A well-developed chest helps to build a more ideal physique during the bodybuilding stage, turn your head on the beach, and look a little bigger in the mirror. That said, most people don’t think much more than meeting friends at the bar for an international chest day. But that raises the question — at what point should you start paying more attention to how you exercise your pectoral muscles? Are things more complicated than they look?
Bodybuilders who have worked since the golden age of sports support the doctrine that specific areas of muscle such as the upper, medial, or (especially) lower breasts need to be targeted in order to develop the entire chest. I am. Whether you believe this is necessary or not, it’s certainly difficult to keep an eye on the results.
The slope is famous for targeting the “upper chest”, but the flat bench is clearly in the center, but what about the lower chest? To do that, you need to look elsewhere. Here are five of the best lower chest workouts for bodybuilders.
The best lower chest workouts for bodybuilders
The best barbell lower chest workouts for bodybuilding
Building muscle groups can be achieved in a number of different ways, but in all of them you are forced to train hard and approach failure. Barbell-based bodybuilding training is most often used by taking advantage of the fact that you can load the most barbells from any tool to hit your chest. Train hard and get closer to failure (not perfect).
workout
In barbell-based bodybuilding training, you should prioritize one or two major lifts before splitting into more easily customizable tools (cables, dumbbells, even machines, etc.) to end the day. .. Targeting the lower chest is to properly align your body and best force mechanical tension through the fibers underneath your pécs. Therefore, the decline bench press is the best bet.
Complement it with a few sets on a standard bench press and then continue with the rest of your workout.
The best dumbbell lower chest workouts for bodybuilding
Dumbbells provide a much easier way to customize the range of movement and target areas of the body for barbells. Barbells can certainly be stacked heavier, which can provide a good spillover effect for your breasts to grow more generally, but dumbbells can be used to carve out certain areas a little more elaborately. increase.
workout
Following the same logic as barbell-based bodybuilding training, choosing the descent angle to align the optimal lower chest for the main exercise of the day is a great choice. From there, the same angle dumbbell fly can be a perfect compliment before hitting some cables or machines. Your dumbbells aren’t as heavy as barbells, so it’s a good idea to choose a machine that can make a few more mistakes in terms of weight.
- Decline dumbbell bench press: 3 × 12-15
- low Reject dumbbell peck fly: 3 × 12-15
- Plate type dip machine: 3 × 10-12
- Cable peck fly: 2 × 12-15
Best Weight Lower Chest Training for Bodybuilding
Weight training is very effective in building the pectoral muscles. Dip is a great staple for lower chest development and is a great foundation for training. However, one of the biggest considerations for weight training is to perform far more sets and iterations to produce the same growth due to the relatively light load.
workout
Pre-fatigue of the chest is a good option to continue the challenge enough to prevent the rest of the exercises from being repeated 30 times a day. Some hard sets of push-ups just have to do the trick. Adding ranges of movement and running them in the red, for example, is another way to enhance things when you start to get stronger. From here, start working by arranging some dips side by side.
- deficit Push up: 2xAMRAP
- Immersion: 4xAMRAP
- Bench dip: 3xAMRAP
Note: AMRAP refers to performing “as many iterations as possible” within a single set. It puts you at risk, but only to the extent that you can maintain reasonable skills.
Best Cable Bottom Chest Training For Bodybuilding
Cables are arguably the most versatile and useful tool for bodybuilders. The immense customizability and body-specific range of motion of the exercise is nearly impossible to duplicate using other tools. Again, in addition to fly-based exercises, refusing to push down is part of the best choice for building the lower chest. Cable setup can do just that.
workout
All that is required to reproduce the descending press pattern in the cable system is to use a bench and some creativity. You can apply the same logic to mimic a dip. The standing cable pressdown can be set to target the same range of motion as the dip, but you’ll need to load it a bit lighter to track down failures to get the same effect without literally shifting the position.
- Decline cable chest press: 3 × 15
- Bilateral standing cable vertical press down: 3 × 15-20
- Single arm crossbody cable press down: 2 × 12
- Cable fly from high to low: 2 × 12
Note: To apply chest compressions, grab each handle and push your arm sideways with your elbows bent. Then push the handle like a dumbbell. Posture and range of motion should be very similar to how you perform a dip. It’s just moving external resistance, not your body.
“Go Anything” Lower Chest Training for Bodybuilding
You have the freedom to use all the tools in a commercial gym, so you need to take advantage of each training device. Barbells, dumbbells, cables, and machines all have their place, and together you can make a sturdy lower chest.
Track barbell loads, dumbbell range of motion, cable accuracy, and machine failures for maximum muscle growth.
workout
Severe descent bench presses can be complemented with lighter, more repetitive dumbbell variations. From there, using cables and machines to accurately target the lower chest and deliver large amounts of high-quality volume is the best way to coordinate your workout for the benefit of the beast.
- Decline barbell bench press: 3 × 8-10
- Decline dumbbell bench press: 2 × 10-12
- Dip machine: 3 × 10-12
- Cable fly from high to low: 3xAMRAP
Chest anatomy
The chest is mainly composed of two muscle groups. Large and visual pectoralis major and small and deeply hidden pectoralis minor. The anterior deltoid and serratus anterior muscles can play a small role in building the aesthetic edge of the chest, but the pectoral muscles are the most notable point.
Pectoralis major
The pectoralis major is a large fan-shaped muscle that occupies most of the chest. It has a common insertion where most fibers attach to the humerus (humerus) around the armpit area. However, because it has a unique shape, there are actually some different areas from which the pectoralis major muscle fibers come from.
Important parts attach to the clavicle (clavicle), sternum (sternum), and costal cartilage of the ribs in the center of the chest. The pectoralis major will be the primary player for all chest-based exercises. In short, growing this muscle is the way to create the aesthetics of the breast you are looking for.
Pectorialis minor
The pectoralis minor is a much smaller muscle below the pectoralis major. It begins in front of the 3rd to 5th ribs and is inserted into the coracoid process (the ridge of the bone protruding from the scapula). The pectoralis minor plays a much smaller role in chest movements, but it helps to “inflate” the overall appearance of the peck.
Can you really target your lower breasts?
The idea that you can (or cannot) target a specific area of a muscle or muscle group that is the target of hypertrophy is a mixture of different messages.
The deltoid muscle is a good example of how good this concept is. The anterior, medial, and posterior deltoid muscles are all separate muscles within the same broad muscle group and can be the subject of a variety of exercises.
However, the pectoralis major is a little more unique than the deltoid. It does not break down into different muscles, but it can be “local hypertrophy”. How you arrange your exercises also helps to bias specific areas of your muscles from a biomechanical point of view. This is a transaction.
Local hypertrophy
The pectoralis major is a large fan with multiple insertion points along the clavicle, breastplate, and thorax, so you can choose an exercise or range of exercise that emphasizes the area you want to prioritize.
Studies are beginning to support the old bodybuilder’s maxim of choosing different exercises to carve out specific areas of muscle. This is especially useful for hitting different parts of the chest. (1)
Biomechanical bias
Each area of the chest has muscle fibers that run in slightly different directions from each other. Broadly speaking, these areas can be thought of as the upper, middle, and lower breasts. If you want to adjust your exercise or its range of motion to optimally target the muscle fibers in these areas, Theoretically See some additional benefits.
A good example of this is a standard peck fly, preferably on a cable machine. If you set the handle high and pull your arm down, the chest fibers that are most directly aligned to that “pull line” will do a little extra work. If you start the flow and fly high, the opposite effect is true.
This may not produce easy-to-see results and does not specifically develop a “looking disproportionate” chest, but to some extent putting the right part of the muscle in the optimal position to do most of the work. Is reliable.
How to warm up for chest training
They may not be as demanding from top to bottom as Full Leg Day or the Olympic lifting warm-up, but you still need to be careful when preparing to tackle heavy chest workouts.
You don’t actually use your lower body to train your chest, but you’ll need to do some full-body gymnastics and light aerobic exercise to increase blood circulation, increase body temperature, and sweat lightly. After that, it’s all about priming the relevant joints and muscles.
In this case, it means that your shoulders are “online” stable, your elbows and wrists are warm and ready, and your pectoral muscles themselves are in the zone and ready to generate force. It means to guarantee that you are. This simple upper body warm-up covers all these bases and then some. Try out.
Chest training warming up
Big peck photo
From an anatomical point of view, there may be no inner or outer breast (due to Jim Brothers’ regrets around the world), but it is actually possible, at least to some extent, to target a specific area of the breast.
By intelligently adjusting your exercise choices, you can highlight areas of potential physique. Creating bodybuilding workouts at the bottom of the chest is a perfect example of the movement of this idea.
If you need a quick Google search to brush up your muscle anatomy, you can start implementing this assumption in your training right away. Alternatively, you can use any of these lower chest workouts as a proof of concept. There is no good reason to leave a gap in your physical development, so get to work.
References
1. Zabaleta-Korta, A., Fernández-Peña, E., Torres-Unda, J., Garbisu-Hualde, A., and Santos-Concejero, J. (2021) Role of Exercise Selection in Local Muscle Hypertrophy: Random Chemical comparison test. Sports science journal, 39 39(20), 2298-2304.
Featured image: Sahara Prince / Shutterstock
