How To Build The Inner Chest, Outer Chest, etc.

A lot of people complain that a certain portion of their chest is underdeveloped. Both in the gym and on internet forums, you will hear countless people say things like "I want to build my inner chest", or "How do I grow the lower/outer part of my chest?". Alot of these people have one thing in common; they are beginners and/or their chest is lacking in size overall. These individuals should continue doing basic exercises like pushups for the time being, and not worry about specialising on specific parts of the chest. If, however, you honestly feel that you have some decent mass overall, but are lacking in some areas, here is a bit of information that could help you.

The pectoralis major (chest muscle) has 2 "heads" (or two parts). The clavicular head, which is commonly referred to as the upper chest, and the much larger sternal head, which is commonly referred to as the lower chest. There is no "inner chest" muscle, or "outer chest" muscle. There is also no real "lower chest" muscle either, if you are referring to the very bottom outline of the chest. As you can see in the diagram below, the "lower chest" muscle is the ENTIRE area covered in red.

In theory, you cannot contract a specific part of a muscle (such as the inner chest) exclusively, because the whole muscle must contract as a whole. Some trainers suggest that you can use a single exercise like the bench press, and build a big chest that fills in any weak areas over time. HOWEVER, there are a few studies which suggest that although the muscle contracts as a whole, more stress can be placed on the microscopic muscle fibres in different areas of the chest. You might ask, who is correct? The answer is, it doesn't matter!

In order to develop a big, full, symmetrical and aesthetic chest, you have to hit the muscle from different angles and with different exercises. As a rule of thumb, heavy compound movements (pushing exercises) will add size and thickness to your chest, while isolation exercises (hugging type exercises) will help to give it more shape and definition. You need to do BOTH isolation and compound exercises to get the most out of your chest training.

If you are feeling impatient and want some more direct answers as to why the inner/outer/upper/lower portion of YOUR chest is lacking, here are a few possible answers:

• You don't have enough overall size. You may think you do, but you don't. Don't worry, there isn't a danger of you growing a huge "outer chest" while your "inner chest" stays invisible. Be patient, and that area will fill out.
• You are carrying too much bodyfat. Some people may have enough muscle mass for an "inner chest" to be visible, but they also have a lot of fat which is covering and hiding that cleavage.
• That's just your genetic chest shape. Notice I said shape, and not size. Some people have a more square chest, other's have a more round chest, some have a triangular gap at the bottom/center. I guarantee you that once you add enough size to your chest, you will stop caring or noticing the little details which are ultimately irrelevant.
• You are not lifting with the correct technique. If you lift with the wrong technique and don't get a good squeeze/contraction on every repetition of every chest exercise, you are selling yourself short.

In the next articles I will go into more details about which exercises are the best for achieving a complete chest, WHY I believe they are the best, and HOW to go about performing them with the correct technique.