How to Get a Bigger Chest in 12 Weeks

What can you do in three months? Put in a solid quarter at work. Grow a third of a baby. Orbit the earth three times (although you do have to be the moon for that one). But what about growing a massive, rippling, muscular chest?OK massive and rippling might be a bit of an overstatement, but on the question of whether or not it’s actually possible to grow visible pecs in 12 weeks, well, we were curious. We posed it to former firefighter, current personal trainer, and Extremely Muscular Man, Tony “The Wolf” McAleavey, who’s coached a ton of dudes into putting on big chunks of muscle, to see what's possible.Is it actually possible to grow pecs in 12 weeks?“Yeah, I really think it is,” says McAleavey, encouragingly. He says that for a long time, the fitness industry told everyone that anything was possible, and people started trying to turn themselves into Mr. Olympias and then became discouraged when it turned out this wasn’t possible. But more recently, McAleavey says things have gone the other way—and that it’s become so common to write off an influencer or film star’s muscle growth as a result of steroids or genetics that we’ve actually lost a sense of what an average person can achieve with a solid plan.“Obviously it’ll be different person to person,” he says, “but to get a visible difference in 12 weeks? 100% yeah. Absolutely.”How do I grow my pecs in 12 weeks?McAleavey says that algorithms will always promote whatever shiny new method someone has just come up with, because “boring doesn’t sell.” But that “the principle you need to understand, which all the research points to, is that the main things that dictate muscle growth are overload and strength.” So, ensuring you keep gradually lifting more weight, and the more weight you lift, the more muscle you’ll grow. There can be some nuances within this. McAleavey says visible gains tend to lag slightly behind gains in strength, but basically: Lift more and you will get bigger.What are the best exercises for building my chest?McAleavey says hitting chest twice a week, with a pressing variation and a fly variation in each session, is gonna be more than enough to get the growth you’re after, and hits the right balance in terms of making progress while allowing your muscles to recover. If we’re getting granular on it, he recommends machine chest press and machine fly on the first day, incline dumbbell press and cable fly on the second day, with three sets of six to twelve reps where you’re going to failure on all of them. He also says it doesn’t have to be these specific exercises if you don’t like them for some reason or don’t have them available to you. Those basic principles applied to any big pushing movements and fly movements will still work, but he does warn against experimenting too much between different exercises. If you don’t give yourself long enough to improve a lift, then measuring (and making) progress is going to be a lot harder. Give an exercise at least twelve weeks before deciding it doesn’t work for you.Other rep ranges beyond six and 12 can definitely grow muscle, but McAleavey says that with these lower ranges it’s easier to push yourself closer to true failure, which is where the real gains happen. (Also note, while there's nothing wrong with a classic bench press, it can sometimes cause shoulder pain, which is why it's not in McAleavey's recommendations.)And rest. Two to three minutes at least between sets. Always. “Me and the team have coached probably over 3,000 people,” says McAleavey, “and what we see is, the more rest we give a person, the better they look over time. If somebody says to me, I think one minute's enough for me, I say, that set was not hard enough. If you feel ready to go again after a minute, you didn't go all out.” Going all out is what gets you the gains.What do I need to be eating to help me achieve this?“Your start point really matters,” says McAleavey. This is because you have to eat a lot to gain muscle, and if you start off pretty lean then your body deals with carbs more efficiently and therefore gains less fat alongside the muscle. Also, being leaner just makes your muscles look bigger, because there’s less fat hiding them—so if you’re on the bigger side then it could be worth leaning out a little before you board the gain train.Once you’ve done that, McAleavey says the ancient wisdom of a gram of protein a day per pound of bodyweight is about right. Then you want about a quarter of that in fats—which shouldn’t be shunned as they’re important for joint health and hormones and other things you take for granted—and then fill the rest of your diet with carbs until you’re in a slight calorie surplus. Note “slight,” not “massive”—if you put a load of fat on with your muscle you’ll make extra work for yourself trying to lose it later. Two to three pounds of weight gain per month is plenty. “If you’re gaining more than that, it’s probably just fat,” says McAleavey.Are there any common mistakes I should try and avoid?Not sleeping enough! At least 7.5 hours a night, McAleavey says. More than that, he emphasizes that “the biggest pitfall most people fall into that I see is, they don't learn how to stop and restart. They don’t realize that somebody's gonna get sick, you’re gonna get sick, your job’s gonna get too busy, your kids are gonna be annoying, you’re gonna go on holiday—something’s gonna happen where you just can’t go to the gym that week, and starting again is the best skill you can ever learn.” So start with twelve weeks, sure, but if it doesn’t happen, or it does and then you find yourself getting derailed after that, that’s fine. All is not lost. You and your big sexy chest can always start again.A version of this story originally appeared in British GQ.