Upper Chest Training
by preist943, Moderator
www.IronLife.com &
amp; Team IronLife.com Writer
Courtesy of IronLife.com &
amp; IronLife Online Magazine. For full article click here.
Out of all the exercises one could do the bench press is by far the most beloved. The first question asked to most big guys is how much you bench. Everyone knows what the bench press is yet few can master the movement to full sculpt a well balanced chest.
Where most are lacking development is in the upper chest. It is one tough area to build what makes it even harder is when a person doesn’t fully understand how to perform upper pec movements. For instance I have scene some people arch their back while doing incline presses. This totally defeats the exercise throwing the stress off the upper chest. Many times the upper chest is underdeveloped just because of ego since you can press much more on the flat bench. IMO the upper chest needs to be hit hard through high-intensity training and special techniques to
isolate the upper chest like supersets, tri-sets or pre exhaustion.
Now before we get down to the training lets take a closer look at the muscles of the chest. There are in fact 3 muscles in the chest the pectoralis major the pectoralis minor and the subclavius. Most trainees know about the first two muscles of the chest but they wrongly assume that the lower chest is the pec major and the upper chest is the pec minor. The whole pectoral area that covers the front of the chest is the pectoralis major. The pectoralis minor is a very small muscle that fits under the top of the pectoralis major.
Now for the lesser known chest muscle. The subclavius is another small muscle that fits between the collarbone and the first rib at the very top of the chest
For a complete developed chest it’s a must that you build the upper chest. The problem is how to go about it. There is no one magic exercise to use for the job like say the squat is for the legs. If your chest is unbalanced the first thing you should do is stop all lower chest work. To work the lower chest any more will make your development even more lopsided. One tip I learned a long time ago is when bench pressing incline or any other is to push your delts down and back and concentrate on isolating the chest and not pushing threw the movement with the shoulders.
One form of the bench press that works the upper portion very well is bench pressing to the neck. It’s a great movement for building the upper chest one reason I believe its not done very much is you cant handle nearly as much weight as in the standard bench press.
Just for safety I like to do these on the Smith machine because you don’t have to worry about balancing the weight. And this is the only exercise that stresses the subclavius very hard.
Bench press to the neck 3-5 sets 10-12 reps
Shoulder height cable crossovers 3-5 sets 10-12 reps
Incline bench press 3-5 sets 6-8 reps
Another way of bringing up the upper portions of the chest is by increasing the intensity.
If you have trouble isolating the chest try doing flys before bench pressing or in my case I like to use the pec deck. This will help to pre fatigue the chest so it wont be as strong in the pressing ensuring the pecs will tire first. a workout of this nature would look like this.
Incline flys 3-5 sets 8-12 reps
Incline bench press 3-5 sets 8-10 reps
Incline dumbell press 3-5 sets 20reps
You could also try supersets a sample would look like this
Incline flys 8-12 reps (no rest) followed by incline dumbbell press 6-8 reps
This would be one superset and I would do 5 sets in this fashion.
These are just some samples youl have to find the set and rep scheme that work best for you. The main thing is don’t give up. It took me a full two years of concentrating on the upper chest to make it just as thick as the lower. I also fell into the flat bench trap when I first started bodybuilding and got off Balance. Also there isnt anything set in stone on training. You could try an all fly workout.
Incline flys supper slow 25sec down and 15 up 3 sets 6-8 reps
Incline flys hold at the stretch 10 sec then up 3-10-12 reps
Then normal incline flys 3 sets 8-10 reps
If you follow that talk about soreness!
You could incorporate German volume training into your program. I would choose the bench press to the neck. Take a weight you can do 20 reps with but stop at 10 and do 10 sets of 10 reps Resting only 1min between sets. This will fully pump the pecs and by the last set your chest will be screaming to stop.
When building the chest one thing is for sure my best growth came when I stopped worrying about the weight and concentrated on working the muscle. Lets face it this is bodybuilding not power lifting do one or the other but you cant train for both. Don’t let your ego get in the way of building a great chest .
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