How I Built Up My Chest
I’ve gotten several questions from people wanting to know tips/secrets/routines I used to build my chest up. Let me preface this by saying I’m am the furthest thing in the world from a fitness expert. I’m just going to describe what worked for me. A part of me can’t believe I’m sitting here giving fitness advice. Anyway, here’s the short answer: I did a ridiculous amount of pushups. That’s it. Long answer: Post-college several years ago I wasn’t happy with the way my body looked and I wanted to make a change but I didn’t have the cahones to join a gym. I also knew nothing about exercising properly. I tried to think of what I could do in my apartment and I came up with pushups. When I first started I don’t remember how many I could do but I know it wasn’t much. The key was that each session I would try to do a little more than the last time. If I could only do 40 one day I would shoot for 45 as a goal the next time. If I didn’t make it, fine, but at least I tried. My routine was to do 20 pushups, rest briefly, do another 20 pushups, rest briefly, and so on. I also would write each set of 20 down because it was easy for me to lose track of my count. Each time I would pass 100 I would rest a little longer. I kept doing this until I hit my max.
I think another key was consistency. I did a session at least three days a week. Unless I was sick or on a vacation I stuck to my routine. Just as with going to the gym consistently I don’t think I would have gotten the same results if I would have been “on again off again” with doing this. I made sure I stuck with it. Before I joined a gym in July 2007 I was doing at least 500 pushups in a day’s session, which means at least 1500 pushups a week. What started as “let me try a few pushups” morphed into me doing pushups for well over half an hour each session. Once I put on some good music and got into a zone it really didn’t seem like that long.
If you look in my photo gallery at a picture titled “0703-1007 front” you can see a shot of me in 2003 compared to me in 2007. I look absolutely awful in the 2003 picture, but you can also tell that I’m not flat chested. The routine was taking hold.
A part of me is proud of myself for taking the initiative to start a program like this and sticking with it. Another part of me is horrified that I concentrated on a single exercise and muscle group for so long. Oh well, lesson learned. I don’t do this anymore. Now I go to the gym three times a week and train all of my muscle groups properly. Usually one day a week is chest day. I don’t do anything out of the ordinary. Last week on chest day I did a lot of benching: incline, decline, flat, etc. This week I would guess that my personal trainer will have me doing pushups and dumbbell presses. He always mixes things up so that I’m always doing something different.
I’ve been lucky in that when I joined the gym and started training properly I wasn’t starting from scratch. I had a good foundation on my chest to build upon. So that’s it. I don’t have any secret routines and I’m not doing anything out of the ordinary. I just found that if you want a bigger chest the pushup is your friend. Now drop and give me twenty!
December 3, 2007 at 7:33 pm
yea this works …when I was like 18 (20 years ago) I would grab a deck of cards to make it interesting, and flip a card and do that amount, would do like 4 cards take a breather 4 more etc till deck was done sometimes would do deck twice,three times, just depended on my day but it adds up, my chest was massive for my size in like 2 months, dont underestimate body weight exercises . Hey great job though, chest looking massive. cool blog.
December 4, 2007 at 6:00 am
Nothing like good ol fashion pushups. I appreciate the info and the details.
December 4, 2007 at 9:04 pm
As if I wasn’t already way impressed with you. Here’s to ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ I raise my mug to you.
[ ])
(…that’s a mug)
January 22, 2008 at 9:36 am
HaHa!! One thing I admittedly need to do is pushups! Great job!
September 12, 2008 at 11:10 pm
Hey,
I was just surfing the net, and stumbled across this page.
IMHO, you looked great from only doing your pushups. Actually, I think you looked better then than now. I suppose tastes differ, but I find myself moving away from gym workouts and protein bars.
You’ve already demonstrated that you can be healthy and strong by simple calisthenics. Will a seventeen inch arm really bring more fufillment to your life?
Your call.
January 18, 2009 at 3:27 pm
Awesome blog, StressMonkey! I had a similar outcome, however I was working out as well as doing pushups.
I never got to the 500 per day range. However, every morning I would do 3 sets of 40 pushups (or whatever ‘failure’ was for me) against the edge of the bathtub. It was almost like using my pushup bars, except it was a much higher incline, and it didn’t hurt my wrists. I had my thumb and pointing finger touching to form a diamond and I went to it.
Consistency is everything. A lot of the guys I know who have impressive chest development all have pushups as part of their foundation when they were growing up. So hey… I think you’d stumbled across ‘the Holy Grail’ of chest development.
Now drop and give me 1500!
- Skip