Help! My Chest Won't Grow - Health & Fitness

Last Updated on January 7, 2021

It is a common fault in most gyms. Young guys starting on a weights program with the sole ambition to build a well defined chiseled chest. They start each chest program with the bench press punching out 4 sets before they move onto flys, pec deck, dips and finish up with push ups. Sixteen + sets of chest exercises with little or no results except for pain and tenderness in the front of the shoulders.

So what has gone wrong and why is pain present?

Before we address these questions we need to understand the anatomy of the chest muscles. The chest muscles are made up of the pectoralis muscles which are divided into three bundles.

Upper chest which attaches to the clavical and is known as the clavicular portion
Central chest which attaches to the sternum
Lower chest

The chest muscles have multiple functions which include moving the arms forward to hug your girlfriend or wife to moving your arms above your head with your fingers pointing to the sky. The chest muscles also allow you to rest your hands on your thighs from a standing position. With this much movement and activation of the chest it is imperative that all angles are exploited when you commence a chest program.

One of the biggest problems with young gym enthusiasts is they train their chest repetitively through the same plains of motion which causes stress and excessive pressure to particular chest bundles. For example, their chest program always starts with bench press followed by pec deck and then machine flys. The problem with repetitive sets of these exercises is the pressure it places on the pectoralis minor which is situated just below the pectoralis major. Delavier and Gundill (2010) note that the pectoralis minor muscle is a stabiliser for the shoulder and may cause pain in people who do repetitive plains of movement like repetitive sets on the bench press. They also state that tendinitis in the pectoralis minor can easily be confused with shoulder pain because of its location. This explains why so many gym enthusiasts who overtrain chest have shoulder related pain.