IMO people worry about what is and isn’t a dominant muscle in a movement far too early in their development. Get into what works and doesn’t work for your development once you have a good level of strength and development first, which for benchpress and chest strength IMO is 3 plates per side.
The basic exercises will work to develop a good base of strength and development. This (first few YEARS of training) is the context my comments are phrased within in case the various people who don’t tend to read threads try to jump on this.
This is just like people discussing whether a squat is good for development when they are only just moving 2 plates per side to a decent depth.
This also lends itself to the hammer strength discussion (good or not for chest development?). I’m yet to meet someone who can push 4 plates per side who didn’t have a well developed chest (bodybuilding forum remember).
[quote]GluteusGigantis wrote:
IMO people worry about what is and isn’t a dominant muscle in a movement far too early in their development. Get into what works and doesn’t work for your development once you have a good level of strength and development first, which for benchpress and chest strength IMO is 3 plates per side.
The basic exercises will work to develop a good base of strength and development. This (first few YEARS of training) is the context my comments are phrased within in case the various people who don’t tend to read threads try to jump on this.
This is just like people discussing whether a squat is good for development when they are only just moving 2 plates per side to a decent depth.
This also lends itself to the hammer strength discussion (good or not for chest development?). I’m yet to meet someone who can push 4 plates per side who didn’t have a well developed chest (bodybuilding forum remember).
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as far as 3 plates per side on the bench goes, do you mean repping or maxing?
as far as 3 plates per side on the bench goes, do you mean repping or maxing?[/quote]
A few good reps. No powerlifting style 3 plate technique maxes either. Even more simply, lifting 3 plates per side on a bench press doesn’t scare you and you can do it at least once.
Even if you can ‘only’ hit a good 3 plate per side max, you are probably repping something quite good and I would say have pretty good chest development (the I can tell you workout in your XL sized t-shirt test), or at least a level of chest development when you can start to actually see whether you have balanced hypertrophy happening through the chest/shoulder girdle.
[quote]kaoticz wrote:
Say your chest is lagging and you bench 2 plates per side, you decide to keep going at it and get to 3 plates per side… your chest would no doubt be bigger but wouldn’t it still be proportionally “lagging” compared to your triceps and shoulders, provided they are still dominant in your pressing movements?
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You hit the point,man.
no matter how you can bench (even 200kl/440lb)but if weak ring of your anterior kinetic chain is the chest it remains not proportional to other muscles (delts&tris),
and this disproportionate becomes even bigger if you train just to add plates to your flat bench.
incidentally,one of my lads -world champion in a trohwing sport- is a big,stocky dude (big wrists,big head,mesomorph) who always liked to lift weights,he can bench 450lb (raw) but his chest is flat like the sea on low tide…