Thread: Chest Fat

Hi everyone, Just lost 30 kgs in past twelve months and have got some chest fat in lower chest. Dr has prescribed Testogel 50 mg a day. Been on it 6 weeks and feel much stronger. Im 33 years old. Question is, Should I avoid decline bench in workout or incorporate it? I read an article that mentioned decline can make the lower chest look worse thatn what it is and that I should focus on the upper.

Any suggestions?

Hahaha, your original post in the training section turned into a diet discussion, and now your new post in the diet section has turned into a training discussion.

What has happened to our precious forums???

Anyway, everyone quiet down before Merkaba sees all this talk about spot-reduction and hitting lower chest. You don't want to see him when he's angry. I think he's cutting now, let's just avoid it.

To the OP (original poster), regardless of where you have fat stored you'll just have to deal with it through diet. You can't exercise a certain body region to lose fat there. The body doesn't metabolize fat that way. Everyone will lose their BF according to how their genes dictate. For men, we typically lose fat last in the chest and torso. Don't stress over using decline this or crossover that; all that will achieve is overtraining the involved muscles when (assuming you're dieting right now on a calorie deficit) they won't have the necessary dietary resources to rebuild properly.

If you haven't already, enter your diet into fitday.com, and post your information from there on here. If you know how to do screenshot captures then do that, if not just post the food sources in amounts with their corresponding calories and grams of protein, carbs, and fat. Once we get your diet in check you'll start seeing progress with your excess fat. Trust me -- diet is everything.

Of course, it would be wise to use weight training to stimulate what muscle you have to maintain it. Don't go for high-reps though in an attempt to "tone" your muscles. Toning is achieved through low BF, not high reps. High reps will develop muscular endurance, but they won't make your muscles any harder or look more detailed. If your on a calorie deficit your best bet is to stick to low-volume compound exercises. When you go on a calorie deficit your body looks to alternative fuel sources -- of which muscle protein is one considered. Obviously, you want to thwart your metabolism's attention away from muscle and on to fat. You basically have to present a good enough argument to your body to justify the need for those muscles in metabolically hard times. Low-volume training at high-intensities -- submaximal lifting (aka, "heavy" lifting) -- is the most efficient way to tell your body "hey, I need this muscle, so back off". Using too much volume would damage the muscles more, and make it harder for them to recover due to the lack of calories and nutrients compared to normal.

One last thing to everyone else -- for the how many millionth time, we've discussed before everybody but you can't isolate certain regions of the chest. There are different sets of muscle fibres that collectively form the pecs, but all these regions contract together. You might feel a "burn" in the lower, outer, inner, or wherever, in certain exercises, but you can't just assume localized fatigue to determine the mechanics of an exercise. I was doing high-rep split squats last Tuesday and I felt the greatest "burn" in my glutes. Does that mean it's a glute-dominant lift? No, they're involved definitely, but it's a quad-dominant exercise.

Lactic buildup is random. Don't let it fool you.