Lower Chest Workout

For many guys, the lower pecs are the most difficult area of the chest to fully develop. That's about to change. Not because we're the proud owners of a magical exercise that'll finally build that slow-to-grow region, but because we've developed seven strategies which take direct aim at shallow lower pecs.

To add thickness to your lower chest, start by abandoning the "one lower chest exercise is enough" mentality when it comes to chest day. To focus on a stubborn area, it's too late to pick your parents, but not too late to dig deep into your bag of chest-training tricks.

Besides adding specific lower-pec exercises, you can also manipulate your routine and boost your training intensity by adding techniques such as dropsets, rest-pause sets, or even negative reps. Addressing all of these elements is your best option to re-ignite muscle growth and give your lower pecs a big lift.

Try these seven tips to power-up your lagging lower chest!

1 Train Lower Chest First

Many a chest workout has deservedly started with the bench press, but when you prioritize a particular area, you should start your training day with an exercise for that area when your energy is fresh and your strength is high. In this case, do a lower-pec move like decline barbell press right off the bat.

"Do a lower-pec move like decline barbell press right off the bat."

If you traditionally do declines later in your workout, you will notice right away that you're significantly stronger when doing them first. That's the idea: tackle the target area with weights it hasn't had to push before. Above that, don't be afraid to push heavier weights for lower reps than you normally do. If you typically do declines for sets of 10 reps, increase the weight and do sets of 6-8. Don't underestimate the impact that a novel training stimulus has on a target muscle.

THE LOWER CHEST EXERCISE LIST

Press (multi-joint exercise)
- Decline Barbell Press
- Decline Dumbbell Press
- Smith-Machine Decline Press
- Decline Machine Press

Fly (single-joint exercise)
- Cable Crossover
- Decline Dumbbell Fly
- Decline Cable Fly

Bodyweight Moves
- Incline Push-up (feet on floor)
- Bodyweight dip

Who says you have to do only one lower chest exercise per workout? While you normally want to do various angles to hit all the muscle fibers in your chest—often flat bench, incline, and decline—by using a decline bench set to a different angle than your first decline exercise, or using a totally different decline-focused machine, you can work those lower-pec fibers in different ways for better development.

Just avoid doing lower-chest exercises which closely mirror each other, such as the decline barbell press and Smith-machine decline press, each done on a bench of the same angle, or decline dumbbell presses and barbell presses at the same bench angle.