Day 51:Chest

This is your last chest workout of Operation Aesthetic. Regardless of whether or not your chest is a strength of your physique, you should be seeing more detail and definition in your pectoral muscles. Use today’s workout to really examine the strengths and weaknesses of your chest.

You can also practice posing. People who aren’t bodybuilders have the idea that for posing you just stand on stage and look good. As a bodybuilder, you know nothing could be further from the truth. Posing is its own intense workout. You should practice posing to make sure you can display all your hard work to its best advantage for a considerable length of time. That’s true whether your goal is to compete or just take pictures.

OPERATION AESTHETIC NOTES

*The higher-rep sets at the end are not an afterthought—especially when you’re dieting. These are the sets that really carve in detail that you can see as you lose body fat.

*When your form gets a little choppy that means you should drop the weight. That’s true even if you’re doing burnout sets. Make sure every rep is clean and that you can really drive in that contraction.

*You can add intensity techniques to any of these exercises if that feels right to you. These include rest-pause, where you wait a few seconds after failure before performing another move, or drop sets, which I use frequently. Note that I use my version of rest-pause during cable flyes.

Early morning cardio

25 minutes

Perform this session upon waking before consuming food.

EXERCISE	COMMENT
Incline barbell bench press I bring the barbell down to my lower pecs, stopping just before the bar touches my body, but use the range of motion that feels best to you.	5 SETS / 12, 10, 7, 3, 15 REPS

Incline dumbbell flyes Rep pace is very slow and controlled on the extension (lowering) phase, and explosive on the way up.	4 SETS / 12, 10, 8, 15 REPS

Dumbbell bench press This compound move is going to be a challenge at this point because you should already be a little burned out from this workout.	5 SETS / 12, 10, 7, 3, 15 REPS

Machine press This is a low-risk pump move which is ideal at the end of this fat-loss Trainer.	4 SETS / Burnout*

Cable flye I like to really emphasize the stretch, allowing my elbows to travel behind my back a bit.	5 SETS / Burnout

Post-Workout cardio

25 minutes

You can also perform this later in the day.

TIP: L-Carnitine is an amino acid compound that supports the release of stored body fat. Getting in 3–4 doses of L-Carnitine every day gets more important as you approach the finish line of Operation Aesthetic. L-Carnitine helps transport fatty acids into your cells, where they can be burned as fuel.