Pec Blasting Chest Workout | IFBB Pro Romane Lanceford

Looking to spice of your chest workouts and build a strong, powerful, and defined set of pecs? Then check out this complete pec blasting chest workout from Primeval Labs athlete and IFBB Pro Romane Lanceford.

Romane Lanceford Complete Chest Workout

Chest Training Tips

Cable Flys

The pecs have two main functions -- shoulder flexion (pushing things away from your body) and horizontal adduction (bringing your arms together).

When your chest workouts only contain different variations of bench presses and chest presses, you aren’t able to maximally stimulate all of the fibers of the chest. The reason for this is that barbell presses, kettlebell presses, and dumbbell presses do not allow for complete adduction of the arm across the body, which means you never get a complete contraction.

It’s commonly suggested that dumbbell flys can help to train horizontal adduction; but, just like what happens with presses, the dumbbells stop at the midline of the body and do not cross it. Furthermore, when performing dumbbell flyes, tension on the pecs is lost at the top. Not to mention that a lot of people experience shoulder pain when performing dumbbell flyes.

This is where the standing cable fly, or cable crossover, comes in handy. The cables allow for constant tension to be placed on the pecs and the set up also allows for you to bring the arm across the midline of the body, ensuring a full and complete contraction of the muscle fibers of the chest. Cable flys also tend to cause less shoulder pain in lifters who are typically bothered by dumbbell flyes.

Another benefit of the cable fly is the wide variation in the placement of the cable column. Depending on how high or low you set up the handles will determine your angle of pushing as well as which aspect of the pecs you emphasize.

Performing high-to-low cable flyes emphasizes more of the mid to lower pecs, while performing low-to-high cables flyes more heavily focuses on the upper pecs.

Romane likes to start off his workout with cable flyes as it serves as a good warm up for the pecs and helps reinforce a strong mind-muscle connection.

As with all exercises, use good form and a controlled lifting tempo. As you bring your hands across the midline of your body, make sure to squeeze the pecs at the top of every rep as hard as you can.

Machine Chest Presses

Following cable flyes, Romane moves onto the “meat and potatoes” portion of his chest workout with a trio of machine chest presses including decline, incline, and flat presses. The benefit to using machine presses over free weight presses is that you are in a more stable position, allowing you to really load up the weight.

The reason for this is that free weight exercises require a great deal of stabilization from supporting muscles. Often times these stabilizers can be the limiting factor in the number of reps completed or amount of weight on the bar, as these smaller muscles tend to fatigue before the pecs do.

Using machines greatly reduces the amount of stabilization required, allowing for the pecs to be the limiting factor.

Machines also tend to have a much lower risk of injury and do not require a spotter.

That being said, if your gym doesn’t have a variety of chest press machines available. You can simply substitute them with dumbbell variations of decline, incline, and flat presses.

Dumbbell Floor Press

This is one of Romane’s recent favorites for targeting the fibers of the chest as it helps limit the involvement of the shoulder joint due to the fact that the arms only bend to 90 degrees, due to the floor.

Moreover, for lifters who tend to experience shoulder pain when bench pressing, the dumbbell floor press is usually better tolerated than conventional bench press exercises as it allows for a neutral grip (thereby placing the shoulders in a more favorable and stable position)

And, since pressing from the floor limits the amount of shoulder extension that can occur, floor presses help reduce stress on the shoulder joint while providing a great training stimulus for the pecs and triceps.

Additionally, traditional bench pressing can be troublesome for those with a history of low back pain. Floor presses reduce lumbar extension that comes with overarching the low back during bench presses.

Now, be aware that you likely won’t be able to lift as much on the floor press as you would be able to with a standard flat dumbbell or barbell bench press.

Push Ups

The granddaddy of all upper body exercises is the push up. It’s an all-time mass-building exercise for the pecs and it only seems to get better with age. One advantage push ups have over free weight and machine presses is that it allows for natural movement of the scapula.

Pressing from a bench forces you to fix your shoulder blades in place, as maximum bench press performance occurs when the shoulder blades are retracted and depressed. While this is great for moving a lot of weight, it may not be the best thing for your scapula health and function.

Push ups allow for full protraction and retraction of the shoulder blades as well as activation of the serratus. The serratus is a highly underrated muscle that assists in upward rotation and stability of the scapula as well as the overall health of the shoulder.

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