The True Victor

By Victor Martinez

How many different pressing movements should I do for chest in a workout? Some guys seem to only do two, while others will do as many as four or five. What’s a good routine for someone who has been training about four years and still needs a lot more mass in the pecs?

If you want a lot more thickness to your chest, nothing is going to beat barbell and dumbbell presses. As to how many you should do, it’s a matter of personal preference. These days I like to do an incline barbell press, a dumbbell press either on the flat or incline bench, and a machine press, but that’s now how I trained for most of my career. I had a partial pec tear two years ago while doing the flat barbell bench press, and it’s been out of my routine ever since. But if I had to say there was one exercise that gave me the most overall mass in my chest, that would be the one. Unless you have some serious injury that prevents you from benching, you should do it first and work hard on it for about 4 work sets of 8-12 reps (after warming up well, of course).

Every second or third workout, start with the incline barbell instead. If you do flat bench with a bar, do your inclines with dumbbells. And if you start the workout on incline barbell presses, do your dumbbell presses on a flat bench. You can also do either decline presses with a bar or dumbbells after that, or weighted dips with your torso tipped forward to focus on the chest and not the tri’s. Finish up with incline or flat dumbbell flyes. Flex your chest hard between sets and stretch it out nicely when the workout is over. Also think about doing cross-bench dumbbell pullovers. This is an old-school trick for stretching the pecs and opening up the ribcage to allow for more growth. All that should put you on your way to a bigger chest. Here are those routines again:

Chest Routine A

Flat Barbell Bench Presses        4 x 8-12

Incline Dumbbell Presses           4 x 8-12

Decline Barbell Presses             4 x 8-12

Incline Dumbbell Flyes               4 x 8-12

Chest Routine B

Incline Barbell Presses               4 x 8-12

Flat Dumbbell Presses              4 x 8-12

Weighted Dips                          4 x 8-12

Flat Dumbbell Flyes                  4 x 8-12

3 Things Beginners Should Not Waste Their Time On:

Machines And Cables For Back

Stay away from this part of your gym on back day! Nothing is going to give you more width and thickness than the raw basics: chin-ups, deadlifts, barbell rows and dumbbell rows. Work them hard and your back will grow, period.

Pec Decks And Cable Crossovers

Just do presses and dips for your chest until you have some good thickness, at which point you can start doing dumbbell flyes. Leave that other shit alone until you are more advanced, maybe about two years of training under your belt.

Leg Extensions

For big quads, do deep squats and add in some heavy leg presses every once in a while. You don’t need to worry about isolating your quads or trying to get more separation until you actually have the size there in the first place.

Vic, what do you know about EPO? A few guys at my gym are using it and they say they are getting great pumps but the shit is expensive. Plus, I thought it was for bike racers, not bodybuilders.

EPO is a powerful hormone called erythropoietin, which stimulates the production of red blood cells and increases blood volume. Yes, synthetic EPO is being used by athletes in events like the Tour de France. It was first popularized by endurance athletes because the increase in red blood cells increases oxygen-carrying capacity. Bodybuilders are using EPO because of its blood-volumizing effects which also plays a critical role in muscle building and recovery through increased nutrient transport to muscle tissue. The most noticeable effect of EPO is the amazing full pumps you get during your workouts. I have been using MHP’s Dark Rage, which has a patent-pending EPO Technology and the pumps are incredible. Rather than spend thousands on synthetic EPO, I recommend you try Dark Rage. For more information on Dark Rage you can go to www.getMHP.com. I feel it’s by far the best pre-workout formula out there.