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5 Red Flags of a Weak Chest (FIX THESE)

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Rating: 4.0; Vote: 1

m going to show you the 5 biggest red flags for a weak chest, and most importantly, what you can do to fix them. The first thing you want to do is look at the way in which you are performing your dumbbell bench press or barbell bench. If you have the tendency to allow your shoulders to drift forward ahead of your chest on the pressing portion of the lift then you likely are compensating for a weak chest. This becomes especially true if you find that it happens even more as you fatigue during the set. Next, take a look at your performance and strength on the overhead press as compared to the bench press. If you find that you are meeting or coming close to pressing your bodyweight on the OHP but are far less capable of pressing one and a half times your bodyweight on a bench press, you likely have a very weak chest. Why is that? This is because the OHP requires primarily the strength of the delts to perform it well. Given that your delts are also needed on the bench press, if you have incredible strength in them that should carry over to the bench. If yours falls apart however, the most likely cause is that your chest is not nearly as strong as your shoulders. Sticking with the bench press, you also want to be aware of where in the range of motion you seem to most often fail or struggle. Generally, the shoulders are most responsible for getting the bar off of your chest at the bottom of the lift. On the opposite end, the triceps are relied on tremendously for locking out the lift. The chest however, is most active and recruited during the midrange of the lift. If you find that it is here that you are failing on your reps or getting stuck, then it is something that you are going to want to work on and at the very least, identify as a major red flag. Continuing on, you don-t just want to be concerned with your absolute strength in your chest but also your ability to produce force over time repeatedly. The muscle endurance of the chest can be tested by simply performing 25 pushups as I show you in the video, breaking them up into 5 reps at a time with a 5 second hold in the midrange of the exercise each time. Without stopping, see if you can get all the way to 25 reps while accruing 25 seconds of holding time. If not, you want to be alerted to the weakness you likely have in your chest muscles. Finally, take note of any potential discrepancy in your performance of the dip. We know that leaning forward in the dip is going to more effectively recruit the muscles of the chest rather than relying heavily on the triceps (as happens in a more upright dip. If you find however that you can do more reps upright than you can tilted forward in more of a chest dip, this is a major red flag. The fixes for each of these red flags are included. Be sure that you keep your shoulders held back during all pressing movements so that your chest can more actively contribute to the lift. Likewise, it is ok to work on including partials in the midrange of a bench press or even paused reps in the midrange to evoke more work from the chest and strengthen it. Finally, with dips, don-t just treat them as a high rep exercise. Remember to include some weighted dips and lean forward into the chest dip position and work on increasing your strength on the exercise in the lower rep ranges. If you are looking for a complete workout program that helps you to not only overcome these red flags but everywhere else you can develop them in your body, be sure to click the link below and get a step by step plan for training like an athlete. Build ripped, athletic muscle in just 90 days by training with the ATHLEAN-X Training Systems
Date: 2022-04-22

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Comments and reviews: 10

For
This vid confirmed that I have a weak chest and is shoulder dominant. I remember when I was doing 5x5 SL, I loathed bench press because Im so weak at it. I stopped doing it when I reached 155lbs. I still do dumbbell BP, but BB bench. However, I kept doing OHP from 45lbs to 140lbs (1RM, then I got curious on how I would perform on bench press. I tried BB bench again and in span of 8 weeks, my BP went from 155 to 225(1RM.
My thoughts that time was -you-ve got to be kidding me-. And watching this vid rignt now just confirmed it, esp the bench press midrange and dip angle. Now that gyms opened back up again, I struggle again with 135lbs 5x5 on bench, but not on 95lbs 5x5 OHP. Bruh
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Oldskool
I absolutely don't get the third red flag.
Why is it bad that the chest is the first to fail? If anything, it would seem like a red flag if the shoulders give up first, because that would mean I put more stress on them then the chest.
I want to train chest when doing the bench press, so the chest giving up first only seems logical to me.
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monson77
Most of his videos are for people who have been working out constantly for years and already have muscles, or close to having muscles. They're not for people like me who workout off an on and not looking to have the same kind of muscles Jeff has. He is good at explaining what to do and not to do and it does help.
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Dalia
About -1. 5 times body weight-- what about for women?
I can do 10 reps of 10 lbs per side for bench press abs i weight 122 pounds.
I-m therefore only bench pressing 65 pounds. Just slightly over half of my body weight.
I doubt that I-ll ever be pressing 1. 5 times my body weight lol
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Glyn
Many years ago I made the mistake of bench pressing on my own and doing a few reps too many. Hitting failure part way through the final rep with no spotter, I injured my right shoulder getting the barbell back onto its stand. That took 20 years to heal completely!
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Ken
I-m a newbie old obese man. My whole body unfurled as a red flag - when I clicked on the video. On the plus side, I am over-resourced for body weight exercises. The other plus is that I have been working consistently to change my body and health before it kills me.
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Ramone
When doing the push ups -I did the 25 with the pause. tapped out struggling with the last 5. and I've never had this problem before but the joint in my palm hurts when I do push up I. think its wen i restarted working out but I'm not enterily sure why it hurts
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KiritoDaark
For me whenever i do. Bench presses it's my arms that feel weak af after certain amount of reps and they start failing me
So why is it? Is it my arms that are too weak or is it my chest?
(Started working out 1 week ago and really need an answer )
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blo0dmaster
I have problems trying to get a stronger chest because I have no strength to work with it. What should I do? lower the weigth and do the correct movement and increase the weigth from there once I can do the reps with the perfect posture?
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Anthony
I definitely have a weak chest and have been very frustrated that im just now figuring this out. This for the tips, will definitely be working on getting the chest I-ve always wanted. Cable flies are also a good exercise to help fix this?
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