Bodybuilder Seth Feroce is a source of pre-workout motivation for people across the world. He recently set out to achieve a new fitness goal and shared the details of it in a video posted on his YouTube channel.
Seth Feroce is a retired professional bodybuilder who competed in the 2000s era. It has been over a decade since the 38-year-old donned the posing trunks for the last time. However, he has not stopped training and primarily focuses on health and longevity rather than pursuing aesthetics. One of the vocal critics of the sport of bodybuilding, Feroce has warned about the potential downsides of bodybuilding lifestyles on several occasions. He often uses the public platform to raise awareness about perils of rising PED use in the fitness industry and does not advocate its abuse.
The 38-year-old has maintained an excellent physique in retirement. But as impressive as a professional bodybuilder’s physique is, it has several restrictions. Feroce acknowledges this and has leaned into high-intensity functional training to be more ‘durable and functional’ and engage in activities like running, hiking and playing with his kids.
Starting in late 2022, Seth Feroce started contemplating a return to competition and opened up about a health scare. He set the goal to build a shredded physique once again earlier this year, fueling the speculations about his comeback. In the most recent video posted on his YouTube channel, Seth Feroce laid out his goals for the near future and explained his method of formulating a training program.
Seth Feroce sheds light on the new training program and his physique goals
Feroce claims to be in much better shape compared to where he was four to five years ago. However, he doesn’t quite feel as strong and has taken it up as the next challenge to build the strength back up. To enable this change, Seth Feroce started his new training routine while his diet remained pretty much the same.
“I’m still doing my functional workouts, I still do the driveway and the rucks and all that, but I need to put a little more emphasis and more intensity into the weight training,” Seth Feroce said about his plan of action.
He then went on to explain the workout plan he has built to meet his goal of helping viewers analyze and break down the training plan before starting out. Since it was the first day of the retired bodybuilder’s new training regime, he trained chest and triceps. So naturally, he broke down the workout and explained the thought behind every detail.
Feroce broadly divides his chest exercises into two categories – size-building exercises and detail-oriented exercises.
Size building exercises
As the name suggests, the primary function of size-building exercises is to build strength and muscle mass.
The size-building exercises include:
- Incline pressing movements – Incline Dumbbell Press, Barbell Press, Machine Press (Plate-loaded and Selectorized Machines)
- Flat Pressing Movements – Barbell Bench Press, Dumbbell Bench Press, Smith Machine Bench Press, Machine Flat Bench Press (Plate-loaded and Selectorized Machines)
- Flyes – Incline and Dumbbell Flyes
- Chest Dips
- Plate-loaded Machine Flyes
While free weight pressing movements are the bread and butter of chest building, Seth Feroce believes in the efficacy of machine exercises for their muscle building ability. But he prefers to use them as the second or third exercise in a five-exercise training session. The 38-year-old is an absolute admirer of chest dips for its benefits in building the outer chest. Although he puts plate-loaded flyes into the size building category, the retired bodybuilder admits to its role in adding details to the physique.
“You’re able to control it, you’re able to squeeze. I like it because you can put it at that second exercise or you can put it at your last exercise and use it for the goal that you want to achieve… Whether it be moving some weight and hanging in that six to eight or nine rep range or looking at that fifteen range and squeezing the f* out of your chest.”
Adding further about the plate-loaded chest flyes machine, Feroce stated:
“The whole reason that you have a plate-loaded flye machine is that now you can start cutting out all those stabilizer muscles… Whenever you’re doing like incline dumbbell flyes, you’ve got a lot of stabilizer muscles happening… Which is a great thing to do if you’re building a base. But then if you want to isolate that muscle, you’re going to use a plate-loaded flye machine.”
Detail oriented exercises
While adding muscle is essential, adding more detail to it is equally important for complete development. The second category of exercises caters to this purpose.
These detail-inducing exercises include:
Seth Feroce admires the hex press for giving a good squeeze to the pectoral muscles. However, he cautions about the potential downside:
“Hex presses are something I absolutely love. They do get semi-dangerous just because… What makes it dangerous is knocking your front teeth out!”
Seth Feroce also incorporates exercises like push-ups into his training session religiously to get a good squeeze in the muscles.
“I don’t do a lot of posing. I’ve done more squeezing than via push-ups than I have doing posing. The squeezing and the posing helps push blood into that muscle group that you’re working.”
The retired bodybuilder promotes adding cable crossover in the chest training routine to isolate the pectoral muscles and push blood into them.
Adding a bit of extra work…
Apart from these primary categories, Seth Feroce puts some exercises into the third category, the extras. Dumbbell pullover is the prominent exercise in this category.
“It’s a rib cage expanding exercise is how I look at. some people put pullovers on back day. I personally like putting them on chest day because it’s going to help expand the rib cage.”
He typically supersets this movement with push-ups and/or dumbbell presses to get extra volume in.
Seth Feroce explains the importance of writing down the plan before executing it
Feroce advises that it’s worthwhile to write your exercises down before starting a new training plan. This helps in experimenting with exercise selection, rep range and sequence of exercises for trying various permutations and combinations. A lot of factors like individual fitness level and injuries also come into play in this phase. The 38-year-old used himself example to drive the point through and explained:
“Oh,I’m going to put in an incline Smith machine today. I chose it because I don’t want to use a lot of my stabilizer muscles, I want to focus on my chest and going into the lower rep range, especially lower than I have been and hang in that six to ten rep range instead of that 12 to 15 like I have been doing for months.”
“I want to build some strength and it’s going to take months and if I come out of the gate with dumbbells, it just makes me nervous because I got my f*ed up elbow, older… I’m not on the same amount of sauce. So I’m gonna use Smith machine. So those are the things that personally go through my head of why I am choosing it. If it goes well, f* yeah!”
The new chest workout
After explaining the training methods, Feroce jumped into the first chest workout of his new training regime. He had been following a push-pull-leg training split for a long time and did not have a separate chest day. As a result, the variety in exercise selection was restricted. But he is relying on the ‘bro split’ in his new program.
The retired bodybuilder has plenty of room to work with different types of exercises for size and detail. He chose four chest and two triceps exercises for this workout. But unlike chest, the tricep work largely focused on adding detail.
“My goal is to probably do a little bit of triceps work. We’ll probably do six sets, three and three… And it probably won’t be anything mass building. It’ll probably just be more detail oriented. Pushing blood… I just want to push blood in there,” Seth Feroce said about training triceps.
Smith Machine Incline Chest Press
Feroce enthusiastically kicked off the training session, and in turn, the new training program with this exercise. Incline pressing movements emphasize the upper pecs / clavicular head of the pectoral muscles and help bring it up. The 38-year-old performed all the sets of this movement with a furious intensity and maintained two-minute rest periods between the sets.
Flat Dumbbell Flyes
Feroce took to the flies next to build the adduction strength of his upper body muscles. He pushed through some heavy sets to stimulate the muscle fibers more and advanced over to do a superset.
Superset – Dumbbell Pullover and Flat Bench Dumbbell Press
Feroce, who has lost quite a bit of muscle mass in the lower body and back, has set the goal to get stronger and regain the size. He increased the training intensity a notch above with this superset. The 38-year-old took to the dumbbell pullovers after a long time as his training split did not have room for it.
“I wanted to put them here because I haven’t done them in a long time. Doing the push-pull-legs, it was usually, you know, two exercises for chest, two exercises for shoulders and one or two for triceps,” Seth Feroce stated.
He superset the movement with flat bench dumbbell press and performed both exercises with minimal rest periods between them.
Cable Crossover
The retired bodybuilder wrapped up chest training with a few sets of cable crossover. He used upright and bent over upper body posture to emphasize different parts of the chest. This put a cap to chest training as he took to the triceps exercise next.
Cable Triceps Pushdown
Seth Feroce wrapped up the training session with some sets of cable triceps pushdown. He used moderate weights and performed the exercise strictly with the goal of adding more detail.
Overall, the workout included:
- Smith Machine Incline Chest Press
- Flat Dumbbell Flyes
- Superset – Dumbbell Pullover and Dumbbell Press
- Cable Crossover
- Cable Triceps Pushdowns
Seth Feroce has achieved the goals he has set for himself so far. There is no reason to doubt that we will see a stronger and bigger version of him in the time to come. But following his journey isn’t enough! Analyze your training, formulate the training plan and give it a try!
You can watch the full video below, courtesy of Seth Feroce’s personal YouTube channel:
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