Strength Training: Tips for a Great Chest Pump

Chest day is a favorite among athletes and gym rats. It’s one of the days where you get to lift heavy and feel strong. Every day at the gym (and on the turf) is a good day, but sometimes walking out of the gym with a killer chest pump tops everything else. Chest muscles are some of the most complicated to develop, whether you’re training for sports or aesthetics. Form is always important, and if you neglect proper form when working out your chest, you may affect your results as well. Worse, you could possibly hurt yourself, and chest injuries are as debilitating as they come. Today, we’re going to run through a weekly chest workout you can do yourself, one that’s sure to give you a killer pump.

Just about every chest exercise is categorized as a “push” movement. Whether bench press, chest press, or anything else, chances are high that you’re going to be pushing a lot of weight. Because of how much weight you’re pushing, it’s important to warm up properly.

Warm-Ups

Start with some light reps on an exercise like dumbbell bench press. Then, warm up your shoulders. In the lifting community, it is common to meet athletes who talk about shoulder pain, notably in the left shoulder. This is a common pain that may appear after weekly repetitions of pushing exercises. A good way to warm up your shoulders is to properly stretch, followed by this joint warm-up:

Using a lightweight dumbbell, somewhere between 5 and 8 pounds, raise your arm to the side and bend at the elbow to make a 90-degree angle. The dumbbell should parallel your head. Rotate your shoulder so that the weight moves forward in front of you until you have made a 90-degree rotation. Rotate back to the starting position and repeat for reps.

This is a great way to loosen up your shoulder joints in preparation for the heavy weights you’re about to push.

The Workout

To begin, we’re going to start with an incline dumbbell bench press. Notably more difficult than flat-back bench press, incline is a great way to force you to use proper form and challenge your body to lift heavier.

• Angle your bench to a 45-degree angle and select your weight. You’ll want to start with a weight that will have you gassed between the 8 to 12 rep range.
• Once you’ve selected your weight, from a seated position, load your dumbbells onto your knees.
• When you’re ready, arch your back, puff your chest, and fall back onto the bench with the weights resting on your chest. We fall back on the bench slowly to make sure we maintain that arch in our back for safety.
• Once you’re lying down, bring your weights out to your side into a bench press position.

Note* Typically, for a barbell bench, your hands and elbows would make a straight line to account for the bar. With dumbbells, we’re going to want to make more of an “A” shape. Angle your arms with your elbows slightly closer to you. Imagine the dumbbells are making the frame of a capital letter, “A.” We do this to put more pressure on our chest muscles than our shoulders.

• From here, push the weights up and in front of you until you’ve just about locked your elbows. You do not need to completely lock-out.
• Return to the starting position and repeat for reps.

Be sure to be mindful of your back and maintain that arch. And be careful about the weights veering out to the side. Imagine a box sitting on your chest and try to keep the dumbbells in that imaginary box for the duration of your lift. Once you have finished your set, gauge where your fatigue level is and gradually increase by 2.5 to 5 pounds each set. In your final sets, you should be gassing out between 7 to 9 reps.

Next on the list is barbell bench press. For this lift, you’re going to lift from a flat-back bench. Earlier we stated that incline is harder than flat-back, but it’s still important to incorporate both into your routine. The reason for this is because flat-back and incline bench both work your chest, but in different ways. Incline bench primarily targets the upper chest and deltoids, while flat-back targets the upper and lower chest, or pectorals. By doing both in your routine, you’re making sure that the entirety of your pectorals is addressed in your workout.

Much of the formula for flat-back bench is the same as incline, only this time you will be using a barbell.

• When you lie back on the bench, position your hands evenly, a little wider than shoulder width.
• When you’re ready, arch your back and move the barbell off the rack into position.
• Lower the barbell down to your chest and press upwards. Try to focus the pressure on your chest muscles more than your arms. Part of the reason a lot of beginners gas out early on bench press is because they try to push the weight with their arms alone.
• Squeezing your chest muscles together as you perform your reps will allow you to lift more and fatigue slower.
• Repeat this for reps, following the same formula as stated earlier with an incline bench.

We’ve covered the upper chest and lower chest, but what about the sides of your chest? If you’re training for aesthetics purposes, this is an important one. The side of your pecs is just as prominent as the upper and lower portions, so we should train them just as hard. There are multiple ways to do this.

First, we’ll start with chest crossovers. This exercise is performed using the cable machine or a weighted band.

• Equip a one-hand attachment (or hold the band), and set to waist height, or one notch higher. This exercise will be performed with one arm and focuses more on achieving a burn than pulling heavy weight, so do not be afraid to go lighter.
• Stand with the cable machine, or where the band is anchored, to your side. Pull the cable/band away from the machine/anchor and form a right angle with your arm.

Note* For this exercise, you will be pulling the cable to the shoulder opposite of the hand you’re holding the weight with. So, if you’re using your right hand, you should aim to pull the weight to your left shoulder.

• Pull the handle to your opposite shoulder but be sure to maintain your 90-degree arm angle throughout the entire movement.
• At the peak of your pull, squeeze the last few inches out with the side of your chest. Hold this position and return to the start.

Since you are using a lighter weight, aim for somewhere between 10 and 15 reps. This exercise will be repeated on each side for one set. Be careful not to go too heavy too quickly with this exercise. Given the nature of the side of our chest, it’s easy to fatigue quickly or worse, injure yourself. It’s not about the weight, it’s about the burn. Repeat for reps.

The chest crossover can be a strange exercise to execute. It’s a bit of an awkward movement, and sometimes does not work for everyone. As a backup, we can also work the sides of our chest with a chest fly. This can be done using a fly machine, or on a bench press with dumbbells. For this example, we’ll use the machine. Set the machine so that the handles are roughly 30 to 40 degrees angled in front of you. It’s very common for lifters to have their handles directly at their sides. However, if you do this, you will have more distance to cover before you are in a good “working range,” for your set. No sense in wasting energy just getting to the point where you can get a pump. Grab the handles in front of you, arch your back, and bring the handles together. At the peak of your movement, you should be able to accomplish an incredible squeeze, which you’ll feel in the center of your chest. Return to the starting position and repeat for reps.

If performing a chest fly on a bench, you can choose a flat bench or incline bench and follow the same principles as above.

A good chest pump is one of the greatest feelings an athlete can achieve. It’s a rewarding, exhilarating feeling that can show instantly noticeable results. If you’re an athlete, your chest muscles are used for a variety of movements and provide an immense amount of explosive power. After a good chest workout, you are sure to feel electric, prideful, and ready to tackle the day ahead of you.