We’d all like that magic bullet in our weightlifting program, that best chest workout routine, that best bicep workout, that get ripped quick cure. And while there are no magic bullets, as it takes good old fashioned hard work to build muscle, if you adhere to the basic principles of muscle gain in every single workout, your chest workouts will be comparatively few and short compared to your average gym rat. And this is what we want right, the best results for the least amount of effort?

In this post we’ll cover the basic principles of muscle gain which ought to comprise every chest workout routine, your chest workout frequency, how to figure out your ideal chest workout routine, and which exercises pack the most bang for buck.

Chest Workout Principles

Every chest workout should adhere to the principles of intensity and progressive overload. Everyone talks of intensity in the gym, but they never put it in real terms. It’s usually a term that connotes how exhausted one feels when they’re finished. Intensity should however be a real number that denotes exactly how much weight you’ve lifted in a certain unit of time. If your chest workout takes 40 minutes and you’re not monitoring your weight, reps, and rest times, then you may as well stop complaining. There is no science in this.

Your chest workout intensity can be measures simply by multiplying the amount of weight you’re lifting by the number of repetitions, and then dividing that number by the number of minutes it takes you to complete your workout. This number gives you you’re chest workout intensity in a very tangible pounds-per-minute calculation. This number can obviously be altered in a number of ways. To increase the intensity of your chest workout, you can increase the number of reps, increase the weight, or decrease the time it takes you to complete your workout. All of these result in a higher intensity number.

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The principle of progressive overload states that in order for your chest to become stronger and therefore larger, your chest workouts must become progressively more intense, thereby forcing your body to adapt, and to grow. Each chest workout should aim to surpass the previous workout in terms of intensity. This cannot be calculated simply by adding heavier weights. For example, let’s say your chest workout is comprised of benching 100 pounds 20 times in 10 minutes. The next week you bench 120 pounds 15 times in 10 minutes. Even though the weight lifted per rep is heavier in the second scenario, your body exerted greater force and therefore did more work in the first scenario. The first workout was more intense.

Naturally, in order to calculate these things your chest workout routine should be very simply, comprised of only one or two exercises so that data can be comparable. You can try to alter any one of the variables. Perhaps you are not capable of lifting heavier weight today, or even doing more reps. But if you can reduce the amount of time it takes you to complete your chest workout by 20% than you have made very significant strength gains and have succeeded in increasing the intensity of the workout. You may even find that decreasing the weight you’re lifting but increasing the reps significantly allows you to produce a higher intensity number.

Chest Workout Frequency

As was said, each chest workout should aim to surpass the previous workout in terms of intensity. If you are unable to make gains a certain week, there is a very good chance your body has not recovered from your previous session. Rest time is crucial for building muscle. In fact, when weight lifting your body is not building muscle but actually breaking it down. It is during rest that the constructive building process occurs. This may seem counterintuitive, but as your chest workouts become more intense, thereby causing greater stress to the body, you will need to decrease the frequency of your chest workout sessions. That’s right, the stronger you are, the less you should lift if you are adhering the muscle gaining principles above and want to maximize results for your efforts.

Compound vs. Isolation Exercises for Your Chest Workout Routine

This is an old heated debate, and not one worth rekindling at present. But it is worth mentioning that if you want to grow, the single fastest method to do so is with compound movements that use many muscle groups at a time. This is because working the whole body puts great stress on your nervous system, and working larger muscle groups like the legs causes the release of testosterone and human growth hormone. So lifting your legs makes it easier to build your chest. And for most of us, the bench press or simply doing pushups, both compound movements, are sufficient to cause significant muscular hypertrophy.

Most of us have heard stories of pro football players who never lifted weight but simply did pushups, crunches, and ran. This is all true. The key, as mentioned above, is doing more and more. A pro football player has probably worked up to several hundred pushups in a single chest workout routine. This would cripple the average person. But pushups and bench press both exercises almost every muscle in the upper body, to varying degrees. I think it is safe to say that these exercises should be the backbone of every chest workout routine, and every muscle building routine in general.

The best isolation exercise for your chest workout is the fly, or using the machine known as the pec deck. This exercises forces your pecs into a full stretch as your arms come all the way to your side, and forces them into a full contraction as you squeeze your arms together. And since you are isolating the pecs, that is, not using your triceps in the motion, fly’s provide the greatest leverage for your chest workout. A great way to combine these for chest size alone would be to lift to failure using the pec deck, and then to push beyond that with pushups or the bench press by using supporting muscle groups to complete the lift. This provides more stress on the pecs than the pec deck alone can provide.

These are the two most important exercises for your chest workout. Many people talk of incline and decline benching, upper and lower pecs, but the truth is that your pecs will grow in every way, widening top and bottom when you force them to recruit the greatest number of motor units in a lift, and then you lift to failure. This can be done with the most basic movements alone, as mentioned. This also makes it much more convenient when calculating intensity, as it’s difficult to compare data when looking at different lifts. Doing three to four sets of each exercise in one workout, or simply doing one exercise one session, and the other on the following session are ways of simplifying the calculations for your chest workout.

Your Best Chest Workout Routine

You best chest workout routine, if you’ve been following me this whole time, should clearly be something that can only be determined by you. Following the lifting routine you find in a muscle magazine proposed by a guy who consumes steroids every day will drain you of energy and seriously halt your progress. Your chest workout must be personal and specific, because you and only you know what your intensity level is. Only you can construct a workout that is more intense in a logical and methodical way. This will allow you to make consistent gains and also to have a clear understanding of what is needed for you to grow further. These are tools we all have but very few of us employ in our chest workouts.