Big arms aside, there is no desire among would-be underweight muscle-building enthusiasts that outweighs the longing for a large, well-developed chest. And why not; large pectorals inspire respect. Somehow, they are primitively associated with courage and assertiveness. When you have pectoral muscles that only slightly protrude beyond your abdominal section, you’re considered “fit.” What’s more, in a world of male competition where one’s height seems to unfairly monopolize the aura of one’s dominant physical stature, powerful pecs can be a great equalizer. They tell the world that regardless of what level your genetics have lengthened, your physical prowess is packaged by choice. You exude strength and athleticism with well-developed pecs.

So what is the best method to develop a big chest? Well, that shouldn’t be our only question. Because if the pecs are not built in a balanced way, the excessive size can contribute to a feminizing effect on the male torso. Does anyone really want to develop “man boobs”? I do not think so. Therefore, it is imperative that we make our pecs a bit heavier at the top (upper pecs that stick out a bit more than the middle pecs) in our attempt to increase chest size. An emphasis on making sure we are successful with incline exercises will ensure good upper pec development.

Note that I did not recommend doing “lots of incline exercises”. Instead, I mentioned making sure to “hit” the incline movements (this applies to all bodybuilding exercises). Although this may sound like a subtle play on words, it is actually a vital topic for your muscle building progress. Overtraining is probably the biggest setback that most natural bodybuilding enthusiasts unknowingly suffer from. So you may need to add more incline bench moves to build bigger upper pecs, or you may need to drop those moves. It really depends on what you’re currently doing. Just keep in mind that many times our enthusiasm to progress in a particular body part leads us to inadvertently overwork that area, resulting in the exact opposite of our desired effect.

As a lifelong natural bodybuilder, nothing has done more for my chest development than de-emphasizing “pressing movements” and putting it on “flying movements.” The widespread notion that “you have to bench press” and “bench press heavy” has only been surpassed in pectoral growth retention by the practice of overtraining. Combine the two with the typical difficulties of the natural bodybuilder and you have a scenario where pectoral growth is almost nonexistent for many gym goers. If the heavy bench press was the key to a big chest, we’d see powerlifters epitomizing pectoral development. Turns out some of them have great pecs and others seem to have almost none, even though they can bench press a lot.

What if you could make heavy flies? What if you could get on an incline bench and strictly move seventy-five pound dumbbells from the top of the movement, slowly back down until your arms are extended and the dumbbells are parallel to your head (elbows slightly bent) and back again? to rise to the top position without any movement of the arm? If you can’t do that for six to eight reps now, but can do it in a few months, I’d bet your pectoral muscles will be significantly bigger after those months. Making heavy, strict overhead movements the cornerstone of your chest routine can do wonders for growing those muscles.

In addition to shifting the bench press moves to a secondary position and flyes to primary, I also accelerated my chest gains by splitting my first fly move into two partial rep exercises. So when I get to the gym to start my chest routine, I head straight to one of those pec/flye machines where you hold the handles at arm’s length (just a slight bend in the elbows). These are the type of pec dec machines that are also used for rear delt exercises. I adjust the seat of the machine so that an aerial movement performed on the machine hits squarely in the middle of my pecs.

I then proceed to do two different exercises with this machine; one for my external pectorals and one for the internal ones. For the external pecs, I move my arms from the full out position to about half the range of a full fly. I do between five and eight series like this. For the inner pecs, I go from a twenty degree angle (where I finished my rep for the outer pec movement) to the point where the handles make contact with each other in front of me. I do them for another five to eight games. By the time I’m done with these two partial rep exercises, my entire chest is worked and pumped to the max.

It’s important to know that working the middle pectoral muscles actually engages the upper and lower pectorals. However, isolating the upper chest with incline movements does not engage the muscles of the middle or lower chest. The same goes for lower chest isolation with dips; only work the lower pecs. Therefore, the most efficient way to start a chest workout is with an exercise that targets the middle of the chest. My suggestion is that when you start your pec workout with the exercise mentioned above, make sure to adjust the seat so that it is hitting the center of your chest.

Only when I’ve exhausted my pecs sufficiently by strictly executing these partial rep starts do I move on to isolating the upper and lower pecs respectively with three more exercises. These include incline dumbbell flyes, Hammer Strength presses, and a decline angled pec deck. I do two exercises for the upper pecs in an attempt to slightly overdevelop them for better balance; the dumbbell flies and the pressing movement with the Hammer Strength machine. Presses are incredibly more effective for pec growth when the pecs have been previously depleted with flies.

If you’ve been having trouble growing your pecs, I recommend you switch to making flye exercises the foundation of your routine. Also, break that first pec deck fly exercise into two half-rep moves. This will create maximum stress on both the inner and outer pecs, doing wonders for both the size and shape of the muscles.