Why You Should Pay More Attention to Your Pectoral Muscles

 It’s not just about lifting more weight.

When your pecs are functioning properly, though—not too tight and able to move smoothly through their full range of motion—they help your body stay upright and not pull forward, Miranda says. So both strengthening and stretching your pecs is important to add to your workout routine.

What are the best exercises for your pectoral muscles?

Try to include exercises that hit your pecs a little differently and from various angles, says Miranda. Her favorites include a chest press from a bench or the floor; a standing cable chest press, which you can also do with a resistance band—“being upright is more applicable to everyday function, because now you have to use your core and legs to stabilize,” she says—and a push-up.

If you can’t get a full push-up from the ground, ACE-certified personal trainer Sivan Fagan, owner of Strong With Sivan, in Baltimore, Maryland, recommends doing a modified version with your hands elevated rather than dropping to your knees.

“When you drop to your knees, you are breaking at the knees, and you are not maintaining good overall body tension and good core stability,” Fagan says. “This can make it harder to translate to full-body-tension push-ups down the line.” Plus, with a modified version, you can choose whichever height works for you—a box, a table, or maybe even the wall if you’re just getting started—and then progress it as you get stronger. (The higher your hands are elevated, the easier it will be.)

As for how to implement these pec exercises into your routine? Unless your goal is to build maximum muscle on your chest (like if you are bodybuilding), you don’t need a separate day dedicated to chest exercises, says Fagan. Instead, shoot to incorporate pec exercises and pushing exercises into your regular workouts.

If you’re strength training three times a week, try to include one to three pushing exercises in each workout, says Miranda.

What should you do if you injure your pectoral muscles?

Fortunately, it’s actually pretty rare to tear your pec muscles, says Miranda. “It’s a very strong muscle—it takes a lot of force to tear it,” she says.

But you can injure your pecs if you try to lift too much weight while your form is off, especially if your shoulders are in a shrugged position. This messes with your body’s alignment, which puts your muscles at a disadvantage, making them weaker. You can also tear your pec if you let your elbows (and dumbbells) fall too far past your body during a chest press, says Miranda, since this puts your pecs under a lot of stress.

What’s more common, though, is tightness in your pecs, which can manifest in discomfort in your shoulders, Miranda says.

Making a point to stretch your pecs regularly can help. Miranda recommends the doorway pec stretch: Stand in the center of a doorway with both arms up at a 90-degree angle and place your elbows on the sides of the doorway. Keep one foot forward and one back. Lean into the doorway so you feel a stretch across both sides of your chest. Hold that position for 30 to 45 seconds.

When holding this stretch, make sure you focus on your breathing—take deep, diaphragmatic breaths from your rib cage rather than shallow breaths from your chest, she says. After all, your pec muscles are breathing muscles. Breathing efficiently during this stretch will help reinforce proper functioning to your muscles so they don’t default to poor posture or alignment, she says.

You can also take this stretch to the mat with a lying pec stretch, says Darbouze. Lie on your stomach and extend your arms to the side so your body is in a T-shape. Push off the ground with your left hand and bend your left knee for balance as you roll to your right. You’ll feel the stretch in your right pecs.

“Try the same stretch with different arm positions—straight-arm T, bent-arm T, straight-arm Y, bent-arm Y—to find the tightest spots,” Darbouze says.