I’ve recently incorporated dumbell flies into my work out. My shoulder has been beating the shit out of me lately. My bench has dropped almost 100 lbs because my shoulder can’t take the pain. Anyway, so I was doing flies with my palms facing in. My shoulder still hurt really bad. Then, I tried doing flies with my palms facing forward (away from my body), and the pain was reduced ALOT! Any you guys have a reason for this? Am I still working my chest as much with this different “grip”??
If your shoulder hurts, do NOT do dumbbell flies. I’ve always considered them worthless, unless you are training purely for asthetic purposes. Even then, I would only recommend them if there were no shoulder issues. By the way, where in the shoulder is it hurting? That makes a substantial difference.
The palms facing forward grip actually seems to involve the chest more. At least you dont have to descend down as far to get a good stretch. I know Charles Poliquin has always recommended this method of performing them.
I too have always considered them worthless. But then again, when I do them I feel absolutely nothing in the chest, just a lot of shoulder stress.
I don’t find DB flyes useful for hypertrophy, but I do like to use them for a good pec stretch after a set of high rep presses. In order to stretch the pecs, I have to move my arms towards my head until I feel the stretch.
Try doing decline flyes. It will keep your shoulders out of the movement.
I won’t be as diplomatic as others here. shit can flies as they are as near worthless as you can get. If you are steadily prgressing in the weights that you are using with compound movements, “isolation” movements fall under the misnomer of the ‘MORE IS BETTER’ label. Listen to your body!! it is screaming and you dont wanna listen
I think flyes have some use, but i’m getting more and more convinced that not all of us have the same amount of safe ROM in all our joints. You shouldn’t do flyes beyond the point were it starts to hurt, and same goes for bench press. If it hurts before your upper arms are parallel to the floor, then stop before that.
I learned this the hard way and also had a rotator cuff injury from ignoring my body warnings that came as shoulder pain while performing those exercises. I am now one more member of the shoulder impingement club who’s gonna have to watch my rotator cuff health carefully for the rest of my training days.