Try This 'World's Fastest Chest Workout' and Get a Pump in 12 Minutes

Emily Shiffer

February 25, 2020 7:05 PM

Sometimes, you just want to hit the gym, get in and get out as quickly as possible. And if you only have less than a quarter of an hour to get your work in, Jeff Cavaliere, M.S.P.T, C.S.C.S. , creator of Athlean-X , has got the chest workout for you. He's dubbed it 'the world's fastest chest workout' for a reason.

'World's Fastest Chest Workout' Takes 12 Minutes

"If you're trying to build muscle, I say it all the time: you can either train long or you can train hard, but you can't do both. People are on all sides of this equation," he says.

But Cavaliere's goal is to convince you that training long doesn't necessarily mean you're training hardand that he's definitely on team 'training hard' with this workout.

Before he starts, he says that the entire session should take you just 12 minutes or less. He'll achieve this with 2 minute, 30 second time cap for two circuits with three exercises each, repeating each circuit.

"The goal is to train to failure," he says.

The World's Fastest Chest Workout

Circuit #1

He starts on a dual cable machine, loading it up heavy for incline bench chest presses, aiming for 8 to 10 reps. If you don't have access to a cable machine, do an incline dumbbell bench.

"Squeeze at the top, slow down eccentric," he says.

Then, he moves to cable crossovers with a 10 to 12 rep max to failure for each arm. Missing a cable machine? Use a resistance band for the crossovers.

"Drive it all the way across the chest. Get [your] hand and elbow all the way across your chest," he instructs.

After completing that drop set, he quickly hits the ground for bodyweight work: pushups until failure. Cavaliere manages just 13 himself, showing how much the effort is taxing his body.

"Try to squeeze your hands together, even though they won't move," he says as he demonstrates. Check out this guide for more detailed pushup tips.

Circuit #2

Cavaliere grabs dumbbells for floor presses next. He does 8 to 10 reps that lead to failure. You can learn more about the proper form cues for the chest press from this guide .

The next exercise is what he calls a 'Cavalier Crossover', using a single dumbbell for 12 reps.

"Drive up and across, try to momentarily squeeze and hold. I'm not shrugging, I'm literally driving my arm up into adduction, trying to bring my bicep to the middle of my chest," he says, before switching arms.

Finally, Cavaliere finishes with chest dips until he reaches failure, putting him 5 minutes into his workout.

"I'm already toast. These are the kinds of workouts that you wake the next day and you're shocked at how wasted you are because that workload was condensed into such a short period of time. you force your body to do something it wasn't used to," he says, breathing heavily. "That's a good impetus for change, that's what we want that challenge built into the workout."

And he still has a second round of the circuit to finish before he's done.

Emily Shiffer