No Myth Chest Training II
March 4th 2007 13:58
A broad chest makes you look so pretty.
Per my last post the flye is the supreme exercise for building the chest. Done properly it will add weight resistance to the natural function of the pectoral muscle and force the muscle to handle this resistance in isolation and thus adapt.
The fact is that the movement is very easy to do incorrectly. The position of the hands is crucial to proper execution. The hands should be holding the dumbbells so that both of the ends will touch at the top of the movement. That is, the dumbbells should be parallel. A spurious technique turns the hands so that only one end of the dumbbells touch at the top. This takes the onus off the pectoral in favor of the front of the deltoid muscle.
Another tendency is to use the triceps to push the weight up. In fact the arms should be locked at the elbow so that the triceps are neutralized. Banging the dumbbells together at the top is misguided as well. The pectoral muscle is disengaged at a point about six inches before the dumbbells touch. It is thus better to stop at that point. Finally it is very easy to fall into a pattern of not lowering the weights to the lowest possible position on the down stroke of the movement. It is easier that way, but in no way valuable. Part of the benefit of the flye is the powerful stretch at the bottom.
Cable crunches rank just behind flyes in effectiveness for chest triaining. They,like flyes,must be done properly to maximize chest adaptation. I have written about the proper technique in cable use in a post entitled Cable Guy. Read the discussion there and compare my comments with the online animations available for this movement and you will have discovered a very underrated chest builder.
After flyes and cable crunches are chest movements where the isolation of the pectoral muscle is incomplete and other muscles participate heavily. These movements,however, may be ranked for effectiveness based on the extent to which the pectoral is put through a full range of its prescibed motion. The more the muscle is stretched at the bottom of a movement the better. Thus I rate the dip to be far superior to the bench press and the dumbbell bench press to be superior to the barbell bench press.
The problem with dips is that the pectoral is subordinated to the triceps and for that reason weak triceps can limit the amount of work applied to the chest. I still believe in this movement for chest, however. It is also an excellent transition exercise i.e. best used as a transition between chest training and triceps training. Again it is easily abused. To work the pectorals the dip must be to the rock bottom. Little half dips are triceps only.
Dumbbell presses are superior to barbell presses according to the same rationale. Dumbbells bench presses allow the pectorals to be stretched to a much greater extent than barbell simply because all pectoral stretch stops when the barbell bar hits the sternum. The locking of the arms into a fixed position in holding the bar further limits the participation of the pectoral in the barbell bench.
I conclude with a little controversy. I have done my share of incline bench work in the past, but careful analysis of the movements made me suspicious that they were not significantly different from their flat bench cousins. I've heard the upper pectoral justification for their inclusion in workouts,but I think that flyes, pec deck, and and dumbbell presses off the flat bench will target that area sufficiently. Nevertheless,a 300 lb incline press does alot for the ego. Your servant,as always.
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