The reason Marc isn’t too fond of tall women is because they remind him of horses. He used to be into the bestiality thing, and then he had some problems with his ex-lover, which happened to be a horse, racehorse to be exact… He was just trying to help it over the fence, well then things just got ugly from there. Now he just doesn’t want to relieve painful memories…Actually and truthfully, I know Marc, he just happens to like short women more so than tall women, and no, there is no little-man’s complex involved. Everyone just simmer down now, I say to each his own.
Actually, Orbital was right. In fact, I prefer women who lost their legs in train accidents, then I just have a torso to contend with, and I feel HUGE! Smart girls really scare me too, I like it when I can talk to a girl stringing together successive 5 letter words and watch her eyes roll back in her head from confusion. Oh, and tall smart girls make me feel like I have no penis at all. I’m glad I have this forum to use as a place to vent my inadequacies. Orbital, can I have a hug? And Nick, I was helping it over the fence. I cant believe you took those pictures.
thanks, guys. i am sure the original poster enjoyed having his thread hijacked by a bunch of nonsense.
michael - i don’t think you really have that much control over how your pecs will utimately look. it’s really a genetic thing. as your pecs thicken up the armpit area will be one of the first areas to fill out (at least from what i have seen). but not everybody has a lot of mass in that area. you might be one of those folks, you might not. just continue doing a well rounded chest workout, eat right and you will see improvements. best of luck. kevo
I can definetly change the area of emphasis on my pecs through simple changes in hand position and ranges of motion combined with extra concentration. Wide grip flat benching using partials (the bottom half) traumatizes my outer chest near the insertion. Conversely, narrow grip lock-outs will leave my cleavage sore for days (as will narrow grip dips). All of the localized soreness may simply be localized micro-trauma…but isn’t that what we are going for? Will that not cause localized growth to some degree. I believe people who are so against the idea of the possibility that there may be techniques and stratagies to alter the shape of a muscle, even if it is miniscule, are simply out of touch with their bodies and have not mastered their mind to muscle link.
Curtis, I think you should use your supraphysiological mind-muscle link to concentrate on an anatomy book. You feel your wide grip presses in the outer chest “near the insertion”? Do you know where the insertion is? The pec inserts at the bicipital groove, at the top 1/3 of your humerus fella, is that where you feel it? Notice in that anatomy book that the fibers in the chest run horizontaly, not verticaly. There is no possible way to train half of a fiber. Your inner chest may very well feel sore from certain movements, because you stretched the connective tissue at the origin, not because you activated more muscle tissue there. Poliquin has mentioned this quite a few times referring to preacher curls causing soreness close to the crease of the elbow, the distal attatchment takes up a more significant stretch than the proximal in this exercise becasue the arm is in front of the body. So you are sore at the distal attachment of the bicep, but that dosen’t mean that you magicaly found a way to train a part of your bicep that dosent exist. Emphasis can change from the long head to the short head (lateral or medial), or to the brachialis, but not to the upper or lower portions. When reffering to the chest, since the fibers run horizontaly, upper and lower can be emphasized (but not isolated). Bravo Kevo, I’m glad we got back to the point here.
Mr Mcdugal, the point here is the original TOPIC. “My outer-chest looks like shit!! Please suggest something!!!” What do you do?..give us an elementary anatomy lesson and proceed on to fables of nonsense where you mention Poliquin in an attempt to add credibility to the confusion.
“There is no possible way to train half of a fiber” Who the fuck ever said that? Then you write:
"Curtis, I think you should use your supraphysiological mind-muscle link to concentrate on an anatomy book. You feel your wide grip presses in the outer chest “near the insertion”? Do you know where the insertion is?”
UUUHHH??? Yeah!!! thats what I said…“Outer chest near the insertion” and why are you such an asshole?
Regardless of all that, lets assume the soreness I feel near the insertions from wide bottom 1/3 benches/flys or the cleavage soreness, from close lockouts with elbows flared, is related to damage of the connective issue at either end of the muscle. So if that particular location (insertion or origin) was stressed enough to cause tendon damage is it not safe to assume that those fibers near the meshing of tendon and muscle will be damaged as well (lets remember: tendon fiber is stronger than muscle fiber). In the right environment this damage may result in growth. And this may provide the means to improve the outer chest area…maybe the writer of the original question is simply one of those delt/tri dominant guys who has always favored narrow/medium grip pressing and has never given wide benching the opportunity improve his weakness.
Daddy loves a pissing match. Orgin and insertion are rarely used any longer. Proximal and distal attachments are the names.
Curtis, you are correct, I was an asshole and for that I apologize. Maybe I wasn’t hugged enough as a child, or was it too much? You just seemed to be taking shots at those of us who disagreed with you, saying we didn’t have the mind muscle link that you did, which sounds fairly presumptuous and cocky. Anyway, I refer you back to my point that seems to disgust you: You can’t train half of a fiber. The whole tendon/muscle strength is not black and white and depends on many factors involving type of movement, joint postion, angle of insult/trauma, etc. but is a whole 'nother bag of tricks and dosen’t matter anyway. An example of my entire point: Think of pectoral fibers as strands of dental floss. Imagine placing a hundred strands across your chest from your sternum to your bicipital groove. Hold one end of one strand down and tug on the other end. The whole strand got tense, not just the end next to your sternum, nor did just the “outer” part. The strands above and below didn’t nessecarily get(as) tense. Of course you will never just activate one fiber, and this is highly simplistic, nonetheless the point remains. If those fibers had different proximal and distal attatchments, causing the pecs to run verticaly, maybe outer pecs could be emphasized. If you still disagree with me, excellent! That’s what makes this stuff fun. As for advice, I did give it to him. The answer isn’t always something you want to hear.
Fellas, don’t forget there are two heads to the pectoralis major, sternal and clavicular. So, if a trainee neglects the clavicular head he may have a underdeveloped chest. By bringing the clavicular head up to speed, you will create a bigger fuller look and will increase the mass in your upper chest and “outter pecs.” Not because you were able to train half a fiber, but because you trained fibers that were underdeveloped in the area.
Those of you who think they know everything are pissing off those of us that do.
It is better to be though a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
Shield your eyes, the professor has spoken.
When you guys are performing flat presses, from the bottom position can you feel the contraction initiate from the outer chest then progressively move towards the sternum as the weight is pushed up? Then at the top of the movement if the shoulders are shrugged forward as if you are trying to push the weights as high up as possible can you feel the contraction almost exclusively along the sternum? Dr. Fred Hatfield (Dr. Squat) thinks this is ridiculous and that possibility of any muscle shaping is ludicrous, but doctor squat never tried synthol and it seems he is jealous of bodybuilders (for their aesthetics) so he ridicules all attempts to improve flaws or improve symmetry. “Just make the muscle big and hope you have good parents” to me this advice sucks…nothing is impossible.
Has anyone noticed any differences between the proximal and distal loads on a muscle in regards to open and closed chain movements? I have noticed (on me) that closed chain movements tend to overload the origin of the targeted muscle and vice versa for open chain movements. Any thoughts? Yeah I am full of shit and this is a waist of time. Just eat right and lift right and hope you had good parents right?
Curtis I want you to realize that I am not discounting the idea that a muscle can change shape due to specific loading parameters or angles of resistance. As I stated way back at the beginning of this thread and Nick reiterated, I believe that one could change emphasis between heads of a muscle, in this instance the clavicular head vs. the sternal head of the pectorals. Just as I believe one could change the shape of the quads by using only narrow stance squats vs. wide stance squats. All I am saying is that the change in muscle shape is specific to the head of the muscle that has absorbed emphasis. Even if you feel different movements at proximal vs. distal attatchments, I do not believe a change will occur there. As far as kinetic chain, it is plausable that a different recruitment pattern will cause an alternate aesthetic effect, but this would still apply to different heads, not attatchment sites. I do believe that kinetic chain would have more of an effect on neural patterns and teaching the body to learn movements than on differences in muscle development. Closed chain movements do have a tendancy to activate more total motor units to move the body through space, given equal loading parameters, which could have a beneficial hypertrophy effect, but I doubt it would be localized to target one head more than another compared to an equivalent open chain movement. Interesting idea though, I don’t think its a waste of time pondering these issues. When trying to change the shape of a muscle, I think one would find time better spent focusing on which component of hypertrophy they neglect the most between sarcoplasmic hypertrophy vs. sarcomere hypertrophy. If one’s program has weighted heavily on one form for a long time, switching it up would most likely have a significant visual “shape changing” impact.