Questions and Tips on Manboobs and Exircise

Do you have a bench? You can do dumbbell presses and flys. Also, parallel dips are good to firm up the manboobs.

 

Been doing pullups for half a year, it's done wonders ro my chest area.

 

That's a good point. Developing the surrounding muscles is also important in creating a well shaped chest. Abdominal exercises can do wonders too.

 

Dips. Better than Ben he's or any other exercise in my opinion. Make sure you use proper form though.

 

It depends, you maybe have gynecomastia. If you really have it, you are screwed basically. just lijke me..

 

I'd highly suggest picking up "Bigger, Leaner, Stronger" by Michael Matthews. That book is like my fitness bible. I've always been athletic, but I hit a plateau for several years, and that book helped pull me out of it. I saw results very quickly ... and just a few days ago, at 40 years old, I bench pressed more than I've ever lifted in my life.

In my opinion, it's hard to beat the bench press when it comes to building your chest. It's one of the most time-honored lifts in existence for a reason. The only problem with dumbbells is that you need a bench to lay on, but you also need dumbbells that are heavy enough to really fatigue your muscles. Holding a 10 lb. dumbbell in each hand isn't going to do much for you. You need an amount of weight that you can only lift 4-6 times.

I would also encourage you to supplement your weight training with some cardio a couple times a week ... that will help reduce your bodyfat while you build muscle, which will make your man-boob problem diminish more quickly.

 

You cannot spot reduce fat by working out specific areas of your body.

Let me repeat that: You CANNOT spot reduce fat.

You don't lose abdominal fat by doing abdominal exercises. You don't lose chest fat by doing chest exercises. It doesn't work like that. Your body accumulates and loses fat in different areas in a particular order - and nothing you do will change that order.

You also don't lose man-boobs by building muscle there. It's fat that needs to be removed.

Certain areas of your body fat are just the last to go. In men, the chest is one of the last to go, followed by the abdominal area and lower back.

To lose that fat you have to keep dieting down until it disappears. Once it's gone and you have a flat chest, then you can start a bulk and start putting on some muscle, but until then focus on losing the chest fat.

 

There is no such thing as an ideal weight. BMI and ideal weight are really really bad things to follow.

A guy who has an average amount of muscle and an average amount of fat at your height, will be 60 kilograms.

...but a guy who has lots of muscle and is very lean, will also be 60 kilograms.

...and more importantly, a guy who is obese (> 27% body fat) but has little/no muscle, will also be 60 kilograms.

The latter example is someone who is very unhealthy and needs to change - yet he's still the "ideal weight" because of the lack of muscle mass.

Never use BMI or "ideal weights" as an indicator of whether you're a healthy range or not.

Body fat % is what you should be looking at in terms of health.

What you've just described is chest fat. Squishy and with pointy nipples == you have chest fat to lose. Working out won't get rid of that, you need to lose some fat.

Just because your chest doesn't look like the chest of someone who's 300lbs and morbidly obese, doesn't make the issue any less an issue of chest fat.

What you described has nothing to do with muscle mass.

Here's an example of how your chest should look if you have no chest fat to get rid of but lack muscle mass:



Here's another example. On the left, when he was lacking muscle mass, on the right once he added some:



Your chest, if you are lean and lack muscle mass, should be flat.

It should not be soft, and your nipples should not be pointy unless you have extra chest fat (another possibility is gynecomastia like others have mentioned - but with gyno the area under your nipples has turned into breast tissue and will feel rock hard, so your description of soft basically means it's just fat)

Grab yourself one of those measuring tapes you use to measure your body, and go use the navy method calculator here to calculate your body fat percentage. Make sure not to suck your stomach in when doing it, but also don't push it out. Don't pull the tape too tight, but don't have it loose and hanging off either.

Don't input a hip measurement, that's only for women and so you don't need to enter anything there.

For the waist measurement, measure around your navel where your belly button is.

For the neck measurement, measure just under the adam's apple.

http://www.calculator.net/body-fat-calculator.html?ctype=metric

If the number you get is above 11-12%, you have chest fat left to lose, since chest fat is one of the last areas to go and you need to get quite lean before it does.

• If the number is below 12%, do ensure that you're not pulling the tape too tight or sucking your stomach in, but if you're not, you're probably pretty lean, and your issue may be gyno.
• If the number is between 12-15%, assuming you measured correctly, you're healthy and relatively lean, but you need to get a little leaner to get rid of the chest fat.
• If the number is between 15 and 20%, you have an average amount of body fat. You're not lean, but you're not fat either - you do however have a fair amount to lose if you want to get rid of your chest fat. If you're 15% or more body fat, you really need to diet down until you're leaner before trying to build any muscle, as it is 1) easier to build muscle while lean, and 2) you will put on more fat at a higher body fat percentage than someone who is lean, plus 3) you will quickly get to an unhealthy body fat percentage when bulking, and need to spend months cutting down.
• Between 20 and 23%, you're a little bit chubby, not as healthy as someone with a lower body fat percentage, but you're not going to have heart disease or anything either. You should ideally cut down for your health though, and you DEFINITELY need to cut down before attempting to bulk up and add any muscle.
• 24-27%, you're fat. You need to lose weight for health reasons more than anything else.
• > 27%, you're obese and the amount of fat you carry is a serious health risk, and your primary priority right now should be to lose it and get sub 20%.

Tl;dr if you're 15% or over, you need to diet down before trying to put on any muscle for the best results. If you're much higher than 15% you need to diet down for health reasons too.

If you're over 12%, and you want to get rid of the chest issue, diet down to sub 12%.

 

@Jerry4NF, you need to know that these are only half-truths.

When you say, "the one thing that bothers me the most is my chest," I take that to mean it's the overall appearance of your chest that bothers you, right? Well, there is no faster way to improve that than hard weight training coupled with aerobic exercise.

No, you can't spot-reduce fat by working out a certain area. There isn't a single person in this thread who has made that claim. But you for sure can spot-increase muscle. If you increase the muscle mass of your chest while at the same time work on reducing your overall fat percentage, then your chest will change faster than either method will on its own.

If you don't have heavy weights or access to an actual gym, just do as many pushups as you can to failure (until you literally can't do anymore). Then wait 4-5 minutes, and do another set to failure. Do that five times every other day or so. Then 2-3 days a week, go for a jog for 30-40 minutes. Listen to a podcast while you're doing it.

And you have to realize that when it comes to your bodyfat, about 80% of it is due to your nutrition. If you can really cut down on your sugar intake, that will go a long way toward helping you shed fat.

If he does it this way, it's going to take him more than twice as long to get to where he wants to be. @Jerry4NF, the body can reduce fat and build muscle at the same time. In fact, building muscle helps you burn fat more efficiently.

This is me. Trust me, I know what I'm talking about here.

 

Agreed, it's absolutely possible to reduce fat and build muscle at the same time, and I definitely should have made more emphasis on that in the post, since while the issue described is one of having excess fat - the best way to get a nice chest is to build one, since no-one's aiming for a chest like the ones in the pictures I shared above haha.

A complete beginner, especially one with excess body fat, will gain muscle even in a caloric deficit, while simultaneously losing fat, which is why I made the emphasis on the fat loss part - since it seems like he's already working out 3x a work, so has that part covered (assuming he's not fucking around and doing some silly routine that won't get him anywhere of course). Assuming he's say 18-20%+ body fat then there's no need for him to bulk when he can still gain muscle on a deficit as a beginner, and will just gain an unfavourable ratio of fat:muscle and need a ridiculously long cut.

Though, of course if he's reasonably lean, then he may as well bulk, since as long as he keeps the bulk lean and reasonable, even though he won't be losing any fat, his body fat percentage still has a chance of decreasing if he's putting on a favourable rate of muscle to fat - but if he's not reasonably lean, then he can make gains while in a caloric deficit and shedding that fat, and bulking is unnecessary and could result in the same wheel spinning you described. As a beginner it shouldn't really impact his progress either as long as the deficit isn't too severe, and if it does start impacting his strength he can always increase calories as needed.

I can even speak from experience there, since I was in exactly that situation myself. > 20% bodyfat, and given the advice to just lean bulk. So I did, kept it conservative, only gaining 2-3lbs of weight maximum each month - by the end of my bulk, it took me over 5 months of cutting to get me down to a reasonable body fat percentage again, and I had barely gained any lean mass in that time. Were I able to do things differently I would have absolutely finished cutting down before starting my first bulk, as I wouldn't have wasted an entire year as a result of that had I done so. So that's why I suggested he find out his body fat % first, that'll give him an idea of whether he's better served starting in a surplus, deficit, or maintenance.

Just my 2c of course

 

It depends, if its just fat then he can get rid of it easily. If puffy nipples are present, then good luck..

 

Some good answers - essentially you need to do cardio to lose the fat. It won't go on the chest and lower back much until other areas have progressed.

I'm running and I've noticed my legs improving massively however my chest not so much. If you look at some of the better runners at my running club some have a small gut yet can run a good pace for an hour plus.

Just keep measuring on a 2 week (say) timescale and see the results - assuming no medical issues.