Pec deck

Why it's here

The pec deck brings the arms together in front of the chest with the elbows held nearly still, so the chest does the work without the triceps limiting the set. In a twelve-week trial in untrained men, it thickened both the upper and the main lower part of the chest, and one set per session worked as well as three ^[1].

The evidence

• Training study Fifteen untrained young men trained the pec deck one arm at a time for twelve weeks, one arm with one set and the other with three, every set to failure. Both the upper (clavicular) and lower (sternocostal) parts of the chest thickened by 17–21% and pec deck strength rose 43–46%, with no difference between one set and three, and no sign that either part grew more than the other ^[1].

How to do it

1. Set the seat so the handles are level with the middle of your chest.
2. Sit with your back against the pad and, with a slight bend in your elbows, bring the handles together in front of your chest.
3. Let them open back out slowly until you feel a stretch across your chest, keeping your shoulders back against the pad, then bring them together again.
4. If your machine allows it, you can train one arm at a time, as the trial above did ^[1].

Stop an exercise that causes significant or unusual pain and have it assessed. This page describes the movement; it is not rehabilitation advice.

Making it harder over time

This is a isolation exercise in the Progressive Overload Calculator, which adds weight in steps of 2%–5% once every set reaches the top of your rep range, and adds reps until then.

Alternatives

• Dumbbell bench press — A bench press with a dumbbell in each hand. In trained men it built pressing strength over ten weeks, most of all in the dumbbell press itself.
• Barbell bench press — The standard upper-body press. In men who had benched for at least a year, ten weeks of it thickened the chest by about 17%.