1. Pushups are king – use a variety of them!
2. If you go too heavy you will turn a chest exercise into a shoulder exercise.
3. Avoid having a flat back on any bench work. Make sure you tuck your shoulder blades together to prop your chest up.
4. Lying cable flyes are the shit! Spend time in the stretched position and push your back into the bench.
5. Use a slight 30-40% incline to target the upper portion of the chest. This is varied from individual to individual and determined on where a person’s sternum sits on the incline. Use trial and error to see which inclined plane suits you best.
6. Locking your arms out on a bench will undo the set position of your scapula (shoulder blades), thus rotating your front deltoids forward and forcing them to dominate the lift instead of your chest.
7. Another reason to avoid locking your arms out to full extension is the consistent tension your chest will stay under the entire time. This will cause maximum tearing of the chest fibres. Something that is impossible to do with a heavy weight.
8. Spend time in the eccentric (lowering) part of any chest exercise. This is where we lengthen the muscle and cause a large degree of tearing in the fibres. Before we can build up muscle we must effectively learn how to break it down first.