[quote]PGND17 wrote:
I know I don’t have a high post count, but I’ve lurked forever and figured I’d start posting more often
I’ve adopted JM training methodologies and one of the best moves for chest that I’ve seen JM implement is a slight incline press in which one full rep consists of two partials short of lockout and one full rep with a hard squeeze.
The pump is pretty intense. You have to drop the weight a bit as well.[/quote]
you mean like when he was training with matt krock and AV?
[quote]Mr. Walkway wrote:
[quote]PGND17 wrote:
I know I don’t have a high post count, but I’ve lurked forever and figured I’d start posting more often
I’ve adopted JM training methodologies and one of the best moves for chest that I’ve seen JM implement is a slight incline press in which one full rep consists of two partials short of lockout and one full rep with a hard squeeze.
The pump is pretty intense. You have to drop the weight a bit as well.[/quote]
you mean like when he was training with matt krock and AV?[/quote]
I’m pretty sure that’s the video I picked it up from, yea.
I tried something once, with 2 spotters of course, and it felt great. Dumbbell press /cable cross fly at the same time. Grabbed a dumbbell and the cable and repped out. not only did I have to press the weight, but I had to pull the cable in. Yeah it was shenanigans but it felt pretty damn intense. Used much less weight than I would have expected.
I try to compress the bar as I ascend. If I want more triceps involvement I try to stretch the bar.
Freemotion chest press.
Ahead cable flyes… Atleast that’s what I think they were referred to as. I actually dug them up on an old article from here and they give me a chest pump like no other will.
[quote]Dr. Pangloss wrote:
Freemotion chest press.[/quote]
I love that machine.
Please for the love of your respective God, could someone tell me what Ahead Cable Flyes are or link to the article. There are hundreds of hits in the searches.
Its where you take a flat bench and set it up in front of the cable machine so when you lie down your head is a couple inches “ahead” of the cables. Use the d handles (I think that’s what they’re called)on the low pulley attachment. The result will be you doing a lying cable flye but instead of pulling straight across your body you pull down towards your belly button. I’ll try and dig up the article but it was an old one. Tell me how it goes if you try them
Single arm pec deck. Serious chest contraction when your cross your midline.
[quote]paulieserafini wrote:
you ever seen someone in a Hammer Strength machine only using one arm but sitting with diagonally with their shoulder into the bench(instead of their back) so that they could simulate this movement?[/quote]
Thats exactly what ive been doing at the end of every chest workout for the past few months and since ive been using the movement my upper inner chest has really filled in. You can get a great contraction and really feel the muscle working.
Gave the single arm pec deck a try today, loved it! That will definitely be a mainstay in my chest training, hoping to see some added thickness in the coming months
Nothing works my chest better than a combination of rest pause heavy incline bench, and leaning dips. I hard flat bench anymore these days.
Actually tried the slight decline medium grip bench dorian yates styles and it was fantastic and I got a great pump. Upper chest is sore to btw. No should pain either. Give it a shot and maybe implement some dumbbell flys decline style to.
I was under the impression it was the muscle tearing that promoted repair and growth? As in the bottom part of the movement, so ensuring a stretch is present through each exercise, the contraction still comes from pulling the weight or body out of the hole, that last little squeeze really just promotes a little extra blood and even a rest? But that’s just me and that’s probably why I’m still a baby.
Longest and shortest position possible for a muscle is where it’s weak and thus easy to overload. Stretch deep, contract hard, repeat.
I’ve really learned to like the following a lot over the past year or so:
-Decline bench with 3-second negatives on the smith machine. I like the smith with the negatives bc it allows me to focus on the muscle instead of the plane of motion, if that makes any sense.
-With higher rep bench (12-15), now that I have a home gym I like to have a pair of dumbbells on “pump”-oriented days where I superset the 12-15 with slow, controlled dumbbell flies. Not too heavy on the flies–eg, if I’m doing 245x15, I’ll use 45s on flies (50s max).
There are 2 styles of benching. One to maximize 1RM max and 1 to promote chest hypertrophy. Just because you’re pushing big numbers with a powerlifting style of benching doesn’t equate to big pecs necessarily.
I don’t think there is so much of a problem with dumbbell and barbell presses (the exercises themselves), it’s more how people perform them. If you dial your form down on presses to put maximum tension on your pecs, they should do fine (along with flies of course)
[quote]Tommy W. wrote:
There are 2 styles of benching. One to maximize 1RM max and 1 to promote chest hypertrophy. Just because you’re pushing big numbers with a powerlifting style of benching doesn’t equate to big pecs necessarily.[/quote]
A lot of people don’t think about this. Lifting sufficient weight is important but when looking to isolate your pecs you need to find the right form/leverages and then use the maximum weight allowable while keeping the stretch on your pecs. When you start thinking about the weight more than the MMC is when you’ll be making mainly strength gains more than developing muscle in the areas you want to. I’ve learned to use 2 different styles of benching, one for moving pounds and the other for pec tension.
My lifting partner and I tried a technique with flat dumbbell press once where we spotted each other with a rubber gym or kick ball. I would hold the ball with both hands above his chest. As he would press the dumbbells together the ends would squeeze the ball and rebound the bells back out on the way down. It didn’t give the peak contraction so much like the OP talks about but did give a huge pump and soreness from the accelerated negative.
[quote]Tommy W. wrote:
There are 2 styles of benching. One to maximize 1RM max and 1 to promote chest hypertrophy. Just because you’re pushing big numbers with a powerlifting style of benching doesn’t equate to big pecs necessarily.[/quote]
not necessarily, sure, but “PL style” simply means that you find the most stable position, usually with elbows at 45degrees. Theres no rule saying you have to use leg drive or arch. I get a great stretch at the bottom of my bench rep even with an arch, and while I’m sure using more triceps than chest, I find that’s going to be the case with almost every barbell vs. dumbbell variation. Maybe it’s just genetics, but my chest has gotten noticeably bigger than some of my peers, and all of them bench “BB style”, with some of them pushing a lot more weight than I can handle (current max ~275, theyre hitting 315 or more).
Maybe it’s the dips I’m hitting for assistance, maybe it’s that I’m not stopping reps before they hit my chest/abdomen without a board or pins, maybe, again, just genetics, but my chest gets worked well enough that for assistance I’ve shifted to incline for both DB benching and Close Grip benching because my shoulders have become the weak link. To be fair, my pecs aren’t… pretty? There’s a lot more mass on the lower portion and my anterior deltoid overpowers any “flare” I might get from my upper chest.
But really, one excercise is not going to fit all. When weaker people, or skinnier people or whoever asks how to work their chest so it can show through their shirt, I tell them only use the flat bench for DB or close grip benching, because flat barbell’s primary purpose in my book is to build strength. I don’t really know why any “bodybuilder” that takes their training seriously and doesn’t crossover to another sport would waste their time for “chest” with the BB flat bench. Honestly I think “Bodybuilder-style Bench Press” is only a thing because of convention, Mens Health magazines and the like, and CT Fletcher. Strongest man no one knows my ass… seems like everyone at my gym has seen his video(s). Not one knows that Eric Spoto currently holds the world record for the raw bench, much less that the bar is set at 722lb. Anyways, I typed more than I thought I would… tl;dr