When men do complete body workouts, they tend to spend time trying to make sure they’ve covered every muscle in their chests. They do tons of different types of weight lifting variations from flyes to chest presses and everything in between. However, when most women do their strength training, the odds are that they do very little, if any chest workouts. It simply is not an area of the body that women tend to spend their time training.

Still, despite the lack of attention women give their pectorals, they do actually have these large, fan-shaped muscles on either side of their upper torso. It is found immediately beneath the breast tissue. Moreover, there is a smaller muscle in the upper chest area that is overlapped by the larger pectoral muscle. Together, the “pecs” are muscles that cover the entire chest area. Still, despite their size and importance, women are prone to ignoring them.

Many physical trainers say that their clients are often confused about these muscles. They have a number of misconceptions about them. Among those misconceptions is that the muscles aren’t even there in women, that they’re not important muscles, or that by working those muscles, there is a risk of reducing breast size.

That said, there is a long list of reasons that women should start to improve their understanding of these muscles and start training them as they would any other large muscle group. Among those reasons include the following:

• They help you naturally maintain better posture – Better posture provides your muscles and joints with better support, it helps to give you a slimmer look and allows your clothing to hang better. By strengthening those muscles and easing the pressure on joints, it can help to reduce the risk of many problems later in life.
• They help to promote better respiration – When your pectoral muscles are strong, it helps you to open your chest more effectively for deeper, better quality breaths. Every time you breathe in, you stretch your smaller pectoral muscles to allow for your ribcage expansion. Weaker pectoral muscles can lead to shortened breaths.
• They can help perk up your chest – While many women may hesitate to work their pectoral muscles fearing that they will shrink their breast size, the truth is that strengthening these muscles can actually make breasts firmer can draw the tissue up and more forward for a perkier look. It can act like a natural, built-in bra that gives the illusion of a larger chest size.