No Myth Chest Training
March 3rd 2007 16:49
Where our chests are!
At the NFL Combine every year prospects are asked to perform as many repetitions as they can in the 225lb barbell bench press. I wonder every year if that movement has any real bearing on the athletic necessities of football or whether the bench press is simply a totem in that culture for muscular strength. The barbell bench press is generally considered the number one chest exercise.And the chest is one of the marque body parts. That is for sure. Your gym probably has an inordinate number of machines and benches devoted to the various permutations of chest training. If the gym is open it is likely that there is some guy working on the chest. Women too have their reasons to be drawn to chest training. Despite its popularity I'm not sure that real chest training is very well understood.
There are lots of chest trainers in the gym.Not so many of them,however, train all the other parts of their body. Most are pretty much devoted to arms and chest.They train these body parts frequently and they pile on the sets. I have seen guys do bench presses, incline bench presses, dumbbell flat bench presses, dumbbells incline press and some sets on the pec dec machine in one workout. This is possible only because they are not working other body parts either at all or with so much vigor. These bench obsessors teach us something about over training. Its not as easy to do as we are told, if you confine you weight training to a couple of body parts. Yet for someone who is working the whole body this massive overtraining is not going to bear fruit. His system will be overloaded. He needs to know how to train chest more efficiently.
Much of bench pressing is wasted effort for the chest. Only via stupendous numbers of sets do bench obsessors get larger chests. That is because the chest is not particularly activated in barbell bench pressing. The movement of a bar to the chest, while lying, simply means that the chest itself limits the downward movement of the weight and thereby the full extension of the pectoral muscle. Fact is,however, that the pectoral muscles work the most as the upper arm is raised from below chest level to vertical to the chest. To train chest optimally this fact has to be considered in exercise selection.
The movement that is most consistent with the actual function of the pectorals is the flyes, done while lying flat on a bench. It involves dumbbells up and over the chest with hands facing one another and elbows bent at just short of a 45 degree angle. When the dumbbells are lowered they should bring the upper arms well below the bench and the upward movement should be an arc. I usually stop short of the dumbbells from touching over my chest and bring them back down. (Many sites will show you animations of this movement. Google "dumbbell flyes" and learn.)
This movement is mimicked by a host of machines and the majority of these that I have used do a good job. It might be easier for newcomers to work them and slowly add in flyes. Regardless, flyes should be done prior to any bench pressing because they are a direct pectoral stimulator.When the muscle is exhausted by flyes the bench press (which demands significant participation by triceps,shoulders, and back) can continue the stimulation to a lesser degree.
My discussion of chest training continues in my next post.Your servant, as always.
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