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Is there anyway I can work the inner chest without doing flys and pec-deck? I try to avoid them the most since theres a huge risk in re-injuring my shoulder when doing these. If you guys tell me theres no other way I guess I'll just have to up my shoulder strength tremendously and just do the flys.
i never do flyes anyway, worthless exercise in my opinion, close grip bench and dips
Well the idea is that if you're benchin 400, you won't be complaining about any part of your chest.
i know, alot of people are supporters of flyes and other isolation movements, but what saboudian said speaks volumes, you ever see what a guy who benches 400 lbs chest looks like? you think doing flyes got him benching 400 lbs?
heehee, i love it, here's where we're gonna get into a debate on overtraining ;)! IMO you don't need to do ANY isolation movements, that icing on the cake may be what's holding you back from making signifigant strength gains! Ask any competitiven power lifter, they almost never do isolation movements, and as we all know stregth = size
yes, the next question! the only thing that looks different between body builders and powerlifters is body fat% many old school guys you referred to were powerlifters who just dieted down, i.e. mike metzer, franco columbo
reall? that's cool as hell, franco's a hero of mine! another thing about genetics, your body doesn't develop one part of your muscle and not another, when you stimulate a muscle, the entire muscle is activated, not just the inner, outer, whatever, so with that knowlege, it wouldn't make sense to do flyes to develop the "inner" chest, when i recommend doing closegrip, it's because that movement stimulates the muscle through a greater range of motion, it takes the stress off the shoulder and puts it on the chest and tris, so i develops the pecs more
that's my point, you can't sculpt a muscle, it'll grow the way your mom and dad made it to grow, no matter what stimulation you give it to grow, so the thing you want to do is maximize the growth, and doing extra sets of flyes, in my opinion, holds that growth back by over training the muscle, there is a point where too much work will stop the muscle from growing, look at marathoners, their legs get so much work, that they should all be jogging around looking like tom platz, but they look like steven hawking itstead, now look at sprinters, they do short, explosive workouts and have huge legs, my point, less, more intense work stimulates growth, adding extra stuff like flyes hurts the process
I would say try some cable cross overs they have worked for me. Since I started them I have seen a difference. Hope that help. P.S. I like dumbell flys! :D
Quote:
Originally Posted by scottninpo
I think we agree on every thing [exept dl's]
I gaind the most size from "exept warmups" 3 sets flat 3 sets incline
thats it for chest day, hit chest twice a week second workout light 3x10 each with dbls.
I do flys as a finishing move for my pecs. It makes sure you hit everything, every fiber. It works great for this but causes you to need more recovery time then just bench presses, for most people this is more so a good thing then it is a bad thing. If you can't do them don't worry about it too much. Cable crossovers (wich would be safer) at the right height can be used to hit the inner pecs better as well as medium grip bench presses. Too close and you'll hit the triceps more, too wide and its the outter chest, somewhere inbetween is what you want. Dips are great for finishing and the lower pecs.
"that's my point, you can't sculpt a muscle, it'll grow the way your mom and dad made it to grow, no matter what stimulation you give it to grow, so the thing you want to do is maximize the growth, and doing extra sets of flyes, in my opinion, holds that growth back by over training the muscle, there is a point where too much work will stop the muscle from growing, look at marathoners, their legs get so much work, that they should all be jogging around looking like tom platz, but they look like steven hawking itstead, now look at sprinters, they do short, explosive workouts and have huge legs, my point, less, more intense work stimulates growth, adding extra stuff like flyes hurts the process"
I can safely say I pretty much disagree with almost all of that. Sure your genetics determine alot of things, and your muscles will grow how they will grow, but marathoners are not skinny because they overtrain, they are skinny because this suits them better to do the job at hand (plus they burn alot of calores and dont usually take in as many as other athletes). Carrying aound a ton of mass would be a bad thing for a marathoner, or a long distance runner because for one thats more weight for them to carry, they would require more oxygen to be given to them large muscles making it harder on them to get the endurance, not to mention there bodies start burning the protein from their muscles during the running because its most likely they would not be able to eat enough energy to supply them throughout the run. This is more so the reason for them being muscularly skinny then anything else. Sure their training has a say but remember there training is suited to make their task at hand easier for them to accomplish, and putting on mass does not help them any so they dont even try to. The point is you can't compare someone running a marathon to someone doing flys, it's not the same thing, not even close. 2, 3 exersizes a body part, 3-4 sets each is far from overtraining for most people.
This is probably one of the very few threads I would actually side more with scott (and by the way, i hate that **** avatar)
To some extent, you can sculpt your muscles, but the shape is mostly determined by genetics.
Lostup- I'm not going to bother arguing against you because I know you've never done anything but volume training.
saboudin lmao!!! c'mon man, you gotta love Hank!
the marathon runner isn't an example to illustrate a bodybuilder's routine, i was using it as an argument against overtraining, forget about how there upper bodies look, their legs still look like they just got over having polio! and most people think that cables hit inner pecs or preacher curls hit the lower bi's, they think that because that's where they get sore, which is not they case, they get sore in that part of the muscle because those movements put strain at the insertion point at the tendons, and that's where the soreness is coming from, pick up any college 100 level book on physiology and it'll back my case up for stimulating the entire muscle rather than parts of a muscle
Well **** scott I was just saying cable cross overs because I looked up inner chest in Joe Weiders Ultimate Bodybuilding. And it said it was a good isolation exersise for inner chest. I don't want to sound like a dick but I'll listen to him.
this is just healthy debate guys, but, personally, i'd rather listen to what science has to say rather than what a guy who's only concern is to sell you magazines and supplements has been saying for years, it's not like he can say now, hey guys, everything i said before about weight trainging was wrong, now buy my magazine! you can't just throw out medical facts because joe weider says to
Alot of people say you can't train specific spots of your muscles, this might be true, I really can't say for sure, but you can target upper or lower pecs that is for sure, along with inner and outter biceps, different sides on the tris, so on and this is done effectively by using different exercises. Like I said tho, I can't say for sure that you can target your inner pecs specifially but if you want to try those are the what to try it with (just as many people say you can target specific muscle spots and not speaking from soreness). Even if they don't hit any specific spots on a muscle theyre still great finishing moves. BTW, I don't do high volume training, I'm against it. I did high volume long ago with like 0 recovery time (because I was clueless) and needless to say I got 0 results. I tried a few things and now I do about 2 exercises a body part, 3-4 sets each... which is not considered high volume. I have pics in the member pic section. If you look at them and think that what I do isn't working better then what you do, don't listen to me. If you look at my pics, just consider that I've gotten all results from last june until now and am completely natural, you can then decide for yourself if I might know a thing or two. Results speak for themselves (I'm not saying my results are better then any one elses, thats not for me to decide). Sorry, I just feel like my advice just got brushed off to the side like I don't know what works and what doesn't by someone who doesn't know a thing about me.
Oh yeah, I'll second that about the mags, their just trying to sell.
I find PUSH UPS work great. Hard to believe but you work different muscles doing push ups as you do during bench pressing. Keep your hands together and try doing pushups. Make a diamond shape with your thumbs and forefingers. Definately hits inner chest.
Incline dumb bell press also helps inner upper chest.
If you start developing an strong incline, you will notice your chest starting to grow.
Its kinda like tris. If you do more tris it will make your arms look bigger. Most rookies just concentrate on biceps hoping to show bigger arms and forget about tris.
Incline is the same way with flat benching. Most people jsut concentrate on flat.
Yeah definatly, I always get sore from pushups like on the side of y body, inbetween my pecs and lat, maybe its part of my lat but it don't get sore there any other time. Triceps are said to make up 2/3 of your arm mass...
i hate doing pushups because i rarely vacuum my floor and wind up getting dustbunnies in my nose
From the looks of your avatar, Dust bunnies are the least of your worries :)
Dips, closegrip bench presses, dips