4 Reasons Your Chest Won’t Grow (FIX THIS!) – ATHLEAN-X™

by YouTube Team

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You’ve tried everything to grow a big, ripped muscular chest but nothing seems to be working. In this video, I’m going to show you how to fix a chest that doesn’t seem to respond to your training and won’t grow no matter what you do to it. You might think that I’m going to show you some secret chest exercise that is going to do the trick. Not quite. While there will be a few new things you’ll see here the key is more in how you perform the exercises in your chest workout rather than what you are doing.

It starts with the start of the exercise of course. There are two things you want to do before you even perform your first rep to ensure that the chest muscles and not the shoulders are doing the brunt of the work during the lift. Because of the proximity of these muscles to each other it is very normal for the shoulders to dominate the movement. You can stop this by first sticking your chest out and making sure it is more prominent than your shoulders. The second is that you can unshrug your shoulders by depressing your shoulder blades. Both of these things will help the chest to be in a better position to initiate the move and ultimately produce a stronger contraction.

Next it is important to concentrate on how you finish each of your chest exercises if you want to get more out of them. What I’m talking about here is literally changing the way you think of a rep. Remove the word press or push from the name of the exercise and replace it with the word squeeze. This will have the effect of changing your mindset about how the movement is performed. For instance, don’t think of it as a bench press but rather a bench squeeze. Really work to squeeze and contract the chest as you move the bar up to the ceiling.

Same thing can be said for a pushup as well. Don’t just push your body away from the floor, squeeze your body off of the floor. The slight difference can make a huge difference in the activation of the chest over the course of many reps and many workouts.

It continues from here however since you don’t want to just squeeze the reps but you ultimately want to figure out a way to take the chest through its full contraction. The only way this can occur is if you find a way to adduct your arms across your chest in the exercise. Now, a lot of people will point to these horizontal adduction exercises for chest and say that they are isolation exercises or muscle sculptors. They claim they are not as effective for building a bigger chest.

I disagree. Any chest exercise that you can load up and deliver peak tension to the muscles of the chest and take them through their full range of motion and functions is an exercise that is capable of building more muscle. Keep including these and perhaps a few of the ones that are new to you from this video and I promise you will see better chest gains because of it.

Finally, you must not forget to drop set when doing your chest workouts. Perhaps here more than anywhere else it is important to do this. If you followed my directions from earlier and made the chest do the majority of the work you will see that you, at that point, could rely on the assistance of the shoulders and triceps to get you through failure and into even more of a growth producing zone. Bench presses to failure into pushups to failure are still one of the easiest and most effective ways to grow your chest.

If you want a complete program that puts the science back in strength and shows you the next level training tips to take not just your chest muscle gains but every muscle to the next level, head to and get the ATHLEAN-X Training System. Use the same techniques and chest workouts used by today’s top pros that are capable of working the same for you.

For more chest workout videos and exercises for a bigger upper chest, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube at

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39 comments

ATHLEAN-X™ December 21, 2018 - 4:48 pm

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Kasmene yes May 1, 2021 - 3:36 pm

"Squeeze up" very smart

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Joel Mc May 4, 2021 - 6:25 am

My chest has been pretty much stuck for a year. I've tried all kinds of different exercises. Haven't been able to bench press more than 305lbs for over a year. Other body parts are growing so its not related to nutrition. I've tried high volume, then thought maybe it's too much, and backed off. And I do everything. Flies, cable cross overs, incline dumbell press, flat dumbell press, barbell press, lots of dips. Triceps and shoulders growing fat as fuck. But my chest is still bleh

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Nicholas Ramirez May 5, 2021 - 2:33 am

Good shit

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1017 Glo Gang May 7, 2021 - 4:46 pm

We need weekly workouts plan Bruh

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Ken Hoover May 18, 2021 - 5:53 pm

Thank you so much for this! I am one of those people who has trouble building my chest. I think the squeezing information and the abduction is going to be particularly helpful to me.

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Mario Feds May 19, 2021 - 12:27 am

Very helpful chest has gotten bigger seen the difference in 1 week!!!

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Colton J May 30, 2021 - 2:14 am

Wow those editing mess ups are not like him. Must have a new editor. F

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Jacob Herter May 31, 2021 - 7:04 pm

But it is growing!!

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Stephen May 31, 2021 - 8:00 pm

I hate chest on a bench cause my shoulders

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Space Ghost June 3, 2021 - 11:36 am

thank you sir

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eivil H June 9, 2021 - 1:55 pm

10 years of silence for people who said chest is easy to grow
It so hard

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Zach June 15, 2021 - 4:58 pm

What helped me build a bigger chest was just waiting 10 years. 30 is so much easier than 20 LOL. There's a reason women like older men, we just get better with age.

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Brett Forsyth June 20, 2021 - 10:59 am

Thanks for the advice!

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Erik Rodriguez June 24, 2021 - 5:40 pm

Dude I love your channel I was literally working out with out knowing what I working on helped me alot in setting my body goals and to aim at different muscles definitely best working out videos in YouTube and the info is priceless 💪

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Greg Poe June 25, 2021 - 4:12 pm

There seems to be such contradiction from YouTubers on whether we should work towards failure or leave a few in the tank. Personally, I always use drop sets when I do chest. But I don't know what to make of these other folks saying it does nothing but increase our recovery time.

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Abhinav Tripathi June 26, 2021 - 7:50 am

The only squeeze ups I do is at night in bed.

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MBK July 2, 2021 - 2:43 am

I’ve been training for years and my chest is kinda flat. Thx a lot for this, can’t wait to try this.

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Jürgen Elm July 12, 2021 - 6:12 am

Absolutely legendary information, i been doing this shit wrong for ages, changed it, doing it as you showed and my chest is growing huge!

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Munshi Atif July 14, 2021 - 6:42 pm

Just same as the thumbnail 😭

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Young Prada July 21, 2021 - 4:54 am

Ig my chest has depression, I’m gonna de press it 💀

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Andrew Vaden July 25, 2021 - 4:43 pm

Little chest

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ObnoxiousCat August 14, 2021 - 5:14 am

Great video helped a lot

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Ya sh August 28, 2021 - 5:22 am

28 August 2021 , let's see guys if I could bring a change in my chest within 1 month see you at next 28

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Andrew Smith September 4, 2021 - 4:57 am

Lmao I just went from the dumbbell presses to the push-ups and played the video after I paused and Jeff called me out on the save it mentality and I dropped down till I couldn’t do another pushup

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Caedes September 4, 2021 - 9:20 pm

Jeff’s muscles are too scared to shrink after a pump

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Luai September 30, 2021 - 6:11 am

How csn you do dropsets when you train alone?

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Blaz S October 5, 2021 - 7:36 pm

5:00 lol i cant do push ups

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Xclusive89 October 30, 2021 - 11:16 am

6:06 Jeff crying because the set is over

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Andrew Van De Mark October 31, 2021 - 3:05 am

Yo, my max is increasing every week so ik I am getting stronger, but I don't see any growth in my chest visibly. Any advice?

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martyn011978 November 7, 2021 - 10:34 pm

How ofter do you train your chest

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Sơn Roger November 13, 2021 - 6:17 pm

i try bout 166 push up and 60 dips w 10kg 2 days a week. But it doesn’t seem to work

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Michael Robinson November 14, 2021 - 10:15 am

1 reason… I don't exercise.

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LasagnaBoi November 16, 2021 - 3:19 am

Thank you so much I really needed this video.

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Danks November 22, 2021 - 7:37 am

Could u do a video on how to get rid of gyno

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Commander GRIT Sandwich November 27, 2021 - 5:53 am

honestly…I bench 300lb and my chest has been mediocre until I lowered the weight and started focusing on pulling the shoulders back and down

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Teclozz December 4, 2021 - 5:44 pm

Why u not reply my comment plzzz…reply

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Teclozz December 4, 2021 - 5:44 pm

I am so sad about my chest

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Filip Rangus January 2, 2022 - 8:27 am

GREAT VIDEO !

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