Two weeks ago, we reviewed the pectoralis major and pectoralis minor and their function within the chest area. Today I will finally get around to discussing a few exercises that you might occasionally include in your upper body routine that will strengthen and possibly offer some definition to your chest area.
Please join me below to review and discuss a few of these exercises.
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My Five Favorite Chest Exercises:
The Push Up:
Everyone has done them. You can perform them in many variations. First, try a few minutes to do a full body pushup with your hands about shoulder width apart. Too tough...then drop from your toes to your knees. This takes off about 40% of the difficulty. No 40% of the weight is not in your lower legs. It is the degree of the new angle formed that helps with the lift. Another option is to do a push up off a higher platform where you can safely place your hands. I often do push ups off my bathroom vanity top. With your feet out from the cabinet about 3-3.5 ft, it is only about 40% of your body weight that you are lifting. Want even less weight to start with, use a wall and lean into it from about 3-4 ft away. Push off the wall. The lower you go on the wall the more weight you are shifting upwards. You can't go too low however, because it places more pressure on the wrists.
What about those Perfect Push Up platforms that were the rage about two years ago. Yes, they work. It allows you to move your chest lower and gives much more stretch (and yes possible tearing) to the pec muscles. When I was little, my Dad would use a couple of bricks on the floor as his platform. Sometimes, he would double stack them. Rough on the hands but great for the chest muscles.
About 2 years ago, I began doing push ups off dumbbells. They work the same way except they don't rotate as you go down which is a really neat benefit of the Perfect Push Up stands. A few months ago, I saw a workout developed by Rachel Cosgrove of Results Fitness. It has now been refined into 10 great one minute workouts. After 2 months, I have finally been able to perform the set twice. It is designed to be done three times in about 40-45 minutes. Read about it at The Spartacus Workout at Men's Health. But I digress. One of the movements of the Spartacus Workout is shown below in a video. Awesome workout for the core, the shoulders, and the chest. I have finally worked up to using 12# weights but my goal is 15# because the hand grips just feel better on the heavier weight.
The Bench Press
OK, you knew this had to be one of my top 5. The Bench Press offers even more variations than the classic push up. The most common press in the gym will be performed on a flat bench with a barbell. Like the positioning of the hands in a push up, the positioning of the hands on a barbell make a huge difference in the difficulty and its effect on the pec muscles. Any grip more narrow than your shoulders recruits the shoulder and triceps almost as much as the pecs. If you have weak triceps or delts, please see the earlier two diaries on these muscles before trying bench presses with a narrow grip and a heavy weight. Your pecs can take the weight but your shoulders may not be able to perform and could be damaged.
As I mentioned last week, the bench press should be performed with a spotter if you are lifting heavy weights or you plan to work until close to muscle failure. Keep your feet flat to the floor with knees close to a 90 degree angle. Arch the lower section of your back slightly as you lift and use your legs in the lift as well by pressing through feet.
The tradition bench press as well as push up usually thicken or add depth to the pec muscles. For some who have their body fat % down to mid teens for men and low 20's for women, they may want also to add definition in the width as well. For this you might try using dumbbells rather than a barbell. Plus, it is safer and can be better performed at home alone.
One of the huge advantages with dumbbells is that it forces each side of your body to perform alone. No compensation from the stronger side can be achieved. Because of the increased difficulty of the lift, you will not be able to lift as much with dumbbells as you can on a loaded bar. For me it is about 60-70% as much weight.
The beauty of the dumbbells is that you can lower the weight by 2-3 inches more than you can with a bar. The chest does not restrict the depth as it does with a bar. Play with the positioning of the dumbbell at the bottom of the eccentric (see, I read last week's diary) part of the lift. I like to allow the dumbbells to go below and to the side of my chest slightly and more toward lower pecs. At the bottom of the isometric pause at the bottom, relax your shoulders downward and feel the stretch of the outer portion of the pecs almost under the armpits. For me at least, this is an area that definitely needs some work and this exercise is the best I have found.
In all of this, I have yet to discuss elevation of the exercise directly. Yes, it was in the push up discussion but the reasons were not fully explored. On the bench press make sure to play with incline and decline sets on the bench and feel the difference it makes on the pecs. An incline lift tends to work the upper pec area more. A flat bench works the entire area about equally. A decline bench press works the lower pec muscles more intensely. Many body building sites really stress this but I honestly don't think the differences are as great as they would like to think.
The Chest Fly:
The chest fly can be performed on a bench with dumbbells, on a pec machine, or with a cross over cable machine. I would love to have this in my home gym so I normally use dumbbells. The chest fly can place tremendous strain on the shoulder muscles so please start with lower weights and move up. Even experienced lifters in a gym usually use less than 40 #'s. I would recommend starting low and moving up gradually.
The key to this move is the positioning of the arms. Start with the weights above your chest with a slight bend in the arms. As you lower the weights in a wide arc toward the sides, expand the chest and lift it very slightly. Start slow and lower only as low as comfortable. Do not go beyond chest level. The key is to keep the arc up and down identical. Don't allow the fly to become another variation of the chest press. The arms should remain with about a 150-160 degree angle between upper and lower forearms at all times. At the top of the movement, squeeze the pecs as a part of the isometric pause. Again, this exercise if performed correctly and diligently is great for widening the pecs and once your body fat % is lowered gives great definition of the outside pecs as they blend into the lats under your arms.
The Dumbbell Pullover:
The dumbells pullover can be performed on the bench like the video below. It can also be done off the bech at a 90 degree angle to the bench where your upper back and neck are supported by the bench but your core area is used more effectively to intensify the exercise. I also like doing it on a swiss ball because it gives your shoulders more soft support and helps to prevent any shoulder pain that you may have. Plus, with the ball it also challenges your body stabilty which keeps the muscles in your core firing at all times.
When watching the video below, please pay close attention to the angle of his arms as he moves the weight up and down. This is the same position that should be used in the chest flys. Not fully locked out at 180 degrees but more like 150 degrees. Watch the video and see if you agree.
I really like to use this exercise at the very end of a upper body workout because of the stretching it gives. With this workout, it is important to breathe properly. Many beginners hold their breath until at the top of the move and then take a full in/out breath. You want to breathe in fairly deeply as you move your arms downward. This fills the lungs and expands the chest to allow maximum stress on the upper pecs.
The Dip:
OK, I know most of you think this exercise is more for the shoulders and triceps. And you are correct if it is performed off a bench, a chair, or another lower platform like a fireplace hearth. Performed this way, the legs and lower body are placed forward and this places emphasis on the delts and triceps. However, if you have access to a dip machine or dip bars, you can let your feet hang more vertical or even shift your lower body forward slightly. This places greater emphasis on the chest.
My son and I have built a set of dip bars similar to the ones in the below video except that we used 4"x4" treated lumber for the supports and some top rail for chainlink fence that I had around the house. We set the widths between the bars with a slight increase to allow for different body types and to place more stress on the workout with wider widths.
The dude in this video is awesome. He performs some very advanced moves that have absolutely no use for almost all of us. It just offers us a great look at how flexible and strong the human's body can become. As I mentioned last week, the pec muscles are and were very important to the evolution of man as we escaped danger from predators.
OK, that's a quick rundown on the exercises for the pecs that I think are important. I'm sure some of you may perform others. Please share in the comments below. As in all exercises, I will discuss, please err on the side of safety as you develop the right weights to use and perfect your form/technique. Use exercises I have described here only as additions to more complete full body workouts like squat, deadlifts, lunges, or extensive core workouts.