CHEST (PECS) GROWTH TRAINING TIPS

by Dr. Mike Israetel, Co-founder and Chief Sport Scientist |  Jan 30, 2017

The following are some helpful tips for your chest training. Please
note that these are averages based on our personal training
experience and, accrued through training thousands of clients over the
course of many years. The recommendations here should be food for
thought or places to start, not dogmatic scriptures to follow to the
letter.

To stay rooted in the theoretical and practical bases on which the

upcoming recommendations are made, before proceeding, please be
sure you've read the introductory article for all of these specific
muscle group training guides: Training Volume Landmarks for Muscle
Growth 

Related RP Tools For You

How Much Should I Train?

Learn everything you need to know about MRV (Maximum Recoverable Volume) to
make sure you're getting the most out of your training.

Male Physique Training Templates

Highly customizable muscle gain oriented weight training program for male fitness
enthusiasts and athletes. Pick between 3 to 6 training days per week to help grow
more muscle. Female Physique Training Templates also available!
 Simple Training Templates
Get in, get out, get visible results for as little as 2 hours a week of simple, scientific
training.

Likewise, before we dive into the training tips themselves, let's also
review our key training volume landmarks and relate them to training
the chest:   

MV = Maintenance Volume:

Perhaps around 4 sets per week are needed to maintain chest size for
experienced trainers. The chest is a large muscle and experiences a lot of
damage and stimulus from heavy training, thus doesn’t require much to
maintain its size in many cases. We recommend 2 weekly sessions for
maintenance, so that’s 2 sets per session, but you can probably get away with
one weekly chest session for 4 sets and still maintain in an isocaloric state,
and can do up to 3 sessions at 1-2 sets each as well.
MEV = Minimum Effective Volume:

Most intermediate-advanced lifters need at least 6 sets of direct chest work

per week to make gains, and for some, it’s even more than that. If you’re
training twice a week, that’s about 3 sets per session. It’s about 2 sets per
session for 3x training, 1-2 sets for 4x training, and 1 set or so for 5x or 6x
training.
MAV = Maximum Adaptive Volume:

maximum adaptive volume of a single session of any trained muscle group is

still speculative, but research suggests it’s probably no lower than 4 working
sets per session and no higher than 12 working sets per session in most
intermediates. When you design your program and progressions, having lots of
sessions with much fewer than 4 working sets per muscle group per session
for multiple weeks on end might not be very efficient, and you might benefit
from combining a few of these lower volume sessions to get the same volume
but in fewer weekly sessions. Also, not exceeding 12 sets per session per
muscle group for more than a few weeks is probably a good idea.
MRV = Maximum Recoverable Volume:

The MRV depends highly on the number of sessions per week. With 2
sessions, the average intermediate MRV for chest might be around 20 sets per
week. With three sessions, it’s closer to 25 sets per week. With 4 sessions, it’s
around 30 sets, and with 5 or 6 weekly sessions, it might be as high as 35 sets
per week in many cases.  Individuals who aren’t very strong on pressing
movements, lack flexibility in their shoulders to really stretch their chests, or
can’t get a great mind-muscle connection with their pecs usually have higher
MRVs (and that’s not a good thing)!

EXERCISES

There are three classes of exercise that constitute direct chest

training. Horizontal pressing moves that train the whole chest, incline
pressing moves that train mostly the clavicular (upper chest) fibers
and isolation moves that train the chest without involving the triceps:

1. Cable Flye
2. Cable Bent Flye

3. Cable Underhand Flye

4. Cambered Bar Bench Press

5. Deficit Pushup

6. Flat Dumbbell Bench Press

7. Flat Dumbbell Flye

8. Flat Dumbbell Press/Flye

9. Flat Hammer Machine Press

10. Hammer Machine Press

11. High Incline Dumbbell Press

12. Incline Dumbbell Flye

13. Incline Dumbbell Press

14. Incline Dumbbell Press/Flye

15. Incline Machine Chest Press

16. Incline Barbell Press Medium Grip

17. Incline Barbell Press Narrow Grip

18. Incline Barbell Press Wide Grip

 19. Low Incline Dumbbell Press
20. Machine Chest Press

21. Machine Flye

22. Medium Grip Bench Press

23. Narrow Pushup

24. Narrow Grip Bench Press

25. Pec Deck Flye

26. Pushup

27. Smith Machine Bench Press

28. Smith Machine Incline Press

29. Smith Machine Narrow Grip Press

30. Smith Machine Narrow Grip Incline Press

31. Smith Machine Wide Grip Press

32. Smith Machine Wide Grip Incline Press

33. Wide Grip Bench Press

VARIATION

The chest is composed of two basic areas (clavicular head and

sternal head) that demand their own special attention. In addition,
isolation moves, while they don’t form the core of chest work, seem to
be very helpful ingredients for maximum chest development. 

When you’re designing any week of chest training, make sure it has
some horizontal, some incline and some isolation movements in it.
Nearly every week of training should have at least a couple of sets of
ALL of those movements. In fact, as the week progresses, it might be
a good idea to rotate these movements. For example, if you train
chest 6x a week, you might want to do a horizontal press on the first
session, an incline press on the second, and a flye on the third, and
then repeat that sequence for the second half of the week, but with
different exercise choices or lighter loads for the categories.

Within a training session, we recommend including between 1 and 3

different chest exercises, but no more than that in most cases, as
doing more than 3 chest movements in one session is likely just a
needless burning of potential exercise variations you can save for
later mesocycles. Within a single week (microcycle) of training, we
recommend between 2 and 5 different chest exercises. For example, if
you train chest 3x a week, you can do a heavy barbell bench on one
day, a lighter barbell bench on the next day, and a flye version on the
last day for 2 total exercises in the week. On the other hand, if you
train chest 6x per week, you might want to choose (though don’t have
to choose) as many as 5 different exercises, with only one of them
repeated in a heavier/lighter arrangement. Because you want to keep
exercises variations fresh for when you need to change exercises
(through injury or staleness, for example), you should use as few
exercises per week (and thus, per mesocycle, as we recommend
keeping the same exercises in every week of each meso) as you can
to get the job done. If you can just do a few more sets of barbell
benches and get a great workout, there’s no reason to switch to
dumbbell benches, for example. If you’re doing an exercise, there
should be a reason for it.

Lastly, how do you know when it’s time to switch out a given exercise
from your rotation to another exercise in your list of effective choices?
The decision is based on answering just a few questions about the
exercise you’re currently using:

1. Are you still making gains in rep strength on the exercise?

2. Is the exercise causing any aches or pains that are connective
tissue related? And are these getting worse with each week or
accumulating over multiple weeks?
3. Is there a phasic need for the exercise to change? In other words,
is the exercise appropriate for the rep range you’re trying to use it
for?  Example: barbell benches for sets of 25 just tire out your
forearms, but machine presses for 25 pump up your chest as
intended.
4. Are you getting a good mind-muscle connection on the exercise,
or is it feeling stale and annoying to do?

If you are still hitting PRs on the exercise, it’s not causing any undue
pains, you’re getting a good mind-muscle connection, and there’s no
other need to change it, then don’t change it! If this means you keep
an exercise around for up to a year or more, so be it! But if an exercise
isn’t yielding any more PRs for a whole meso (especially on a muscle
gain or maintenance phase), if it’s hurting you in the “bad” way, if it
feels super stale, and/or if you have to dump it because it’s not
appropriate to an upcoming rep range target, then you should replace
it. Many times, the questions will fall on both sides, and then it’s up to
you to make a wise choice considering all the 4 variables above.

RANGE OF MOTION
The chest is designed to be stretched under load, and it gets quite a
bit of its growth stimulus from such motions. So if you’re training your
chest and not taking presses as low as they can go (to the chest for
barbells and to deeper than the chest by going outside of your
shoulders for dumbbells), you’re missing out on chest growth. In fact,
by lifting heavier weights than needed when avoiding full ROM, you tax
the shoulder and elbow joints MORE and get hurt more often.

LOADING

In general, like all muscles, the muscles of the chest benefit from
weights in the 30%-85% 1RM range, which in many people roughly
translates to a weight that results in between 5 and 30 reps on a first
set taken to failure. We can split this range into heavy (5-10,)
moderate (10-20), and light (20-30) categories, as there are tradeoffs
to make between all of them.

The first point on loading is that the chest, like most muscles, seems
to benefit from some training in all three of the rep ranges listed
above. Because the moderate (10-20 rep) range often offers the best
tradeoff between stimulus, fatigue, injury risk, and slow/fast fiber
specificity, and mind-muscle connection, an argument can be made
that a first-time program design could have most weekly working sets
for the chest in this range, perhaps up to about 50% of them. The
other 50% can perhaps be split evenly between the heavy (5-10) and
light (20-30) rep ranges, as loading range diversity has been shown to
be a potential benefit in its own right. 
The 10-20 range is productive for the chest, but many individuals
report that they get their best results from something between the 5-
10 and 10-20 ranges, perhaps sets of 8-12 reps and even a bit lower.
This is especially true for compound presses like the barbell flat bench
and incline. Flyes are a bit unsafe to train in the 5-10 range in many
cases, so they are preferentially trained in the 10-20 range. Dumbbell
movements and dips done for the chest (leaning forward more than
with triceps dips) are a bit less stable than barbell or machine
movements and are best done in the 10-20 rep ranges and not the 5-
10 rep ranges for both safety and the highest levels of faster-fiber
recruitment. Lastly, both barbell and dumbbell movements for the
chest can be limited by forearm and hand endurance and comfort in
the 20-30 rep range, so chest machines and variations of pushups are
likely the better choices for those ranges. 

When constructing a weekly training plan, it’s probably a good idea to

train the heavy ranges before the lighter ranges. Because both types
of training cause fatigue, they all interfere with each other to some
extent. However, the muscle and connective tissue damage from
heavier training is likely more substantial and presents a higher risk of
injury if some damage already exists from earlier training. Thus, if you
do sets of 5-10 on Monday and (nearly always) sustain some form of
micro-tearing, sets of 10-20 on Wednesday are lower in absolute force
magnitude and are unlikely to cause the micro-tearing to expand into a
notable injury. On the other hand, if you’re pre-damaged from lots of
sets of 10-20 on Monday, going even heavier in such a state on
Wednesday in the 5-10 range is a bit more likely to result in injury.
Thus, a potential sequencing of heavy-moderate-light during the week
might be advisable, with a day or two of extra rest after the light
session and before the next heavy session to make sure most
damage has been healed and another productive week can begin.

A sample arrangement of exercises, sets, and loads can look

something like this:

Monday Wednesday Friday

Incline Dumbbell Press: 5 Cable Flyes: 2 sets, 20-

Barbell Flat Press: 3 sets,
sets, 10-20 reps 30 reps
5-10 reps

Incline Barbell Press: 3 Dumbbell Flyes: 3 sets, Weighted Pushups: 2

sets, 5-10 reps  10-20 reps sets, 20-30 reps

Based on your personal responses to each of the main rep ranges, you
can adjust how much volume you perform in any of them. For
example, if you notice that you get a better stimulus (pumps,
soreness, mind-muscle connection, etc.) and lower fatigue (joint
stress, systemic fatigue, joint soreness, etc.) in some of the ranges vs.
others, you can do more sets in those ranges and a bit less in others,
though you should in most cases still include at least some work in
the least productive ranges. For example, you might find that neither
5-10 nor 20-30 rep ranges work very well for your chest training, so
you might only do a few sets of both in most weeks and do the vast
majority of your sets in the 10-20 range.
 REST TIMES

When determining how long to rest between any two sets in training,
our goal is for enough rest to be taken such that the next set is at least
close to maximally productive. How can we ensure this? By answering
4 basic questions about our recovery status:

1. Has the target muscle locally recovered enough to do at least 5

reps on the next set?
2. Has the nervous system recovered enough to remove it as a
limiting factor to target muscle performance?
3. Has the cardiorespiratory system recovered enough to remove it
as a limiting factor to target muscle performance?
4. Have synergist muscles in the exercise being performed
recovered enough to remove them as a limiting factor to target
muscle performance?

It might take only 1-2 minutes to recover very well (let’s say, 90%) on
all of those factors, but because set to set recovery is asymptotic in
nature, it might take another 3 minutes to get to 95% recovery and
another 10 minutes more to get to 99% recovery. Since you only have
so much time to spend in the gym, 10 “90% recovered sets” in 45
minutes of training is a much more anabolic stimulus than only 3 “99%
recovered” sets in that same amount of time. Thus, our
recommendation is to make sure you can clearly check all 4 boxes of
recovery above, but to not wait much longer than what can be
considered “very good” recovery in the incredibly inefficient quest for
“near perfect recovery.” 
Here’s an example of what can be considered “very good” recovery
between sets of chest training. Before you do another set of barbell
bench presses, ask yourself:

1. Is my chest still burning from the last set, or does it feel ok

again?
2. Do I feel like I can push hard with my chest again, and I am
mentally ready for another hard set, or do I need more time to
rest?
3. Is my breathing more or less back to normal, or is it still very
heavy?
4. Are my front delts and triceps still very fatigued, or are they ready
to support my chest in the upcoming set of barbell bench
presses?

If you can get the green light on all of these, you’re probably ready to
do another set, and waiting much longer will almost certainly not be of
benefit. 

You’ll notice that depending on the exercise and on the lifter, very
different rest times will be generated by this questionnaire. For
example, pec deck flyes might not even have synergist muscles, so
question 4 doesn’t even apply and rest times can be less than 45
seconds, whereas barbell bench presses might need 3 minutes
between sets just to regain normal breathing. And if you’re on the
larger and stronger side of things, and your cardio isn’t great, you’ll be
resting much longer than someone smaller, not as strong, and in
excellent cardio shape. While average rest times between sets of
chest training will be between 1 and 3 minutes, the most important
consideration is to take the rest time you  need, and not copy someone
else’s, rush the process, or sit around needlessly for minutes after all 4
factors are good to go for your next set to commence

FREQUENCY

There are two main considerations for determining training frequency.

The first is the duration of the increase in muscle growth seen after a
bout of training between MEV and MRV. If such an increase in muscle
growth lasts 7 days, then perhaps a once a week frequency is optimal.
If such an increase lasts only a day, then perhaps 6 days a week for
the same muscle group is much better. While direct research on
muscle growth timecourses is very limited, it seems that typical
training might cause a reliable 24-48 hour increase in muscle growth.
This would mean that if muscle growth elevation was the only variable
of concern with regards to frequency, we should train every muscle 3-
6 times per week. 

However, the second main consideration on determining training

frequency is recovery. A single bout of training between MEV and MRV
causes muscle growth to occur, but it also presents some degree of
fatigue. If we are to progress in training and allow adaptations to fully
take hold over days and weeks, we must allow enough time to elapse
between overloading sessions for at least most fatigue to dissipate.
On average, the exact amount of fatigue dissipation must be at least
enough to allow performance to return to baseline or higher, such than
an overload can be presented. In other words, if you can normally
barbell incline press 135 for 15 reps, asking yourself “when should my
next chest workout be after this last one” can be answered by “when
will you be recovered enough to be able to incline press at least 135
for 15 reps?” The timecourse of fatigue is usually a bit longer than that
of muscle growth, unfortunately, so that for most people, recovery, not
muscle growth cessation, will be the limiting factor on frequency. In
most per-session MEV-MRV training volumes, fatigue will take
between 1-2 days to come back down enough to restore or improve
on past performance, and that highly depends on the muscle in
question and even the exercises used. 

How do you determine what training frequency is appropriate for you?

You can start by training your chest at per-session MEV volumes.
After each session, you note when soreness has abated and when you
feel recovered enough psychologically to attempt another overloading
workout. When you’re ready, and no later, go back to the gym and train
chest again, with volumes just a bit higher than MEV (using the RP Set
Progression Algorithm). If you’re recovering on time, keep coming
back and training your chest as often as you have been. If you notice
that you need more time to recover, add a day to your next post-chest-
training window. If you’re recovering faster than you thought you
could, train a bit more often. After a mesocycle of such adjustments,
you will have a rough but very good guess as to what your average
chest training frequency can be for most of your programs going
forward. In fact, your frequency will not only be tailored exactly to your
responses, but you’ll be pretty sure it’s close to optimal because it was
literally derived from how fast you can recover; which is the very
primary variable that determines frequency. 
Just so that you have some expectation of where to start, most
individuals can recover from chest training at a timecourse that allows
for 2-4 sessions of chest per week at MEV-MRV volumes. However,
only through direct experimentation on yourself can you tell where in
this range is best for you and if maybe you’re even outside of this
range. Just remember that so long as you’re recovered to train again
(can perform at or above normal levels), training is a better idea than
waiting to train, because higher frequency programs, at least in the
short term, have shown to generate more muscle growth than
needlessly lower ones. 

To improve your training frequency, you can alternate exercise

selections between successive chest workouts. For example, if you do
barbell incline presses on one day, you might do dumbbell incline
presses or flat machine presses the next day, and so on. This rotation
of slightly different exercises and movement patterns can take
repeated stress off of very small and specific parts of your muscles
and connective tissues, which might reduce chronic injury risk
exposure. In fact, an easy rotation is to switch between incline
movements that target your clavicular pecs and horizontal
movements that target your sternal pecs.
 PERIODIZATION

There are a few relevant timescales in periodization:

 The repetition (1-9 seconds)

 The set (5-30 repetitions)
 The exercise (1-5 sets) 
 The session (2-6 exercises)
 The day (0-2 sessions)
 The microcycle (usually 1 week of training)
 The mesocycle (3-12 weeks)
 The block (1-4 mesocycle s)
 The macrocycle (1-4 blocks)

We’ve already covered the most important details on most of these

timescales, so in this section, we’ll focus on a brief understanding of
how to manipulate training over a typical mesocycle and training
block.

A mesocycle is composed of two phases: the accumulation phase

and the deload phase. The accumulation phase lasts as long as it
takes to hit systemic MRV, which, because fatigue accumulates in
MEV+ training, has to happen at some point. For beginners with very
high recovery abilities, it can take up to 12 weeks of increasingly more
demanding training for systemic MRV to be reached and a deload to
be required. For very advanced lifters that have very strong, large, and
volume-resistant muscles, it can take only 3-4 weeks of accumulation
training to reach systemic MRV and need to deload. The deload phase
is designed to bring down the fatigue from the accumulation phase,
and it usually only lasts a week or so (one microcycle).

When you begin a mesocycle of training, you should probably begin at

or close to your MEV for all the muscle groups you’d like to improve
during that mesocycle, for reasons described extensively in our book
on the subject of training volume. Week to week, you can manipulate
working sets by using the Set Progression algorithm from the Training
Volume Landmarks for Muscle Growth (link) article. You should seek
to keep reps stable from week to week while letting your RIR decline
from a 3 or 4 RIR start until it gets down to 0 (for exercises that don’t
threaten the bar falling on you) or 1 (for those that do) in the last week
of training. The way you keep the reps stable as RIR falls is by adding
weight to the exercises you’re using. How much weight to add is a
matter of an educated guess on your part. You want to add enough
weight to get your target RIR with the same reps as last week. For
example, if you did 100lbs last week for 10 reps on your first set of an
exercise at 2 RIR, how much should you do next week to get 10 reps
again but at 1 RIR? Well, you might think that adding 2.5lbs would be
too easy, and you could honestly get 11 reps with that next week at 1
RIR, but adding 10lbs might require you to push to 0 RIR to get 10 reps,
so you would just add 5lbs and that will probably take you where you
need to be. If you’re making very rapid gains on an exercise, you might
have a few weeks here and there where even though you increased
weight by a bit, your RIR didn’t decline. You might have hit 8 reps at
100lbs at 3 RIR last week, and then hit 8 reps again at 3 RIR with
105lbs this week! This is a good thing, and lots of these weeks are
how beginners can sometimes crank out up to 12 weeks of
accumulation. Since getting to failure too soon is MUCH WORSE than
getting there a bit slower, we recommend being conservative on
nearly all weekly weight additions.

If you can’t realistically add weight, you can add reps. This might
happen when, for example, you are using the 25lb dumbbells one
week and then having to do the 30lbers next week, wildly slashing your
reps. Just remember to stay within your general rep range and not
leave it in any given meso. If you start at sets of about 5 reps, don’t
add any more reps than will give you sets of 10, because that will take
you out of the 5-10 range and no longer fulfill the needs of your
training program in the way it was intended. If you start to exit a range
by adding reps, add weight to take yourself back into that range, even
if the increments are big and take you all the way down to the bottom
of the range. Yes, this might mean that last week you were doing 20
reps with the 20lb dumbbells on your first set, and this week you’re
back to only 10 reps with the 25lbers at the same or one less RIR, but
that’s proper training!

Once you cannot tie previous reps in at least two consecutive

sessions for a given muscle group, you have likely hit its local MRV,
and need to reduce its training volume. Our recommendation is to take
the next planned session with half of the planned working sets, half of
the planned reps, and half of the load for recovery. In the session after,
resume your load progression from before, but start at a number of
sets halfway between where you started the meso and your MRV set
number, and an RIR of around 2. Thus, for example, if you hit 100lbs
for 10 reps on a first set last session (6 total sets in the session for
that muscle group), whereas the week before, you hit 95lbs for 12
reps, your next workout can be 50lbs for 3 sets of about 5 reps. Then,
next week, you resume with 105lbs, but shoot for 2 RIR and do 4 sets
total, because you started the meso at 2 sets, and 4 is halfway
between 2 and 6 sets. Continue to train normally after that until and
unless you hit MRV again.

Systemic MRV is when you’re training so hard that your sleep quality
declines, your appetite falls, and you might get sick more often. It’s
also when nearly all of your muscles start to hit local MRVs at about
the same time. Once that happens (and be honest with yourself when
it does), stop the accumulation phase and begin the deload phase.

The deload can be done many ways, but our recommendation is to

take sets to MEV for the whole week. The load should be week 1’s
load for the first half of the week and ½ of week 1’s load for the
second half. The reps should be roughly half of all week 1’s reps for all
sets during the deload week. This makes the deload VERY EASY,
which is the whole point, since hard training doesn’t bring down
fatigue! You should feel refreshed and be craving hard training toward
the end of your deload week if you’re setting it up correctly. 

Those are the basics of periodization over the mesocycle . The

training block is a sequence of mesocycle s strung together for one
unifying purpose. For example, a muscle gain block may be 3
mesocycles of 6 weeks each, one after another, with weight gain the
goal for all 18 of those total weeks, or a fat loss block might be 2
mesocycles of 5 weeks long during which weight loss is the goal for
all 10 of those weeks.
Though we can potentially alter all training variables over a training
block, frequency, exercise selection, and loading are definitely
noteworthy.

Frequency Periodization

When you start a training block, your MEVs are very low and so are
your weekly MRVs. Thus, you can fit your total training volume
relatively easily into lower frequencies, such as 2x per week per
muscle group, for example. As training progresses and you start your
next meso, not only do your per-session MEVs go up, but your weekly
MRVs go up as well, making fitting all your training into just a few
sessions more difficult. As well, you’re now quite used to the
exercises, and recovery between sessions occurs much faster,
allowing a higher frequency microcycle to be much more realistic. At
this point, you can increase your frequency a bit, perhaps to an
average of something like 3x per muscle group, for example. In the
last one or two mesos, your per-session MEVs are very high and your
per-week MRVs even higher. To really get the best gains, another
bump in frequency is recommended, and you might go to 4x or so
training per muscle group, and perhaps even higher. 

Unfortunately, super high frequencies might not be the most

sustainable for a couple of reasons. First, muscles heal faster than
connective tissues, and if you train with very high frequencies,
sometimes your connective tissue recovery can lag behind your
muscle recovery, which may set you up for injuries if unabated.
Secondly, the sheer weekly volume that higher frequencies let you do
productively might cause so much fatigue escalation as to not be
sustainable for longer than a mesocycle or two. Thus, after training for
a meso or two at your highest frequency, you might end the training
block and seek to reduce the very high fatigue levels you have
accumulated, in part by starting whatever phase you start next at
lower frequencies.

Exercise Selection Periodization

For normal exercise selection decisions, you can just follow the 4-part
exercise deletion and replacement guidelines in the variation section
above. But as you add sessions from meso to meso with a climbing
frequency, you’ll need to consider adding exercises. Yes, you can
repeat exercises a few times in the week with different loads, but we
recommend doing this sparingly, and more often adding in new
exercises when you add new sessions as frequency climbs. Thus, you
might start with an exercise on Monday and a different one on
Thursday in a 2x meso, but when you move to 3x, you might have to
add a new exercise on Friday, keeping the Monday exercise the same
and moving the Thursday exercise to Wednesday. Because fatigue
and wear and tear increase with each meso in a block, we recommend
adding less systemically disruptive exercises more often than adding
more disruptive ones. For example, you might consider adding some
machine presses on that Friday 3x session but adding barbell incline
presses to an already fatiguing week of chest training might be
overkill. Yes, you can add very tough movements as you go, but we
recommend against it in most cases. Thus, you start with pretty much
only or mostly basic, high-stress moves such as barbell bench presses
and barbell incline presses earlier in the block, and later on add
machine presses, dumbbell presses, and other such less fatiguing
exercises as you add in sessions to expand frequency over the
training block. 

Loading Periodization

Whatever exercises you’ve carried over from one meso to the next
should be done in the same rep ranges as they were done in the last
mesos. For example, if you did barbell incline presses in the 5-10 rep
range on a first set in the last meso, in the next meso, you should
continue your loading progression to stay in that same rep range,
which often means just adding small increments of weight from
where you last left off in the last meso, or lightening up the weight just
enough to get similar reps at 3-4 RIR again in the first week. But for
new exercises added in each meso as frequency goes up, we
recommend adding in the moderate (10-20) and light (20-30) rep
ranges instead of the heavy (5-10) range. This recommendation
occurs for two reasons. First, as you take on more wear and tear and
fatigue, adding more 5-10 rep movements might cause a large
increase in injury risk, especially now that you’re asking your body to
perform with such heavy loads with even less recovery time between
sessions. Secondly, very high rep (20-30) training seems to cause
robust gains over a meso or two, but in part because your body adapts
to buffering metabolites so quickly, might not work nearly as well for
much longer. Thus, you may want to start with heavier training in the
first meso of a block, keep it for all remaining mesos, and add in
lighter training with new sessions as you go, which also pairs well with
the selection of less fatiguing exercises. Here’s an example of how
that might look for the chest:
  

  Meso 1 Meso 2 Meso 3

Barbell Incline Barbell Incline Barbell Incline

Mon
Presses (5-10) Presses (5-10) Presses (5-10)
Barbell Incline Barbell Incline
Wed x
Presses (10-20) Presses (10-20)
Barbell Flat Presses
Thurs x x
(10-20)
Machine Flyes (10- Machine Flyes (10-
Fri x
20) 20)
Machine Incline
Sat x x
Presses (20-30)

Once you’ve done a whole training block, you can do a mesocycle of

low frequency (2x) training at MV with mostly 5-10 rep ranges and
compound movements to resensitize your muscles to volume and
growth again. This meso can take about a month and can be good to
pair with maintenance eating to bring down any diet fatigue you might
have from hard dieting in the last block. If you don’t have any real diet
fatigue, you can instead take around 2 weeks of active rest
(sometimes just one week if you count the deload after your last
meso), where you train with 1x frequency for every muscle, with only
about 2 working sets per muscle per session, and with weights that
are around 50% of your 5-10 range, but doing them for only 5-10 reps
per set. This ultra-easy training can make you ready for another whole
block of training in the gym and can even be replaced with no training
at all if you’re feeling really beat up or tired. Once you’ve taken this
easy time, you’re probably ready to give another training block a go!
 TRAINING MODALITIES

Straight Sets

Straight sets are sets performed to 0-4 RIR, with enough rest time to
recover all 4 limiting factors (see the rest time section above for
details).

Straight sets are excellent for the chest. The allow a ton of control and
are easy for performance tracking. They should form the basis of
most chest training. 

Down Sets

Down sets are straight sets, but with less weight (usually 10-20% less)
than the previous straight sets. By lowering the weight, you can keep
reps over 5 per set, and/or keep the mind-muscle connection high and
keep technique excellent to continue to have a high stimulus to fatigue
ratio in every set of that exercise.  

Down sets are definitely an option for chest, but many people report
that heavier training actually lets them have a higher mind-muscle
connection than lighter training for the chest. If you do have trouble
with chest mind-muscle or your reps get to 5 or lower on a given
exercise, by all means feel free to employ down sets.

Controlled Eccentrics and Pauses

Concentric, eccentric, and isometric phases of each exercise can be
between half a second and 3 seconds long and still confer near-optimal
effects on hypertrophy. In some cases, slowing down eccentrics and
extending pauses can enhance technique, mind-muscle connection,
and safety of the exercise.

Pausing at the bottom of presses and flyes is very likely quite

preventative of major injury to the chest, as is controlling both the
eccentric and the concentric. “Exploding off the chest” is a great tool
for athletic performance, but its injury risks and mind-muscle
downsides probably prohibit it from being a useful method of
movement for the bodybuilder. You don’t have to pause each rep or
squeeze at the top of all machine flyes, but as you get bigger and
stronger, you might want to do especially the former, especially on
your heavier sets, more of the time than not.

Giant Sets 

Giant sets give you a certain weight to lift, an RIR range to hit (usually 0-
4 RIR), and a goal of total reps over as many sets as it takes. An
example is aiming to do 100lbs for however many sets it takes to get
60 total reps, while taking normal rest between each set. Such an
approach can take the focus off of having to match or exceed the per-
set reps you did last week, and can thus let you super-focus on
technique and the mind-muscle connection, thus potentially improving
both and getting more out of the training with exercises that can
demand lots of technique and mind-muscle connection to be effective.
If you’d like to be super precise in counting sets for your volume
landmarks, we recommend counting giant sets at 2/3 of the
contribution of straight sets, such that if you did 6 total sets to get to
your giant set rep target, you can count that as 4 sets of “straight set
equivalency” in terms of stimulus and fatigue. This discount is because
with a higher focus on technique and mind-muscle connection and a
lower focus on getting as many reps per set as possible, giant sets
likely don’t cause as much fatigue as straight sets.

The chest often gives better mind-muscle feedback the more fatigued

it gets and the lower the reps are, so giant sets aren’t as useful for the
chest as they are for many other muscles. That being said, sometimes
flyes and dumbbell presses can be tough to do technically perfectly
when you’re too focused on just getting the reps, so giant sets can
come in very hand in such cases.

Myoreps

Myoreps are just like straight sets in that they must check all 4 recovery
boxes before doing another set. However, they are different in two
ways. First, while the first set is usually between 10-20 reps (0-2 RIR),
the next multiple sets only rest long enough to get between 5 and 10
reps each. This is to maximize the ratio of effective (near-failure) reps
to total reps over the multiple sets. Secondly, for all of those
successive sets to register the highest number of effective reps per set,
the local recovery factor (the muscle itself) must be by far the most
limiting, so that successive sets are not limited by the nervous system,
the lungs, and other muscles, allowing the final reps of each set to
recruit and tense the fastest and most growth-prone motor units. For
this to be possible, only isolation exercises without limiting synergists
are appropriate for myoreps. If you’d like to be super precise in
counting sets for your volume landmarks, we recommend counting
myorep sets each as the equivalent of a straight set. While they do
have fewer reps, they are often taken closer to failure and thus turn out
to be about as fatiguing. 

Myoreps can work great for chest flyes of various sorts, as well as
machine presses, especially when the chest is already pre-exhausted
relative to the synergists (triceps, front delts, etc.). However, because
free weight presses are usually quite systemically fatiguing, myoreps
are not usually appropriate for them.

Drop Sets

Drop sets are exactly like myoreps, but with even shorter rest times
because weight is reduced by 10-20% on average between each set.
The effects are very similar. The advantage of drop sets is their time
saving, and their slight disadvantage over myoreps is that dropping the
weight a lot can reduce mind-muscle connection via reducing tension
perception. If you’d like to be super precise in counting sets for your
volume landmarks, we recommend counting drop sets each as the
equivalent of a straight set. While they do have fewer reps and lighter
loads, they are often taken closer to failure and in such rapid and
painful succession that they turn out to be about as fatiguing.

Drop sets can be a nice change of pace, mostly for chest flyes.
However, chests tend to respond a bit better to heavier work, and
dropping too much weight can lead to a “going through the motions”
effect you might not like. If you want to get away from straight sets for
chest, we recommend exploring myoreps before you explore drop sets
in most cases
Pre-Exhaust Supersets

These supersets begin with an isolation exercise for a given muscle group, and
with no rest after taking it to 0-2 RIR, end with a compound exercise to which
the target muscle is a big contributor. The local pre-exhaust of the isolation
exercise allows the target muscle to be by far the limiting factor for the
compound exercise that follows, and lets it be exposed to a few more effective
reps than it otherwise would be if that compound was done fresh. After each 2-
exercise superset, 4-factor rest is again taken until the next 2-exercise superset
begins. If you’d like to be super precise in counting sets for your volume
landmarks, we recommend counting pre-exhaust supersets as 1.5x as the
equivalent of a straight set. This is because the compound exercise done in the
second part of the set is only limited (highly) by the target pre-exhausted
muscle, and this isn’t nearly as fatiguing, especially systemically, as it would be
if it were done fresh.

Because there are so many brutally effective chest isolations and

compounds, most people will struggle much more with chest recovery
than with getting enough chest stimulus. However, some people have
harder times with mind-muscle connections on their chest, and
compounds see their front delts and triceps as much more limiting
factors. In such cases, super setting a flye variant with a pressing
variant (especially wider grip) can be an excellent approach.

Occlusion Sets

Occlusion training is myorep training with the limb occluded just above
the muscle. This occlusion causes the local muscle and nerve to be far
and away the limiting factors on recovery between sets, and thus
allows you to focus in on a target muscle group that might have
otherwise been difficult to reach with non-occluded movements. The
big benefit is time saving, because rest between occluded sets is only
long enough to get another 5 reps, and you can also use weights at the
very low end of the growth range and even a bit lower (20-30% 1RM).
The downside is that the local vasculature adapts very quickly to
occlusion, so it might not be very effective for any more than a
mesocycle or two in a row. Also, some muscles are much harder than
others to occlude, or even impossible to occlude. If you’d like to be
super precise in counting sets for your volume landmarks, we
recommend counting occlusion sets each as the equivalent of 2/3 of a
straight set, as they cause much less systemic fatigue due to the lower
reps and weights used.

Because it’s pretty much impossible to occlude the chest (and live
through it), this is not an option with chest training.