# Chest not reponding



## jimmiboy (Nov 12, 2009)

I have been doing the workout below and I am pleased with my gains but my chest does not seem to be growing.

I am happy with pretty much everything else.

Can anyone give me some advice on what to do, perhaps a more chest specific workout?

Monday = Push

Bench Press ........5 reps 5 sets....heavy

db inclines ........5 reps 5 sets...heavy

dips ........3 sets to failure

Military press ......5 reps 5sets ...heavy

Wednesday = Pull

Dead Lift 5 reps 5sets ....heavy

Rev grip chins 3 sets to failure

Cable Row 8-10 reps 3 sets

Preacher Curls 8-10 reps 3 sets

Friday = Legs

Squats ......5 reps 5 sets....heavy

Leg Press 5 reps 5 sets....heavy

Leg Curls 8-10 reps 3 sets

Calf raise 8-10 reps 3 sets

Cardio 3 mornings a week pre breakfast, Abs on legs day.


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## Doink (Sep 21, 2010)

get some flys in there, dumbell or cable.

Another option is to increase the rep range, a little change can make a huge difference .


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## Brotein (Mar 22, 2010)

Because the reps you have chosen are for strength, not size.

Increase the reps to 8-12 on your push day


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## MarkFranco (Aug 26, 2010)

I dont think adding a few more reps would do much, if hes lifting heavy he will build muscle

Strength will equal size

You're all ready doing Bench, DB bench and dips (to failure so there is your volume work right there, all though you could change the DB to 5x10/15 for more volume work)... But seriously if thats not working am afraid nothing will, flyes can **** off they dont come close to those three

How long have you been following this routine? Do you have anything to compare it to since you started? Old Measurments or pictures?


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## IronFed (Dec 10, 2008)

What sort of weights are you lifting on benchpress/incline db's/dips and are you gaining strength on these?

If you are getting stronger on these exercises AND steadily gaining weight then I would have thought you will be growing providing you're eating enough food. If one of these aren't budging then its probably due to diet or training intensity/volume


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## jamiedilk (Jul 6, 2010)

try and do all chest exercises with free weights as heavy as u can go 3 sets of 8 , i have the same problem my gym instructor said try and do all incline stuff because building from the top is the best way but me personally i do

incline db press

decline db press

flat db press

incline db fly

and cable crossovers

and u need to have patience and give it plenty of time and also need to be eating rite good luck!!


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## MarkFranco (Aug 26, 2010)

You honestly dont need to do Incline, decline, flat, flyes and then crossovers.

How long have you been following this routine? How much weight are you lifting? Is the weight increasing regulary?


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## monkeybiker (Jul 21, 2010)

MarkFranco said:


> You honestly dont need to do Incline, decline, flat, flyes and then crossovers.
> 
> How long have you been following this routine? How much weight are you lifting? Is the weight increasing regulary?


Yes, spot on. If you are lifting the same weight week in week out you can't expect to be gaining muscle.


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## jamiedilk (Jul 6, 2010)

i been doing it for about 6 weeks, and currently lifting about 27-30kg dbells i started on 22kg so slowly going up and getting stronger i do dips on same nite neway cos i do triceps with chest!! and i only do cross overs for warm down and stretch out with really low weights! do u not think i should be doing this then its just what the personal trainer gave me to do??


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## Fatstuff (Mar 2, 2010)

Try pre exhausting your chest first hit heavy on the pec dec before your chest workout (I don't usually agree with machines, but pre exhausting with them is fine) IMO


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## crf121359 (Oct 15, 2010)

I don't think you'll become hulk in 6 weeks pal... give it time and keep it up... eat well, train well and you're on the right track.


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## jamiedilk (Jul 6, 2010)

sorry to steal original posters thread!! yeah i know i need to give it a year or so to build a good chest but markfranco said i didnt need to do all them exercises!! am i doing nething wrong or overtraining


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## crf121359 (Oct 15, 2010)

You're not doing anything wrong mate. here is a fairly good routine for chest:

Bench press - 5 sets, 6-10 reps

Flat bench flies - 5 sets, 6-10 reps

Incline bench press - 6 sets, 6-10 reps

Cable crossovers - 6 sets, 10-12 reps

Dips - 5 sets, to failure

Dumbbell pullovers - 5 sets, 10-12 reps

Edit:

make sure you get plenty of good source of food in ya... there is not such thing as over training if your buddy has and gets plenty/enough food(protein, carbs, cals). over training happens when your body doesn't get enough nutrition and food and it has to eat up muscle tissues and it can't recover from training...

as said before eat well, train well and you'll see some good results pal.


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## jamiedilk (Jul 6, 2010)

i hope so!! i got a good diet behind me and im training hard so i just need to give it time!! and good luck jimmiboy


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## Cliff (May 2, 2010)

I've started gaining by reducing the amount of chest exercises I do (I used to do chest and shoulders on the same day).

All I do now on a Friday is:

Flat DB Press 3 x 6

Incline DB Press 3 x 6

Pec Dec 3 x 10

I'm outta the gym in half an hour too!! Bonus!! :bounce:


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## C.Hill (Nov 21, 2010)

Your not gonna see monstrous gains in chest over 6 weeks, hit it hard and give it time, eat loads and rest, i personally found best gains came with bench 3x6, incline db 3x8, dips 3xf, slight incline fly 3x12. Bodybuilding is a marathon not a sprint.


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## MarkFranco (Aug 26, 2010)

See the routines people are posting just seem far to much for me, overtraining will not make you grow and more isnt allways better

Incline - DB/bar/smith 5x10-15

Flat - bar 3x5, 5x5, 5/3/1

Assitance/accesory - dips 3xf (add weight when your doing over 12 reps on each set)

If this isnt building your chest I dont know what will, imo dips, flat bench and incline bench (either db or bar) are the best movement for chest, flyes are crap imo compaired to the amount of weight you can shift with flat bench

I hate all this pre-exhaust, superset, dropset, 21s, menshealth ****** crap


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## TH0R (Aug 15, 2007)

crf121359 said:


> You're not doing anything wrong mate. here is a fairly good routine for chest:
> 
> Bench press - 5 sets, 6-10 reps
> 
> ...


You gotta be kidding with that routine, although if thats you in the avvi

then works for you so who am I too knock it  If its not you your full

of sh1t :lol:

Agree with MarkFranco, although decline bench rather than Incl/flat works

more of the muscle fibers of the chest, but try all and see what works

for you. Give it at least 10 weeks though and if still gaining strength gotta

be working.


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## james12345 (Jan 13, 2010)

try a dc like approach, 1 rest pause set after warmups and extreme stretching.


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## DB (Oct 31, 2003)

Its not what you do.. its how you do it 90% of the time, you need to be pushing yourself to complete failure, if you're able to do that whole routine then imo you're not pushing yourself hard enough, my chest is fcuked after 2 sometimes 3 exercises and sore for days after

Quality not quantity


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## chrisj22 (Mar 22, 2006)

Bazza is spot on IMO.

Flat/Incline BB and incline dumbbells and it's game over.


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## Fatstuff (Mar 2, 2010)

MarkFranco said:


> See the routines people are posting just seem far to much for me, overtraining will not make you grow and more isnt allways better
> 
> Incline - DB/bar/smith 5x10-15
> 
> ...


Usually I would agree with you, I do with supersets and dropsets and the like, but if you have got strong tri's and don't feel like your chest is being worked fully pre exhausting works. As it does with any flagging muscle. Oh and Dorian Yates uses pre exhausting all the time, tell him it's mens health ****** crap!


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## Matt 1 (May 8, 2010)

crf121359 said:


> You're not doing anything wrong mate. here is a fairly good routine for chest:
> 
> Bench press - 5 sets, 6-10 reps
> 
> ...


I wouldn't bother doing cable cross overs if you're doing flies before, swap it for decline bench press mate.

Also 6 sets of 12reps is way too much, you're gona be using far more slow twitch fibres (which are less dense), you want explosive high weight intense bursts, to be hitting more of the fast twitch fibres type 1 and II, which are denser, and you're gonna see more improvement in chest development this way.

You wanna do 3-4 sets of 4-6 reps.

I do:

Flat barbel bench press: 3sets of 5reps

Incline db press: 4sets of 6reps (focus on squeezing at the top)

Decline barbel bench press: 3sets of 6reps

*Fly's (I use the machine to isolate inner chest more): 4sets 6reps*

*
Pushups: 8reps 4sets*

*
Dips: 8reps 4 sets*

I do those last three one after the other, like supersetting. So you do flys then straight on the floor press ups then straight onto dips then back to the start (no rest)

As long as you have gone HEAVY and intense, by the end of this workout you WILL feel it.

Good luck.

(Also, its up to you who's advice you take at the end of the day, but the guy of quoted isn't him in his avi, so my guess would be to take what he says with a pinch of salt!)


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## monkeybiker (Jul 21, 2010)

DB said:


> Its not what you do.. its how you do it 90% of the time, you need to be pushing yourself to complete failure, if you're able to do that whole routine then imo you're not pushing yourself hard enough, my chest is fcuked after 2 sometimes 3 exercises and sore for days after
> 
> Quality not quantity


Yes I would agree with this. I see the routine people post with lots of sets and think the only way I could do that is either pace myself or if I was training hard the weight would be dropping each and every set to a point were it's more endurance training than strength training. I would rather just do a few sets but train as hard and heavy as I could.


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## Dagman72 (Apr 2, 2009)

Are your front delts coming into play to much when doing pressing movements?

Also 3-4 (max) exercises are all you need - if your not ****ed after the 4th exercise then the intensity in your workout is seriously lacking.

Totally agree with DB (post 21).


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## David Lloyd (Mar 22, 2006)

crf121359 said:


> You're not doing anything wrong mate. here is a fairly good routine for chest:
> 
> Bench press - 5 sets, 6-10 reps
> 
> ...


32 sets for chest? are you freaking kidding me

can you spell OVERTRAINING

dorian yates did about 8 sets, if that

i believe less is more when it comes to bulking

otherwise your just burning unnecessary calories


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## Rekless (May 5, 2009)

Matt 1 said:


> I wouldn't bother doing cable cross overs if you're doing flies before, swap it for decline bench press mate.
> 
> Also 6 sets of 12reps is way too much, you're gona be using far more slow twitch fibres (which are less dense), you want explosive high weight intense bursts, to be hitting more of the fast twitch fibres type 1 and II, which are denser, and you're gonna see more improvement in chest development this way.
> 
> ...


You definatly do not want to do 4 reps...

use this as a guide. Percentages are based on 1RM

1-5 reps 85-100% Neural Strength & power little hypertrophy

6-8 reps 75-85% Neural & metabolic Strength & Hypertrophy

9-12 reps 70-75% Metabolic & Neural Hypertrophy & some strength

13-20+ reps 60-70% Endurance some hypertrophy, little strength


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## Matt 1 (May 8, 2010)

Rekless said:


> You definatly do not want to do 4 reps...
> 
> use this as a guide. Percentages are based on 1RM
> 
> ...


I don't. Lol

Aslong as you're damaging muscle fibres more than you did last workout, you will get bigger, simple.

And tbh, everyone is different, its not like you do 5reps and you will only have 'Neural Strength & power little hypertrophy ' but you do 1 more and suddenly you enter 'Neural & metabolic Strength & Hypertrophy' not having a go mate, I saw you wrote as a guide line 

4reps would be fine IMO - Size comes with strength, less reps you do, the heavier you will be going, so the more strength will be need.. anyways like I said 4-6 reps OP!


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## Rekless (May 5, 2009)

yes but dependent on which muscle fibres you are damaging will depend on whether u get bigger, stronger, or both.


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## MarkFranco (Aug 26, 2010)

fatmanstan! said:


> Usually I would agree with you, I do with supersets and dropsets and the like, but if you have got strong tri's and don't feel like your chest is being worked fully pre exhausting works. As it does with any flagging muscle. Oh and Dorian Yates uses pre exhausting all the time, tell him it's mens health ****** crap!


Yes but hes not dorian yates, and im sure thats not all he did


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## phys sam (Jan 11, 2008)

fatmanstan! said:


> Usually I would agree with you, I do with supersets and dropsets and the like, but if you have got strong tri's and don't feel like your chest is being worked fully pre exhausting works. As it does with any flagging muscle. Oh and Dorian Yates uses pre exhausting all the time, tell him it's mens health ****** crap!


I thought the whole idea of pre exhausting chest with flys first was to make the chest the failing muscle as opposed to the triceps.

If you had really stong triceps and your chest was failing you wouldn't need to would you?


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## Ninja (Apr 28, 2010)

I have done many heavy singles in the last 5 months.I'm natty and must say it was not only exeptional strength gains for me doing heavy singles. size was there also from 87kg to 95 kg. Bench pess was the most progressive one from 130kg 2 reps to 160kg 2 reps. So i guess you just have to work hard as f**** and results will come. Also don't know how it would work with AAS. Work out as hard as Ninja)) Good luck!

Ninja


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## Fadi (Dec 14, 2010)

Jimmi,

What we may need to do here is look at the small picture. Yes, I did say small, infinitely small in fact. I'm speaking of working on increasing the density of your capillaries. Go ahead, stimulate your muscles as much as you like, blast the hell out of them, what would that achieve?

What that would achieve is some muscle damage at the micro level, a damage that is necessary if our aim is for muscle adaptation (growth). Great, so far we've damaged/degraded our muscles in the iron factory, now we need to give them the appropriate amount of fuel for repair as well as encourage some supercompensation (adding more muscles to what you originally had). All sounds logical so far except&#8230;

Except what? Except now your chest is not responding! Well assuming we're eating enough/recovering well and have peace of mind (which is crucial to balancing our catabolic and anabolic hormone environment).

What we need now is to insure delivery of nutrient rich blood to our blasted chest. How do we do that? We call in the capillary builders. What are these? These are the 100 reps sets. Relax; they're not the same as the nauseating sets of 20-30 reps squats no. This dynamite of a tool is something that bodybuilders can utilise after their workout is over and/or on days off from the gym. The build-up of lactic acid should not be of any concern since the intensity is low (but high enough to increase capillarisation). Think of capillaries as wider roads or more roads. These roads go to facilitate traffic (nutrient) flow to our worked muscles.

I'll leave it here and let you think about it for a bit.

Fadi.


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## DRED (Apr 13, 2006)

i like to pre exhaust chest or do giant sets.....you need to try different things.....i used to bench heavy and all it did was **** my joints up.


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## Mr.Hench (Oct 4, 2009)

Ninja said:


> I have done many heavy singles in the last 5 months.I'm natty and must say it was not only exeptional strength gains for me doing heavy singles. size was there also from 87kg to 95 kg. Bench pess was the most progressive one from 130kg 2 reps to 160kg 2 reps. So i guess you just have to work hard as f**** and results will come. Also don't know how it would work with AAS. Work out as hard as Ninja)) Good luck!
> 
> Ninja


Agree with you mate. Bench press from 130kg to 160kg in 5 months! very impressive :thumbup1: whats your chest/pressing routine like?

To original poster, i focus on strength increases. I do a push/pull/legs routine. Ive noticed great results in a month on this routine. My lifts are better so im happy, noticable growth in the chest takes time as someone mentioned earlier it grows laterally.

My chest routine looks like this:

Flat BB- 4x6 then 1x3 reps (form is very important)

Weighted dips 3x8

Incline db flies 3x12

After this my pecs are very sore 2-3 days after training


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## Ninja (Apr 28, 2010)

Mr.Hench said:


> Agree with you mate. Bench press from 130kg to 160kg in 5 months! very impressive :thumbup1: whats your chest/pressing routine like?
> 
> To original poster, i focus on strength increases. I do a push/pull/legs routine. Ive noticed great results in a month on this routine. My lifts are better so im happy, noticable growth in the chest takes time as someone mentioned earlier it grows laterally.
> 
> ...


I also did push/pull/legs routine. Similar rep range that you are doing. To be honest I never pay much attention to a form, if it's comfortable for me I do it. When i do bench press i stop the bar one or few inches from my chest then push it till i lockout. I did bench press ,weighted dips and then if I had any strength left i did any isolation exercise for my triceps. On pull day i had deadlifts and pull ups with some bicep curls. I did shoulders on my leg day straight after squats (Heavy military press. usually helped to drive more weight than i could with my knees couse my goal was strength development). Must say that every time I had my PB in deadlifting my bench went up also)) At the moment i do incline and decline bench only with less weight but more reps( need to give more rest to my joints and also i like to change my routine

Hope this helps

Ninja


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## Ninja (Apr 28, 2010)

One more thing.I had 3 days of rest between my training days. For me full recovery is a key for being healthy and strong . even if you are on gear and recovery is faster it's mostly all about your muscle recovery not tendons. :wink:


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## Mr.Hench (Oct 4, 2009)

Ninja said:


> One more thing.I had 3 days of rest between my training days. For me full recovery is a key for being healthy and strong . even if you are on gear and recovery is faster it's mostly all about your muscle recovery not tendons. :wink:


cheers mate. i was thinking of seperating shoulders from chest day as i couldnt military press at all after doing chest. i'll start doing shoulders on leg day aswell, that'll help me max out on shoulder presses so that should get my delt and tricep strength up :thumbup1:


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## jimmiboy (Nov 12, 2009)

Thanks for the advice chaps, I do have exceptionally strong triceps so I have changed dips for flys on my push day so hopefully will see some progress.

Can anyone tell me what capillary builders are??


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## Hard Trainer (Apr 29, 2009)

Remember, control the negative and explode on the positive bud

~All the best


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## aveit (Nov 7, 2010)

crf121359 said:


> You're not doing anything wrong mate. here is a fairly good routine for chest:
> 
> Bench press - 5 sets, 6-10 reps
> 
> ...


Im gonna have a go at that workout......looks good lol


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## Rekless (May 5, 2009)

Wouldnt do pullovers mate....More of a lat exercise


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## BillC (Jun 11, 2009)

fatmanstan! said:


> Usually I would agree with you, I do with supersets and dropsets and the like, but if you have got strong tri's and don't feel like your chest is being worked fully pre exhausting works. As it does with any flagging muscle. Oh and Dorian Yates uses pre exhausting all the time, tell him it's mens health ****** crap!


Actually, Dorian Yates has said on several videos supersetting is [email protected], you're not working hard enough if you can do another exercise staright after.

A lot of sh1t gets spouted about what Doria Yates did/does. Even the videos are basically BS. All this in and out the gym in 45 minutes that gets spouted is utter codswhallop. I get my advice away from here from someoone who trained with him when he was at his biggest/best and on leg daty for example he'd spend half an hour stretching his legs before he even went near a weight. The know it all videos Forget to tell you that bit. About the only truth spouted is one working set per excercise. He did around 5 warm up sets/ cns prep sets before the working set though and always strict and beyond failure. Done properly you're fckd, as DB has already said.

If you really push yourself on your working set, no way will you be able to lift the same again even 3x8 never mind 5x5. It's scientically proven that 6-8 reps is the sweet spot so aim for that range. When the pros dsay 5 sets on a particular exercise , they're including warming up and cns prepping, not 5 working sets on flat, then same on decline etc.


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