9 Tips on How to Fix a Lagging and Not Growing Chest

I'm frequently asked at the gym, 'How do you fix a chest that's not growing and lagging behind other muscles?' Here, I'd like to share my personal experience.

One of my weaknesses is my poorly developed chest muscles, which I noticed at the beginning of my bodybuilding journey. Even after a year of training, I realized that my pectoral muscles were not responding well to my workouts. Although my strength increased in exercises such as the bench press and dumbbell fly, my pecs were growing at a slow pace.

My brother and I once read Arnold Schwarzenegger's 'Encyclopedia of Bodybuilding' and began focusing on our upper chest muscles during every workout, as well as doing exercises for the whole pectoral muscles. We did 5 exercises and 5 sets to muscle failure for each exercise, all without using steroids. Despite our efforts, however, our pecs just wouldn't grow! We were puzzled: "How can we fix a lagging pectoral that doesn't want to grow?".

At the time, we trained vigorously but didn't pay much attention to recovery. However, during one summer vacation, I visited my aunt in the countryside for two weeks and didn't exercise during that time. When I returned to the gym, I noticed a significant increase in strength, without even knowing why. Looking back, I realize that my muscles had fully recovered after two weeks of rest, which is why my strength had increased. However, at the time, we continued to pump our pecs muscles just as hard as before. Overall, building impressive pecs was one of our top priorities back then.

But enough about the past. Let's get back to the original question, specifically about training methods and tips on how to fix your lagging chest in the gym.

Tips on How to Fix Your Lagging and Not Growing Chest

1. One important method for training your pectoral muscles is to prioritize them by doing them first in your workout.
2.  When doing bench presses and dumbbell flies, it's important to pull your shoulders back and puff out your chest. This position is more effective for the biomechanics of the pectoral muscles.
3. During dumbbell and barbell bench presses, avoid straightening your arms fully and aim to work about 3/4 of the movement amplitude. At the upper point of these exercises, the triceps get more load and may fail before your chest muscles. By doing this, you exclude the pre-failure of your triceps and focus more on your pectorals.
4. While dumbbell flies are a great exercise, I would recommend using the butterfly machine that imitates the movement of the dumbbell fly.
5. Supersetting bench press and dumbbell fly is a great way to increase the intensity of your workout. For example, try doing 6 reps of each exercise.
6. Experiment with reps ranging from 6 to 15. 
7. Aim to increase the weight you work with slightly each workout.
8. If your training plan includes three exercises for your pectoral muscles, do one bench press and two fly exercises. This is particularly useful for those who can't work their chest muscles effectively with a bench press.
9. Try increasing the number of working sets, try going from two to four (2, 3, 4) sets over time. After reaching four sets, take a recovery period with total rest before starting again with 2, 3, 4 sets.

In any case, you have to experiment. It's important not to forget that the complete muscle recovery time after heavy workouts is about 15 days.