Author’s Note: This routine was written as part of a conjugate training system, if you are not doing conjugate training that is cool too. There is an option below of how to make it work as a standalone workout outside any conjugate framework. If you are not super familiar with that kind of training I recommend reading this page for more information. Article: How I Do Conjugate Training.
This is the kind of chest workout we used to do a lot. It’s all about the basics and really building the chest. With all the pressing work you will also get a lot of work for your triceps.
This is a hypertrophy program and not concerned about working in the strength range. Your main lifts for the day should cover the strength range if you are concerned with that right now.
When To Do It
This is to be done once per week for either upper body day if you are conjugate training. This routine would couple well with a back specific program on the other upper body day. This would maintain some balance. If you are doing a conjugate program, this would probably work a bit better on a max effort day than a dynamic effort day. You can try it with either type of day though and see what you like best.
If you are not doing conjugate this would be done as your primary bench press or chest day. I would advise against doing it twice per week. If you wanted to do a less intense second chest or bench press day that would be acceptable.
Main Lift
If you are doing conjugate training follow the conjugate recommendations, otherwise you can bounce down to the non-conjugate recommendations for main exercises.
Conjugate
Do your max effort or dynamic effort pressing as normal with this program. Stick to doing a flat movement while running this for your main lift. You’ll be getting incline and decline work later on.
This is a good program to run if you are dropping out dynamic effort work in favor of repetition effort work for a while. In such a case, 4-5 sets of 10 repetitions for bench press would be a good main lift.
Non-conjugate
Perform 4-5 sets of bench press in a 10-12 rep range if you are focused on hypertrophy. If you want to do strength work you could bench press for 3 sets of 5 reps.
Supplemental Movement
You will not be doing a true supplemental movement in this program because all the pressing will serve this purpose.
Program
Do a comprehensive warm up as you normally would before beginning the main lift for the day.
| Exercise | Sets/reps |
| Main Lift of Bench Pressing as outlined above | Whatever you normally do. |
| Incline Barbell Bench Press | 4 sets x 10-12 reps |
| Dips (weighted if strong enough) | 4 x 10-12 |
| DB Flyes | 3 x 10-12 |
| Pushups | 2-3 sets, as many as you can do without getting fired up. Just pump some out to finish your chest off. |
| Free Time (Keep Limited and no more chest you did enough of that.) A few rows if you want.Lateral Raises would be ok.Hammer Curls would be ok.A few sets of abs is good idea. | Keep the reps high and weight low. Anything you do here is just to keep a little balance in things. Don’t try and push other lifts after all this chest work. |
Picking Weights
Start on the light side with the weight and build up if you have not been doing a lot of training volume already. It is best to start too light if you don’t know where to start and add weight each week.
You can pyramid the weight up or use the same weight for all sets of an exercise.
Progression
Each week you can try and add more weight or more reps to the lifts.
On the dumbbell flyes you might just stay with the same weight across the whole cycle. These do not improve as fast as other lifts do.
Length
Run this program as listed above for 3 weeks. After 3 weeks if you want to do another 3 week run at it that is good. During the second 3 weeks start adding in things like drop sets, forced reps, and other intensity principles. This is when you can start doing all that bodybuilder type stuff. Only use those methods for a couple sets per workout.
If you were feeling good after 6 weeks of running the program you could try it for another 3 weeks. If you are having good progress then you can just keep running with things indefinitely.
Program Tips
- Make sure you are doing lots of back training on another day of the week. Otherwise you risk becoming out of balance.