i’ve been doing tons of incline work but i just cannot seem to feel anyting in the upper inner area of my chest. it’s really annoying, the upper outer area is coming together, but there’s almost a void in the upper inner area…
any ideas?
this is what i usually do:
i’ve been working out for bout 7-8 months now.
thank you
I’m not an expert by any means, but my thoughts – based on a reasonable knowledge of human anatomy – would be that the sternum (breastbone) is almost bare of muscle until you build significant chest mass.
As you layer more muscle on top of what you already have, it needs to attach to the breastbone and will gradually “creep” farther into the center. You start to see gains on the outside first, because what you’re thinking is the outer chest is really near the center of the pectoralis muscle, and gains toward the ends of muscles happen somewhat more slowly. It’s just like your bicep – the ends are never as big as the middle. (Good thing, too.)
As I’ve said, I’m no expert, so I could be wrong… but I think that’s reasonably accurate. Someone else might be able to suggest how you can “even out” the gains so the central area doesn’t pyramid as much.
Further note: I don’t see any direct flyes in your routine; everything’s at angles or straight up. While I’m even less of an expert at exercise than I am at anatomy, I would think that for central chest gains you would want to do direct lateral movements to the center.
Just my two cents.
Agree that flyes may help, squeeze hard at the top. The best exercise I’ve found is going heavy on plate raises and accentuating the negative for as long as possible. I think this is normally thought of as a shoulder exercise, but I get a great pump on the inner chest doing this. The more I attempt to “squeeze” the plate by trying to push the hands toward each other while holding the plate, the more this feels like I’m hitting the inner part of the chest. Could be psychosomatic, but I sure feel the pump. I generally do this as the last exercise on chest day.
Hey Shamrock,
I used to have the same problem as you. One day a buddy of mine suggested that when I do any type of presses or flyes that I should clinch my shoulder blades together. He said keep them clenched throughout the whole movement and viola, the next day my upper chest was super sore.
I have very wide shoulders so every time I would bench, in the concentric phase of lifting my chest would sink and my shoulders would be above my chest. My shoulders and triceps were doing all of the work.
Try it out and see if that helps.
“Sancho”
Shamrock,
Do you perform pull-ups? If no, maybe you need to incorporate these as they do target the upper pectorals.
Then again, maybe it’s just poor genetics. I know I wished I didn’t have that 2" inch gap between my biceps and forearms. Oh well!
Good luck
Bringing the inner chest out is like trying to have a bigger peak on your biceps. It does not work that way.
I know what you want because you see those people with nice chest touching in the middle. I felt that way too and didn’t change anything and now, a couple of years later, my chest is much bigger and touching in the middle.
You should just concentrate to do your pressing movement or flys with your chest. Let me explain, sometimes, we do an exercice and all other muscle are doing the work. Concentrate and make sure that your pecs are doing the work.
As you may know, the chest fiber are placed horizontally and not vertically, so you cannot do an exercice that target more the inner chest. This is a misconception.
Keep up the good work and it will get big and full.
STACK
I second what everyone else has said on focusing on building up the mass with direct flyes and flat bench. Something I’ve thought was missing though are dips. Use a wieghted belt ans watch your chest fill up.
In one of the print issues there was an atricle about developing the upper/inner portion of the chest using limited ROM straight arm dumbell pullovers. Could be worth looking in to.
Sorry I don’t have more info.
Good Luck
Jeff
here, check out what CW wrote about getting a huge chest…
http://t-nation.com/portal_includes/articles/2003/255chest2.html
[quote]Sancho wrote:
Hey Shamrock,
I used to have the same problem as you. One day a buddy of mine suggested that when I do any type of presses or flyes that I should clinch my shoulder blades together. He said keep them clenched throughout the whole movement and viola, the next day my upper chest was super sore.
I have very wide shoulders so every time I would bench, in the concentric phase of lifting my chest would sink and my shoulders would be above my chest. My shoulders and triceps were doing all of the work.
Try it out and see if that helps.
“Sancho”[/quote]
This is the best advice in the thread.
Pop 'em out Muscles covers this. Do a search to find it
first of all i’d like to thank everyone for contributing!
i do dips from time to time, but those are on triceps days. i guess i’ll incorperate them more often. as for regular flies, well, i guess i’ll start diong them again… about time to change the routine.
oh, and i’ll definatley give that shoulder-blade tip a go this week!
looking forward to my workout now!
thank you all!
first of all i’d like to thank everyone for contributing!
i do dips from time to time, but those are on triceps days. i guess i’ll incorperate them more often. as for regular flies, well, i guess i’ll start diong them again… about time to change the routine.
oh, and i’ll definatley give that shoulder-blade tip a go this week!
looking forward to my workout now!
thank you all!
The shoulder blade idea works really welll for people who don’t feel their chest. However, Stack was right about the inner chest… at least in theory. Poliquin had an interested article that summarized this quite well in MM a few years back.
He also mentioned inner chest was completely a factor of genetics I think saying that the amount of ‘inner’ chest you have, is an issue that depends on the length of muscle belly vs tendon. As you know; at the origin and attachement of every muscle we find tendon and i think that those with ‘holes’ in the middle of their chest just have a longer, undevelopable (to a cetain extent) tendon ‘belly’ there.
That said… the other extreme of ‘artistic’ bodybuilding; Vince Gironda and Larry Scott swore that to fill up the ‘hole’ you should do dips with the palms facing away from each other and the elbows flared right out.
Personally I couldn’t do these as i found them ‘shoulder-wreckeckers’.
If the ‘tendon’ belly and muscle fiber orientation theories are right then the inner chest should be impossible to develop, however I found (as did Stack) that after a couple of years of training the problem took care of itself, and my middle chest became ‘satisfactory’ (but never ‘quarter-squeezing’ tight).
So there is hope!
wide-grip bench press to the base of the neck
i take the bar right below my adam’s apple
use very light weight to start with