As with any muscle group, there are multiple ways to target it, stimulate it and accelerate growth. It's having a clear understanding of these different ways which enables you to continue development, and ultimately take that muscle to the next level.
With your chest workout try to start with flies rather than pressing, the emphasis, in this case, was on pre-exhausting the pec muscles without involving the triceps. By the time you come to press, your pecs are already partially fatigued.
This isn't the only way to train your pecs, though, this is just ONE of MANY ways you can go about it.
I don't want you to get into the mindset that one thing is necessarily superior over another, instead view each training tool as a means of creating a new stimulus and opportunity for growth. Collectively, they can come together to create a multi-faceted training approach to ensure a muscle group is constantly worked through different mediums which are great for optimizing hypertrophy.
In relation to training your chest, here are 3 ways you can change up your chest workouts to change the emphasis.
1. Cables
Cables are a great training tool for you to be using, but on chest day, they are particularly effective. Compared to free weights, cables generate CONSTANT tension right through the plane of motion which makes it great to recruiting more muscle fibers. Cables are best utilized with very slow, controlled negatives with great emphasis on the SQUEEZE - this is where using cables really works.
On chest day, doing flies with cables will drive a lot of blood into the area and create significant amounts of tension within the pec muscles.
To REALLY benefit and feel this exercise, try and make sure your hands (when above your chest) are in line with your lower pecs rather than your neck. This will create far more tension and muscle fibre stimulation!
2. Rep formation
There is nothing which says you have to do one whole rep, start to finish without ever changing the emphasis. On the pec-dec try doing 1.5 reps, and you'll VERY quickly feel an intense isolated burn within your pec muscles.
For example, starting from the middle go "back" half way then come back in, before going all the way back and repeat. This will lead to a great deal of forced stress within your chest, you won't need a lot of weight for this!
3. Pause
When pressing, implementing a pause at the bottom of the press for 1-2 seconds before lifting the weight again can drastically improve the recruitment of muscle fibers within your chest muscles. Again, this isn't something you should do ALL of the time. There's times where it is more suitable to NOT pause and there are times where pausing will improve the stimulation.
When you near the bottom of a press (not right down as this will load the shoulder joint) pause (about 2 inches before the bottom) and tense your pecs. This will create an LOT of tension, but remember you will need to reduce your usual weight to get the same reps.
There are 3 very effective ways of taking your pecs apart, add them to your training tools!
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