There are your standard chest days. Then there’s Nick Walker, or as he is better known, The Mutant’s chest day.
A recent video on his YouTube Channel followed him around the famous Dragon’s Lair Gym in Las Vegas as he showed off how he goes about building a big chest. While the video shows off some staple exercises, how he goes about them is definitely unique, starting with his ultimate focus.
“Don’t jeopardize form for weight,” Walker says in the video. “It’s all about the contraction.”
Walker admits most peoples’ biggest downfall in building a bigger chest is ego. They opt to put more weight on the bar in an effort to look “cool,” and while they may build strength, they’re sacrificing the extra reps that can build size.
Thus, when starting on the incline barbell press, Walker opts for multiple warm-up sets, gradually increasing the weight from just the 45-pound bar all the way up to completing seven slow, controlled reps with 315 pounds.
After considerable time on that first exercise to warm up his muscles, he’s ready to completely tax his chest by moving over to his favorite exercise – the plate-loaded chest press machine. After that, he switches from presses to flys, doing incline dumbbell flys and then the pec-deck machine.
Again, the emphasis is always slow and controlled to maximize the contraction. He also takes his time between sets and exercises to allow his body to rest.
“I’m not here to do cardio,” Walker says. “I’m here to build muscle.”
Now, many have heard of combining chest day with triceps and front-delt exercises, as all focus on pushing. Walker bucks convention by going with biceps and mid delts.
He hits the biceps with the preacher bicep curl machine before going to cable curls and finishing with standing dumbbell curls. All done with a high rep scheme– 12-15 reps – and with constant tension on the muscle, even with the dumbbells, which he accomplishes by slight supination.
With the biceps pumped, he opts to do some dumbbell side laterals to hit a completely new area of the shoulder.
But at the end of the day, his main focus is the chest. So, he ends with two or three sets of pushups to push every last ounce of energy in his muscles possible.
Full chest-day rundown:
- Incline barbell press
- Plate-loaded chest press machine
- Incline dumbbell flys
- Cable flys or pec deck machine
- Preacher bicep curl machine
- T-bar cable curls
- Standing dumbbell curls
- Standing dumbbell lateral raises
- Pushups
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