A big chest is one thing but just as important is to ensure you have a sculpted chest. If you think about building mass in your pecs alone and don’t spend any time considering symmetry or balance, then you can end up with a ‘turkey’ chest. Worst case scenario, your muscular pecs can end up looking like breasts!
The key is to ensure you develop separation, you build the tops as much as the bottoms and you keep them symmetrical. These exercises will help you to do just that…
Explosive Medicine Ball Push Up
Medicine ball push ups are awesome for building explosive power as well as for giving you control and balance in your supporting muscles.
At the same time though, this move is also great for ensuring you’re hitting every last motor unit in your chest as you’ll be forced to stabilize yourself. What’s more, it’s ideal for developing symmetry as one arm will be doing a much larger proportion of the work compared with the other.
Spider-Man Crawl
Spider-Man crawls are loved by the ‘functional strength’ crowd due to being ‘contralateral movements’. This means that they force you to use all four limbs independently which does a lot more than just turn you into the king of ‘Twister’. Spider-Man crawls are perfect for core strength, for strengthening your central nervous system and for developing agility and explosiveness.
What’s more, Spider-Man crawls are again perfect for evenly targeting both sides of the chest independently and for building the supporting muscles throughout the pecs and shoulders. They’re great for the core too!
Incline Bench Press
If your pecs look a bit too much like boobs, it’s probably because the lower parts are larger than the upper portions. What you want is that nice ‘ridge’ along your pecs so that you can balance coins on them and take photos for Instagram (apparently this is what women do to look hot now??). Ahem, anyway… Incline bench press always has been and always will be the best way to target the upper chest and it’s a crucial move if you want to sculpt the pecs.
Close Grip Dumbbell Press
Go for a dumbbell press as usual but bring them in together so that they’re touching each other while in a hammer grip. This will engage your triceps much more and at the same time make sure you’re utilizing the inner portion of your chest. Can you target the inner section of your chest considering it’s not a separate muscle head? That’s up for debate but if you can then this will do it!
Pec Flyes
And on the opposite end of the spectrum come pec flyes, which are ideal for hitting the outermost portion of the pecs to ensure your chest is really nice and wide. If you want to get experimental, you can even try throwing in a slight weighted stretch which some studies now suggest may trigger hyperplasia. Be careful though!
One more tip: build wider shoulders to help make your pecs look wider too. Get on those lateral raises!
