Chest Workout (INNER CHEST FOCUS)

By Steve Ellefson

I was pretty hyped on coffee today and went to the gym with the purpose of doing chest a little differently than I would usually do.

My chest is getting more defined toward the outer edges so I wanted to focus on my inner chest a bit more than usual to help that area.

I dug a little deep into the archives of the Daily Swole and found Episode 143 to be of good help.

If you haven’t watched or listened to this episode, go check it out. It’s a quick one and the concepts are great.

Here is the most recent episode discussing angles in training

Episode #945 - Hitting Those Angles

Streaming now on all podcast apps

Remember that in order to see definition body fat has to be low enough to see your muscles so you obviously have to be eating the right foods and training on a consistent basis.

Brought up in the episode is that it’s important to know that you have no “inner chest” muscle.

Your muscles have fibers that move in specific directions so you have to do exercises that move in the direction of the fibers to make that area grow. Presses are known to help with building the chest along with fly exercises.

I found super-setting/compound-setting presses with flyes, then adding push-ups with the furniture sliding pads and adding the pinch press worked really well in delivering some fatigue and a pretty good pump. 

The concepts of isolation, slow and eccentric movements, and focusing on getting the full range of motion while squeezing the muscles are what I focused on and are the way to go here.

Really focus on getting controlled and quality reps.

I kept rest periods to about 30 seconds to a minute and tried to get to the 12th rep every time.

Activation & Warm Up Sets:

• Dumbbell Squeeze Press (3 sets of 10-15 reps)
  • Similar to the Pinch Press but you’re laying on a flat or incline bench and squeezing two dumbbells together with constant tension while pressing.
  • Shown in the gifs below as a "Close Triceps Press"

• Pec Deck/Pec Fly Machine or Dumbbell Chest Flyes (5 sets of 8-12 reps)

Workout Sets:

// = Supersets

• Flat Dumbbell Bench Press // High Angle Cable Flyes (5 sets of 8-12 reps)
• Slider Push-Ups (3 sets of 3-6 reps)
  • These can be a little difficult, so listen to your body if you’re having trouble!
• Incline Dumbbell Bench Press // Low Angle Cable Flyes (5 sets of 8-12 reps)
• Decline Dumbbell Bench Press (or chest dips) // Pinch Press (5 sets of 8-12 reps)
• Dumbbell Pullover (5 sets of 8-12 reps)

Click the training gif below for full instructional video (members only)