Chest Development

[Martin Hodges]

Chest development,

Okay so Iʼm going to go ahead and admit that asking an aesthetics question on a

gymnastic forum is out of place, but....

As much as I love the form-follows-function aspect of gymnastics, my one vain vice is

chest development. Yet i have always struggled to quite achieve the level of chest

development that i want, especially in the upper and middle.

I would like to know the ideal exercises for chest development while still working with bodyweight (and maybe weighted vests) within the FSP and FBE framework. When I say ideal, i mean exercises that will aesthetically (i know i know, vanity) develop upper and outer portions of the chest.

I know pushups and dips, but are there particular progressions of pushups and dips that

one could focus on for the more aesthetic aspect? I donʼt want to waste my time on a

whole chest workout (like most body building forums recommend) if a couple of

exercises with the proper TUT will do the trick.

I also donʼt want to add so much extra chest work that it interferes with the rest of my

workout (i.e. i would prefer a workout style where I still maintained a killroy template

workout, but just added an extra chest exercise at the end).

Any help would be much appreciated!

Martin

[Joshua Naterman]

Maintaining retraction throughout push ups instead of allowing normal scapular rhythm to take over will force the pecs to do a lot more work proportionally. That may help you.

Other than that, hollow dips and ring supports with a slight forward lean will also give you good results, but the key will be when and what and how much and how often you eat. If you want aesthetic results, your diet is at least as important as your training.

And of course a powerlifting style bench press with retracted shoulders. I felt my chest more in this than in anything else once I learned the form.

[Matus Michalicka]

I believe that you should not specialize for esthetics for any body part until at least 3 years of training and after decent strength and size gains.

After that period if your chest is still lagging, some coaches recommend ring chest flies with constant tension, they believe that the function of chest is to draw arms across chest and that this exercise produces best esthetic results.

I would recommend 2 sets of 10-15 reps at the end of workout.

However the strength work(push ups/dips) is the most important.

[Nyikhaj]

I do not know, how you look like, but I think the only problem is, that your ideal is a bodybuilder chest seen in mags. Take a look at some oldtime strongman (Sandow, Hackenschmidt etc.). They were strong and did not have that big chest. When you get older, big chest also can "hang around".

[Martin Hodges]

Hey guys, thanks for your responses.

To Nyikhaj > I wouldn't say its a bodybuilder aesthetic i'm aiming for so much as a male model aesthetic, i.e. still being relatively normal size (i'm 6'1 and 175 lbs, and somewhere between a mesomorph and ectomorph) but with good muscle definition. Probably the aesthetic i'm aiming for has as much to do with body fat % as muscle, no?

I will try to keep my vanity in check and focus on strength work. Whatever chest development happens, happens. The reality is at the moment I have somewhat started over on the GB program because I had missed the requirement of mastering 3x60s of the prereqs before working on FSP and FBEs. Also I had not been doing a 1x60 warmup of the prereqs, nor I had a done warm up sets of easier progressions before working on primary FBE progression. When I started actually doing all of this, I was worn out just by doing the warm up.

When I realized that mastering arches, hollows, and support was foundation for everything else, it started to make sense that I had stalled out in FSPs at a flat tuck position. On FBEs I had made decent progress in pushing...could do XR PPPu and XR Dips, but form on both could be improved, On pulling, never having mastered L-sit, i could only do Pullup L's in tuck position. The more i've read the forum the more i've come to realize my core was too weak and was holding me back.

So starting a few weeks ago I revamped my workout to put the FSPs and FBEs on maintenance and focus on mastering the pre reqs.

[alec_ar]

I like Nyikhaj's post. With old time strongmen you would often times see rippling raw pecs but not too much mass on them. It's often similar for gymnasts imo. If you look at very powerful rings specialists such as Van Gelder or Yang Wei, it is most often their shoulder and upper arm development that 'pops' out the most. With bodybuilders you tend to see development something similar to half a basketball sticking out of their sternum.

This is not to take anything away from the gymnasts or strongmen, I just believe that using calisthenics mixed with a 'train compound movements, not muscles' type of approach, results in the pecs not swelling up quite as much (genes and other things like diet obviously play a huge role too). Doesn't mean the gymnasts or strongmen's pecs aren't stronger than bodybuilders, they are! They're just built for function and not form. And people might facepalm me for bringing Bruce Lee up, but I like his saying, a bigger muscle isn't necessarily a stronger one.

I like looking at Olympic level gymnasts shoulders and upper backs. THAT is impressive!

[Blairbob]

planche stuff, rings build chesticles that the gals will like to feel up. i think weighted dips and bench would work well here but you said only bw.

malt flies

[Brian Li]

Ring flys should work very well for the chest since they pretty much isolate them like DB flys. I think BL pull to maltese and maltese press to planche should work the chest really hard.

[Martin Hodges]

Ring flys should work very well for the chest since they pretty much isolate them like DB flys. I think BL pull to maltese and maltese press to planche should work the chest really hard.

As much as I like ring flys, I am a little hesitant to use them at this point since Coach Sommer seemed to discourage using them until a certain level of strength had been built up. Right now, I either have to do them on my knees with piked body, or if I do them from my feet , my arms are bent so that it seems somewhere between a ring fly and bulgarian pushup.

And i guess I should have used the handy dandy search feature. Finding other similar posts on chest development.

[Joshua Naterman]

I do not know, how you look like, but I think the only problem is, that your ideal is a bodybuilder chest seen in mags. Take a look at some oldtime strongman (Sandow, Hackenschmidt etc.). They were strong and did not have that big chest. When you get older, big chest also can "hang around".

To be fair, these guys also didn't bench or (as far as i have been able to tell) do weighted dips. and while they most certainly would have been strong starting off, would have also seen a lot of chest growth along with horizontal pressing strength increase if they had done those exercises as well.

Hackenschmidt, however, is different. he had a pretty big chest, and he believed in floor presses (from before benches) and heavy weights. It shows in his physique. Of course, it's also in his book "The Way to Live."