
protracted position compared to when i
3:49
was doing it before
3:50
where it's fixed there's a huge
3:52
difference when you push forward the
3:54
tension goes on to the front delt
3:55
and it goes away from your pec okay so
3:58
we need to focus on bringing it down
4:00
keeping it fixed in place pushing elbows
4:03
together keeping fixed
4:05
and then squeezing the pecs at the top
4:14
[Music]
4:29
next exercise dumbbell chest fly
4:32
a little bit controversial some say oh
4:34
it's a little bit dangerous would you be
4:35
doing it
4:36
in my opinion is safe to do if you're
4:38
doing it slow controlled
4:40
and not lifting a ridiculous amount of
4:42
weight what we're going to do
4:43
start i'm doing an incline so i want to
4:46
focus on my upper pec
4:47
just a little bit hands directly above
4:50
my upper chest i'm going to slowly lower
4:53
the weight down i'm going to bend my
4:54
elbows ever so slightly
4:56
and try and keep as symmetrical as
4:57
possible i'm going to feel that stretch
4:59
don't go too low that's when you run the
5:01
risk of injuring yourself
5:02
and then i'm going to drive up and again
5:04
focus on bringing my elbows together
5:07
squeeze at the top okay the whole time
5:10
i'm
5:10
keeping my scapula fixed in place down
5:14
feel the stretch up
5:17
and then squeeze the chest okay
5:24
[Music]
5:26
nice slow and controlled okay
5:31
i would recommend doing a three second
5:32
negative
5:34
maybe four stretch and then two seconds
5:38
up
5:38
to the top and one squeeze
5:53
[Music]
6:04
to maximize the effectiveness of this
6:06
exercise
6:08
my elbow is going to go in the same
6:09
direction in which the muscle fibers are
6:12
aligned because i'm trying to hit the
6:14
pec fibers here they're running across
6:16
in this direction
6:17
so i want my elbow to point in the same
6:19
direction
6:20
which the muscle fibers are pointing so
6:23
i'm getting a nice stretch
6:25
and then a good contraction once i bring
6:28
my
6:28
elbow up to the top and shorten the pec
6:31
the next exercise we're going to do is
6:32
the notorious press of this exercise if
6:34
done properly
6:35
can be a great tool to add to your
6:37
training regime if you want to build
6:38
your chest a lot of people again aren't
6:40
really doing this as well as they could
6:41
do
6:42
the goal here is not to do as many
6:43
press-ups as possible it's not like an
6:45
army test
6:46
the goal is to do the most effective
6:49
press-up possible
6:50
to build your chest okay so we're trying
6:51
to get all of that tension
6:53
to create from the resistance of our
6:54
body weight and place it onto the chest
6:57
so again we don't want to be protracting
7:01
too much you want to keep
7:02
everything fixed in place so what i'm
7:04
going to do instead of pushing my
7:05
shoulders forward
7:06
i'm going to allow them to just pull
7:09
back
7:10
a little bit into this position right
7:13
and i'm going to make sure
7:13
my hands are directly below my chest i
7:16
don't want them in front of my chest
7:17
it's in front of my chest like that it
7:19
turns into a bit of a shoulder press
7:21
okay so hands below chest pull the
7:24
shoulders back
7:25
and then we're going to lower ourselves
7:27
chest to the ground
7:28
not face to the ground chest to the
7:30
ground and the most important thing here
7:32
we're gonna have the intention of
7:33
pushing your hands together okay
7:36
as if you're trying to do that but
7:37
obviously it's not gonna happen
7:39
down push the hands together squeeze
7:42
your chest as hard as you possibly can
7:43
do
7:44
and then back down again to make it more
7:47
effective i recommend just slowing
7:49
the tempo down it's better to do
7:52
10 to 15 really slow reps squeezing the
7:55
chest
7:56
then doing like 20 to 30 rapid
8:00
poorly executed press-ups right
8:04
if you want to try and move the tension
8:05
away a little bit
8:07
to the upper pec i recommend you elevate
8:10
your feet
8:10
so put your feet on any kind of elevated
8:13
surface
8:14
such as this
8:18
hands below your chest again
8:22
you can come down squeeze the chest
8:26
down squeeze the chest
8:30
try and keep your torso straight if you
8:31
want to hit more of your lower pec
8:34
elevate your torso have your feet a
8:36
little bit lower
8:51
[Music]
8:52
so that is the video guys i hope you've
8:54
enjoyed a couple tips there to help you
8:56
improve your technique when you're doing
8:57
some chest exercises
8:59
on your chest training sessions my
9:01
recommendation when it comes to training
9:02
chest
9:03
i would advise maybe picking three to
9:05
four chest exercises
9:07
and maybe adding it with another muscle
9:09
group okay i wouldn't necessarily
9:10
recommend doing a full
9:12
session of chest training might be
9:13
overdoing it a little bit but it's
9:15
really up to you guys and what your
9:16
training split
9:17
is i would also recommend training at
9:20
least twice a week or at least training
9:21
it every
9:22
four days if it is a weak point of yours
9:24
and you really want to
9:25
get it to grow okay so thanks very much
9:28
for watching
9:28
do not forget to give this a thumbs up
9:31
if you have enjoyed it
9:32
and make sure you subscribe to the my
9:34
protein
9:35
youtube channel more videos to come
9:37
thank you very much for watching
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