What are some good exercises besides the various bench presses or push ups that will target the upper chest and more of the inner chest? Those parts are lagging compared to the lower half and the sides of my chest. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks
[quote]Dhuge66 wrote:
What are some good exercises besides the various bench presses or push ups that will target the upper chest and more of the inner chest? Those parts are lagging compared to the lower half and the sides of my chest. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks[/quote]
The pectoral muscle fibers run horizontally. That means there is no way to target your “inner chest” because those are the same fibers at your “outer chest” meaning neither of those terms mean much of anything. Upper and lower chest are different stories.
The location of the pec minor along with the wide area taken by the pec major can allow the upper pecs to be targeted more than the lower. That requires presses on an incline (whether with dumbbells, barbells on some machines). Do you have a gym membership? Do you have access to weights? These are questions that apparently need to be asked on this board lately.
Incline Benchpress would suffice.
[quote]Professor X wrote:
Dhuge66 wrote:
What are some good exercises besides the various bench presses or push ups that will target the upper chest and more of the inner chest? Those parts are lagging compared to the lower half and the sides of my chest. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks
The pectoral muscle fibers run horizontally. That means there is no way to target your “inner chest” because those are the same fibers at your “outer chest” meaning neither of those terms mean much of anything. Upper and lower chest are different stories.
The location of the pec minor along with the wide area taken by the pec major can allow the upper pecs to be targeted more than the lower. That requires presses on an incline (whether with dumbbells, barbells on some machines). Do you have a gym membership? Do you have access to weights? These are questions that apparently need to be asked on this board lately.[/quote]I belong to a fantastic gym: Victory Sports Performance & Fitness in State College, PA. It’s a top-notch facility geared towards athletes and is owned by a former Penn State Football strength coach (he is also the main trainer).
I have a decent chest and overall size, but I’m trying to get more of the upper chest to grow, I guess.
Would flys be good to contract the muscles more?
I’m 5’7 175 right now, by the way…up 10 lbs since my last “major post.”
Actually, I’m pretty sure that two people just told you to do inclines.
[quote]Professor X wrote:
Do you have a gym membership? Do you have access to weights? These are questions that apparently need to be asked on this board lately.[/quote]
LOL
Do you wear high heels and matching leather pants while dancing around a fire proclaiming “get with the times?”
Just loking, but I got a laugh out of it.
Incline dumbell presses. If you flare your elbows out it hits the uppeer pec even more. Vince gironda used to advocate bench pressing to the neck for upper chest. He claimed it worked better than inclines. depending on your loads/frequency/body, it could become hard on your shoulders. I don’t personally beleive it, but some bodybuilders claim the pec-dec flyes or cable crossovers “target” their inner pecs when squeezed real hard at peak contraction. You can’t get that squeeze from flyes. The wosrt you could do is try the above and see what happens.
You may want to check out CT’s HSS-100 for chest specialization.
Here is an excerpt from one of CT’s posts:
"Studies by Seger et al. found that different types of muscle contraction (eccentric vs. concentric) lead to localized muscle damage in specific parts of a muscle group. Eccentric contractions creates more damage in the distal portion (near both insertions) of a muscle group while concentric contractions creates more damage in the proximal (or muscle belly) portion.
Don’t get me wrong, both types of muscle contractions creates damage on the whole muscle, but the relative amount of damage to different portions of a muscle is contraction-specific. That result is an indirect indication that it IS possible to put more training stress on different portion of a muscle group.
Furthermore, more recent physiology research has found that not all muscle fibers run all the way from one insertion to the other; many muscle fibers are actually intermediate fibers that only cover a small portion of the muscle length.
While these fibers do not represent the majority of the fibers within a muscle group, they still form a significant portion of the motor unit pool. If certain muscle fibers cover only a portion of a muscle, it also indicates that it is possible to place more growth stimulation on certain parts of a muscle.
Finally the fact that different parts of a muscle group can get sore depending on the exercises being performed is also an indirect indication that putting more growth stimulation on certain parts of a muscle group is possible."