8 Tips for Building a Big Upper Chest

The upper chest area can be one of the most stubborn to grow and has been the source of frustration for many advanced bodybuilders and novices alike.

Luckily, every problem has its solution, and it’s up to you to learn from their mistakes and successes!

So how can you target your upper pecs with perfect precision and maximum effectiveness?

Check out these 8 upper chest-sculpting tips and incorporate them in your workout ASAP!

 

Stagnant Upper Chest? Think Outside the Box!

The secret to building your upper chest is not in the amount of weight you can press, as Arnold Schwarzenegger as the owner of one of the greatest, fullest chests of all time himself could rightfully tell you.

Instead, it’s in working your upper chest fibers as directly as possible. (Here’s the plan that helped Arnold get his legendary chest)

If you want to develop your chest to its full potential, you need to train each part of it in a rather dedicated and meticulous way with specific exercises that emphasize adequate portions of the muscle.

In other words, you’ll have to make sure to concentrate on all areas equally, with the upper pecs being the exception.

When it comes to these bad guys, you will need all the training wisdom, patience and bravery you can muster!

But if you work them as hard as possible in the way they were designed to perform, and do it often enough, you too can end up with a prize-winning iconic chest of your own.

The following 8 tips are meant to give you the much needed guidance in the process of sculpting the best upper chest possible, so be sure to add them to your chest-building action plan!

1. Hit the Upper Pecs First

As a rule, you should always hit your weakest body area first, while you’re still fresh and optimally motivated to hammer it with all you’ve got.

If upper pecs are giving you the headache, make them a priority in your routine and train them as hard as you can.

Some people believe that you should save the weakest link for the end of the workout because by then the surrounding muscles will already be fatigued thus leaving room for proper exhaustion of the target muscle, but this is not how things really work.

In practice, by the time you get to focus on your upper pecs, you’ll be less than able to give them all the love they need.

2. Use Dumbbells, Too

Don’t be one of those guys that seem to be glued to the barbell, as those are usually the same guys who end up stuck at training plateaus for months.

As with anything else in life, every bodybuilding technique or equipment has its own specific advantages and disadvantages, and it’s on you to make the most use of the proven benefits of every tool available.

While barbells allow you to hit the chest with some seriously heavy weight, dumbbells provide an opportunity to work each side separately and fix any existing muscle imbalances (which are often painfully and ridiculously visible) as well as train crucial stabilizing muscles.

If you’re looking for unstoppable progress, alternate between dumbbells and barbells week-to-week.

And the next time someone tries to talk you into exclusively using barbells, just walk away, get your hands on the heaviest pair of dumbbells you can find and show them how it’s done!

3. Stress the Mind-muscle Connection

Take it from the chest guru himself: Arnold would focus all of his attention to figuratively “become” the muscle he wanted to target so that he could maximize the muscle damage caused and get bigger gains than he would by just mindlessly going through the motion, and he especially stressed the importance of this method in terms of chest training.

Muscles grow after being placed under direct, intense stress with appropriate duration, and developing that mind-muscle connection is one of the most effective ways to do just that.

Warm up properly before the working sets and perform each rep with perfect form to enhance the benefits and keep your shoulders safe.

4. Avoid Lock Out

When you lock out, the triceps are called into play and the tension on the upper chest is diminished.

If you don’t want this to happen (and you don’t), whenever you press a weight up, stop right before lock out to keep that muscle-building tension right where you want it to be.

When you develop the mind-muscle connection we discussed above, you should be able to notice the moment when your tri’s get activated, ‘stealing’ the work from the upper pecs, which is your cue to start slowly lowering the weight back down.

In time, you’ll figure out the optimal length of the movement and this will help you maximize your upper chest gains.

5. Play With Angles

Adjustable benches are the holy grail of chest training, as they allow you to work on your chest from multiple angles on every session.

Critics of the standard incline bench often complain that the high angle leads to unwanted delt involvement, and they are right about that.

With the adjustable benches, however, you are able to lower the incline bench without going flat, and use this low angle to better target your upper pecs while minimizing the assistance from the front delts.

Incorporate different angles on both your dumbbell and barbell work and you’ll be more than pleased with the results.

6. Do Incline Cable Flies

Shortly put, incline cable flies are awesome for chest development and might be exactly the chest-expanding move you’ve been looking for so long.

The use of cables gives you the great advantage of better isolating the target muscle (due to the fixed path of travel) and keeping it under constant tension.

Since more tension equals to more muscle damage, this will ultimately push your upper pecs to grow bigger and meaner.

To get the biggesbiggest for the buck, do every rep with proper form and get a good stretch at the bottom and flex your pecs as hard as you can at the top.

7. Do Decline Work

If you thought that decline is good for lower pec activation only, know that you’ve been living a lie!

Studies have shown that as surprising as it may sound, decline is the most effective angle for training the entire chest area, including its upper fibers.

Just like any other body part, the chest requires a diversity of stimuli in order to be maximally developed, and alternating between incline and decline can help you give it intense stimulation for better overall growth.

To further increase the tension on your upper pecs, employ a closer grip and make sure to lower the bar to the bottom of the pecs on every rep.

8. Feet Up!

Only while you do push-ups, though. As you push yourself up, make sure to also raise your feet, as this will increase the challenge by shifting the bodyweight and emphasizing upper body involvement.

Even better, introduce the growth-promoting magic of elevated push-ups into your routine: just place your feet on a bench or a box and push away.

Upper Chest Workout

Now let’s see how you can combine these tips into a powerful upper chest-blasting routine.

For the incline press, you’ll perform 2 warm-up sets before doing the real work, and then allow yourself no more than 60 seconds of rest between each set.

For best results, vary the stimuli placed on the upper pecs. How? Simply alternate starting with dumbbells and barbells.

Also, remember to stretch the chest in between sets. This helps expand the fascia that surrounds the muscle fibers, thereby allowing more blood to flow into the area and giving your workout the edge it needs.

 

EXERCISE	SETS	REPS
Incline Barbell Press	3	6-8
Low Incline Dumbbell Press	3	8-10
Incline Cable Flys	3	10-12
Close Grip Decline Barbell Press	3	12
Elevated Push-Ups	3	Failure