Train Like an Athlete by ATHLEAN-X (Video Podcast)

Do you have a flabby chest or a lower chest that sags and you hate looking at it? In this video, I’m going to show you a simple and straight forward four step plan to getting your pecs to be more muscular and look better than ever, without the B.S. The key is going to be to make sure you don’t skip any part of this since it will all lead to a combined best result when you do.

This means, we have to start with fixing your posture. That’s right. Posture can be one of the main contributors to a saggy chest. The problem is actually two-fold. First, just slumping your shoulders forward will instantly give your chest the appearance of being a lot smaller and saggier than it actually is. This often comes from having a tight pec minor and weakened upper back muscles. Do the pec minor stretch shown and foam roll your upper back to get more thoracic extension while not forgetting to work on your weak muscles with the corrective exercises shown.

Next, we have to talk about nutrition. Far too often, the chest looks much worse than it should because of the amount of body fat that you’re carrying. You can do a simple test to determine how much of your problem is coming from having too much fat versus simply having underdeveloped chest muscles. Look in the mirror and see if you can see your upper two abs. If you are unable to do so then you are likely to have at least 15 percent body fat and this is going to be a problem since men often times will accumulate a good portion of fat on their lower chests when their overall levels get too high.

The simplest way to fix this problem is to start eating better. The key is consistency however and randomly approaching your nutrition plan is going to leave you frustrated over the long term. Instead, try adopting the plate division method I show you in this video. It makes eating any meal a lot easier when you can just visualize the plate in this way and partition the macronutrients of proteins, fibrous carbs, starchy carbs and healthy fats accordingly. You will likely find this much less frustrating and easy to stick to long term.

For a list of all of these macronutrient suggestions in one place you can visit http://athleanx.com/carbs and see my favorite choices in each of these categories.

Last but not least we have to address the training side of the equation. There are actually chest exercises that do a better job than others at hitting the lower chest and helping to get rid of that saggy or flabby appearance. These are all going to have in common the direction of movement of the upper arms. In general, to hit the lower chest fibers in the abdominal head of the pecs the best you need to take your arm from a high and away position to a low and in position. You’ll see that all of the ones shown here do just that.

Additionally, applying tension and pausing in the stretch position on every one of the reps you do in any of these exercises will help the chest muscle to undergo a more effective stimulus for change. Don’t skip this part or rush through it if you want to see the best results for your saggy lower chest.

To put it all together, I would recommend the following:

- Perform the foam rolling for the thoracic spine and the pec minor stretch each time you do your chest fixing routine.

- Choose one of the three exercises (face pulls, band pull aparts, tubing external rotation) and perform 3 sets of 12 high quality reps as a neuroactivator of the pecs prior to your training.

- Choose 4-5 chest exercises shown and perform 3 sets of each if you are going to perform this as a dedicated chest only workout worked into your current training schedule. If doing this as accessory work to your current total body training split, I would recommend dropping this to just 2-3 exe