Looking to Build a Monster Chest? Stick with the Decline Bench.
Anyone searching for tips and tricks to build a bigger chest is going to be overwhelmed with the flood of information out there.
Everyone – and we mean EVERYONE – that’s ever lifted a weight as an idea about how to build a monster chest, how to blast your pectorals, and how to build this “beach muscle” group as quickly as possible.
Researchers at Wayne State College in the US decided to clear up all of that confusion once and for all, and now they say that the best way to build your pectorals is with the decline bench.
This flies in the face of conventional wisdom that suggested the flat bench or the incline bench (the two most popular bench press methods today) are the only way to get bigger, bolder, and stronger pectorals.
There is, however, little bit of a catch.
Researchers at Wayne State College conducted this study a number of years ago, working with sports scientists to figure out not only how to build bigger pectoral muscles but also how to build stronger pectoral muscles.
They recognized (like anyone else that study even just a little bit of human anatomy) that there are two pectoral muscles that need to be developed – the pectoralis major and the pectoralis minor – but this study focused almost entirely on the pectoralis major.
This is, after all, the largest part of the chest muscle group and the one that’s going to show the most growth and has the potential for the highest strength increases. There are two parts of this muscle – the one attached to your collarbone as well as the larger, lower part that’s attached to your sternum.
Incline bench and flat bench work is going to hammer both of these muscle groups, but these specific exercises are going to place a much higher emphasis on the smaller part of your pectoralis major – the part that connects up to your clavicle.
When you’re looking to build a bigger chest, the kind of monster chest that legends of the bodybuilding community like Arnold Schwarzenegger had, you’re going to want to develop the lower part of your pectoralis major.
Flat bench and incline bench work will not get that done, according to these sports scientists – or at least not to the degree or with the efficiency that the decline bench will.
Over the course of the year, 15 students at Wayne State College participated in this task to discover whether or not there was any real efficacy between incline bench hammering the higher part of the muscle and decline bench hammering the lower, larger part – and it turns out this is 100% true!
Electrical activity was studied throughout the chest muscles of the students that were working out while they were working out, determining just how hard each muscle area was working as well as which area was most impacted during these exercises.
The end of the day, the incline and decline bench stimulated the upper part of the chest muscles just as much as the decline bench press did. That means that both of these exercises work equally as well for hammering the upper part of the pectoralis major.
On the other hand, the decline bench stimulated the lower part of the chest muscles are more than the incline and flat bench did. This means that if you’re looking to build a monster chest quickly and efficiently you want to do “double duty” and work the entirety of your pectoralis major by going with decline work rather than “isolating” muscle areas with incline, flat, and decline.
