Day 23:Chest & Abs

Today’s workout addresses the favorite mirror muscle for many men—chest. We’ll also work lower abs. We’ll still be going with a lower volume and then finishing sets with partial reps. Thankfully, I have a lot more energy today compared to yesterday. I hope you do, too.

Take note that I began by warming up my rotator cuff with external and internal rotation moves before starting my chest workout. That’s a sensible thing to do when you have a shoulder injury, but it’s also a good idea when you don’t because it helps prevent these common injuries. Trust me, you’ll eventually end up with a chest or shoulder problem if you train long and heavy enough without attending to your connective tissue and joint health.

After reaching failure, do 3–5 partials. Then switch to a decline Smith press and do the same, adding in partials when you reach failure. You can rest for about 2 minutes between each of these working sets. Remember that the incline version hits your upper pecs and decline hits your lower pecs.

Then you’ll target the mid-portion of your chest with flat-bench dumbbell flyes with partial presses. Follow that with cable crossovers, keeping rest between sets shorter at around 1 minute for this isolation move.

Finally for chest, you’ll perform dumbbell push-ups with a grip halfway between neutral and reverse grip. This works the middle and a little of the upper pecs. I learned this move from Kaged Muscle athlete and Olympic gymnast Jake Dalton.

Make sure you’ve gotten in your IN-KAGED by the time you finish this portion of your workout. Then perform ball crunches for as many reps as you can. Then, for your partials, bring your arms forward to use them as leverage.

Incline Smith press Sets: 3 Reps: 10–12 + 5 partial reps Strategy: Regular + partial reps
Decline Smith press Sets: 3 Reps: 10 + 5 partial reps Strategy: Regular + partial reps
Flat-bench dumbbell flye Sets: 3 Reps: 10 + 5 partial reps Strategy: Regular + partial reps
Cable crossover Sets: 3 Reps: 10 + 5 partial reps Strategy: Regular + partial reps
Dumbbell push-up Sets: 3 Reps: 10 + 5 partial reps Strategy: Regular + partial reps
Exercise ball crunch Sets: 5 Reps: Failure Strategy: Basic
HIIT Sets: 1 Reps: 3 Strategy: 4 minutes easy/1 minute full intensity for a total of 15 minutes

TIP

Thankfully, I recovered really well from yesterday’s workout. I’m going to focus on that today to make sure I continue to feel as good as I do now after feeling crappy yesterday. Keep in mind that’s going to happen, and you may not even know what causes it. Likely getting in a good night’s sleep and proper hydration are part of feeling much stronger from one day to the next on a program like this Eight-Week Muscle-Building Trainer. The little things you do for recovery add up to give you that extra edge.