Fastest Chest Workout Yet

Build your best chest ever in less than 30 minutes.

Originally featured in:
Men's Fitness June, 2001


Written by: Matt Fitzgerald



You’ve changed a lot since college. For one, grabbing a pizza and then heading over to the kegger at the frat house for an all-nighter is no longer your idea of a great date. Likewise, your wardrobe has evolved beyond a backward-turned baseball cap and an unlaced pair of Air Jordans. You’ve even traded in that old hot rod for a shiny SUV.

So why are you still doing the same old chest routine you learned from your college buddy, who probably learned it from his high school football coach? “I see a lot of guys who go to the gym and do several sets of flat-bench presses and nothing else and call it a chest workout,” says Mike Ryan, a Los Angeles, Calif.–based trainer whose client list includes New York Mets catcher Mike Piazza and pro-wrestling behemoth The Rock. “They’ve been doing it that way forever, and if you ask them why, they really don’t know.” Sound familiar?

According to Ryan, there are three problems with this old-school approach to chest training. First, it doesn’t work the full muscle area thoroughly, evenly, and from different angles. “There’s no single exercise that does,” he says. Second, it’s really a bulking and strength workout. If you’re a powerlifter, great, but the majority of college grads are more interested in thickness and definition. And third, it takes a tremendous amount of time, most of which is spent sitting around recovering between sets.

Ryan developed the following program to help guys like you get a better chest workout, one that delivers size and detail yet still leaves plenty of time for your other priorities, like your significant other and work. “There are two keys to getting the maximum training effect in a brief period of time,” Ryan explains. “The first is to shorten the rest intervals by using body-weight and lighter-weight exercises that don’t require as much recovery. The second key is to increase the variety of movements you use to target the same muscle group. The secret to achieving this is a circuit-type workout.”

The Workout
The foundation of this chest program is the push-up, performed in four different ways--standard, narrow, wide and elevated--each of which targets a different area of the chest. Each set of push-ups is followed with a set of cable flyes or dips. There’s no rest between the push-up and the following movement, and only 30 seconds of rest between each pairing. Of the 15 minutes you spend doing this workout, 12 minutes are active and only three minutes are spent in recovery, an approach that will stress your pecs to their limit in a brief period of time. Even with a good warmup and cool-down, you’ll be in and out of the gym in less than 30 minutes. Perform this workout twice a week as a part of your overall training regimen.

Exercise Sets Reps

Pairing 1
Push-up 2 12-15

Pairing 2
Narrow push-up 2 12-15
High-cable flye 2 12-15

Pairing 3
Wide push-up 2 12-15
Low-cable flye 2 12-15

Pairing 4
Feet-elevated push-up 2 12-15
Dip 2 12-15

*Perform two sets of a pairing before moving on to the next one.