December 28, 2025, 4:55 pm | Read time: 8 minutes
One of the male beauty ideals is a well-proportioned chest musculature. Fitness YouTuber and wrestler Terron Beckham reveals how to train for a muscular chest. He himself seems to be the best proof that it works.
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It’s a well-known phenomenon that many men in the gym primarily train the front of their bodies. In contrast, the back, glutes, and calves are often neglected, which can lead to unhealthy and unattractive body asymmetries. Hence the initial appeal: Train other body parts alongside the chest muscles! However, the following will specifically focus on how to achieve a well-shaped male chest.
How to Get a Muscular Chest–According to Terron Beckham
The beauty of chest training is that you can literally watch your chest muscles grow in the mirror. To actually achieve this and increase both the shape and volume of the chest, special training methods must be employed. Fitness YouTuber and wrestler Terron Beckham demonstrates what these can look like–of course, with his muscular chest as a clear example. Some of his tips come from older training phases where he was extremely focused on bench pressing, while other details–like explosive warm-ups and dips as a starting point–can be seen in current clips.
Who Is Terron Beckham?
Terron Beckham is the cousin of NFL football player Odell Beckham Jr., also known as OBJ. However, Terron has gained fame through his fitness, albeit in different ways. Over 700,000 people have subscribed to his social media channels, whether Instagram or YouTube. It’s no wonder, as the strength athlete is living proof that his training methods work: Terron Beckham has a muscular chest that stands out. He reveals how he trains it to gain more volume in a YouTube video. He consistently relies on methods that generally work for muscle building–just pushing it a bit further on his chest day.
Also interesting: Bench pressing–better on the machine, with free weights, or a barbell?
Warm-Up with the Medicine Ball: Explosive Start to Chest Training
In the mentioned video, Beckham places a stronger emphasis on a structured warm-up to activate and make the chest and triceps explosive. Instead of just doing a few light sets on the bench, he uses a medicine ball and performs two explosive exercises–each with about ten repetitions:
1. Medicine Ball Slams Forward
- Go into a slight squat, bend over the ball, lift it high, and slam it with full force onto the ground in front of you.
- Goal: Dynamically activate the entire upper body, especially the chest, shoulders, and triceps.
2. Plyometric Push-Ups on the Medicine Ball
- Assume a push-up position and place both hands close together on the medicine ball.
- Then perform push-up-like movements, explosively from the chest and triceps.
- Due to the unstable surface, the muscles must additionally stabilize.
Both exercises can be completed in two to three rounds consecutively. The advantage of this type of warm-up: The muscles are not only warm but also “awake” and explosive–ideal for executing heavy sets safely and powerfully afterward.
Tip 1: Maximum Weight, Minimum Repetitions
Anyone who delves into strength training quickly discovers: Eight to twelve repetitions are usually recommended for muscle building. However, depending on what you want to achieve, you need to vary this. For good muscle definition, more than twelve repetitions with lighter weights are recommended. But if you want to gain muscle mass, you should train with a lot of weight and few repetitions.
And so it’s no surprise that Terron Beckham generally relies on high weights with few repetitions. In his older chest workouts, he starts classically with bench pressing, the quintessential chest exercise. Initially, he presses with little or no additional weight to warm up, then gradually increases the weight before really getting down to business. His goal: a single repetition with the maximum weight he can still move. The technical term for this is “One-Rep-Max” or “1RM” for short. Currently, his 1RM for bench pressing is about 250 kilograms–a figure that shows how much the focus in earlier training phases was on maximum strength.
Terron Beckham tries to reach his 1RM in bench pressing as often as he can, which in his case is around 230 kilograms. He trains his chest twice a week and always relies on bench pressing as one of the most important exercises. But caution: Anyone wanting to test their 1RM needs a training partner or a helper during execution. Because when bench pressing at the limit, it’s always possible for the barbell to get stuck on the chest if you can’t lift it anymore. So, if you want to build muscle volume, you have to work with a lot of weight and few repetitions–ideally between one and six repetitions.
Tip 2: Drop Sets for a Maximally Muscular Chest
Drop sets (from the English “Drop Set”) are another method to exhaust the muscle maximally and thus force it to grow. In many of his earlier chest workouts, Beckham initially increased the weight with each set until he reached his personal maximum. But instead of resting afterward, he began to gradually reduce the weight–without taking a break between sets–and perform the repetitions until muscle failure. This shouldn’t be done with every exercise, but only occasionally (for example, with bench pressing) to exhaust the muscle maximally.
Avoid “Suicide Grip” in Bench Pressing
As sports scientist Farsan Maheronnaghch explains in another FITBOOK article, there are some mistakes to avoid in bench pressing that can potentially end dangerously. Chief among them is the “Suicide Grip”–a grip where the barbell can quickly slip and thus provoke serious injuries. Read more here.
Another way to exhaust the muscle maximally is called AMRAP. The abbreviation stands for “As Many Reps/Rounds As Possible.” This method is often used in CrossFit. For example, you have to do as many push-ups or squats as possible within a minute. This is also ideal for pushing your muscles to the limit. Terron Beckham recommends incorporating either drop sets or AMRAP into a training session, as it provides variety and a different stimulus for the muscles.
Important: Always ensure that the exercises are performed cleanly even at the limit, otherwise injuries may occur!
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Tip 3: Alternate Dips, Barbells, and Dumbbells
Variety is one of the keys to achieving good muscle growth. And so Terron Beckham uses as many different exercises as possible to train the chest. In his newer video, he starts chest day with dips, doing 20 repetitions per set, for a total of three sets. Dips primarily target the lower chest, triceps, and front shoulder and are an ideal starting point to challenge the upper body right from the start.
Afterward, he advises alternating between barbell exercises (such as bench press and incline bench press) and free weight exercises (such as dumbbell flys) to train the chest comprehensively with different loads and from different angles. In older chest videos, you can see him performing incline bench flys with dumbbells after flat bench pressing, once with palms turned outward and once with palms turned inward, to hit the muscle slightly differently each time. He also incorporates push-ups in between to add another stimulus and further stimulate the chest muscle. Common to all variants is that Beckham never relies on just one exercise but works the chest from various angles.
Tip 4: Incline Bench Press in Pyramid System and Don’t Forget Shoulders
Terron Beckham doesn’t rely on a large number of different exercises in his chest training but on a few, very demanding variants. In his newer chest video, incline bench pressing in the pyramid system takes center stage: 15 repetitions in the first set, ten in the second, and eight in the third–with increasing load. This provides a high training stimulus, especially in the upper chest area. From older training phases, a reduced, very heavy program with flat bench pressing and drop sets is known. Which exercise he emphasizes varies, but the principle remains the same: few exercises, but heavy and consistently to exhaustion.
However, Beckham emphasizes that you shouldn’t just train the chest on a chest day. A shoulder exercise should always be part of the plan, especially shoulder pressing with the barbell. It strengthens the front shoulder, stabilizes the chest during pressing, and can improve bench press performance. Beckham presses the barbell in front of his body and lowers it only to about chin height. Four sets of six to eight repetitions are sufficient.
To finish, he often includes lateral raises with dumbbells. Although this is not a chest exercise but a pure shoulder exercise, it provides more width in the upper body and a more harmonious overall appearance. If desired, triceps exercises can be added, as this muscle is heavily involved in many chest exercises anyway.