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Welcome to The BarBend Newsletter! Here’s everything in store for you in today’s edition:

• 5 steps to a more impressive chest

• 7 reasons you’re not gaining muscle

• 3 tips and tricks to improve your push press

Workouts

Bigger, Stronger, Rounder

The pecs are one muscle group that can sometimes be more about shape than raw size. Weird-looking, enormous chests look, well, weird. Crafting pecs with the perfect round shape and artistic heft requires some forethought, effort, and a solid understanding of the human body. That said, a better chest is by no means out of bounds for anybody.

The key is to hit the right part of the chest — upper, middle, and lower — with the proper exercises to craft that well-proportioned yet powerful look. And to help you get there, we’ve got a cheat sheet to get you started. 

Use the five exercises below to mold the ultimate aesthetic chest muscles for use in both shirt-wearing and shirt-free situations. You can’t just stick to the flat bench if you want the entirety of the pec muscle to grow. That’s why we’re going over everything from dips and crossovers to the all-important cable flye to get you going.

A Message From Nike

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Muscle Building

Look Better

Is anything in the world more demoralizing than investing time and effort into going to the gym and walking out your front door without ever knowing the joy of having to turn sideways to make it through? Or having small children on the street ask if you’re a WWE wrestler?

If you want to know these simple pleasures of life, you need to look like you lift, and the seven mistakes we touch on in the article below are likely robbing your body of the muscle you need to gain the respect and adoration of your peers.

Social media obsessions are the root cause of many of these issues, especially if you’re trying to emulate the programs and habits of elite lifters (in whose company, we must sadly admit, you are probably not). Muscles need time to grow and plenty of stimulus, rest, and fuel to help them blow up to their appropriately enormous size. Fix these leaks in your muscle game and finally start having people double-take when they see you walking down the street.

Exercises

Push It

Push presses are both a way to overload your shoulder muscles and a valuable addition to your skillset as a competitive strongman.

Moving more weight overhead is something three-time World’s Strongest Man winner Tom Stoltman knows a thing or two about. In this article, he provides you with all the tools you need to move the needle on your own overhead lifting.

Core strength is an underrated aspect of lifting heavy stuff up over your dome. A topographical map of Manhattan tells you everything you need to know about stabilizing vertical structures; the biggest high-rises are built on areas rich in harder, firmer ground surfaces. Let Stoltman help you push your press up to new lofty heights, and remember, using leg drive isn’t cheating; it’s just using your head.

Trivia

Who Toppled the Oak?

Quick Hits

🐴 Push This: The triceps pushdown is a top-tier way to build the ol’ horseshoes. The problem? Many of us (yes, us) are doing it wrong. Here’s the proper form to follow, along with some proper variations to go along with it.

💪 Drink This (Maybe): Noshing on some protein right before bed has been a commonly recommended practice since mankind first ground up some whey and stuffed it into a plastic container. Find out if there is any actual sense to this, or if it’s just an old wives’ tale that needs to be banished from the new world.

🏋️ Bench This: The IPF 2025 Classic Championship has come and gone, and the women’s 47kg class thrilled. Multiple world records were set during the bench press duel between America’s Heather Conner and France’s Tiffany Chapon.

📉 Read This: Most 2024 CrossFit Games Athletes won’t be competing in 2025. Find out what’s behind the massive turnover.

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