Upper/inner chest...

[UberSteroids]

I need some good exercises and technique to really focus on these. Seems as my upper/inner chest falls behind the rest :\

When I do incline barbell I can't find the right grip to really squeeze these muscles. Incline d-bells feel like shoulders work more than anything else.

Any good ideas?

[FortKnox36]

Yea.

When you are doing barbell incline use a close grip like shoulder width apart or a little closer in. This will target your inner chest. Close grip is for inner chest and wide grip is for outer chest.

When doing any chest exercise make sure your shoulders are back and your lower back is at a natural arch. Inhale and expand your rib cage and then lift, slowly exhaling as you push the weight up and inhaling as you bring it down.
Main thing to keep in mind is keep your shoulders back and focus on contracting your chest.
This will take the stress off your shoulders and triceps and really focus on your chest muscles.

Hope this helps,
C

[StritationOrBust]

^^ yep, what he said. If you lagging in an area like this you might have to take some extra mental effort to really use the chest in your bench and try to use less shoulders and tris. Takes a lot of concentration.

I have the same problem with my chest development. You might also try starting you chest routine with incline press so you can go extra heavy on it.

Also do you do flys? I like cable flys on a half incline bench for adding more mass to the upper inner part of the chest. Really concentrate on the inner chest in this exercise and try not to use too much biceps. The motion is like your giving a really big bear hug. Go a little bit beyond center at the top and cross your arms(alternating arms). At full contration at the top of the lift hold for a split second and do a full flex of the upper inner chest.

Any questions on these lifts send me a PM.

[Matt]

Continue with your normal routine, only genetics will dictate the shape of your inner chest...

[StritationOrBust]

^^ Have to respectfully disagree here.

I agree that genetics are going to make something lag behind in almost everyone, and that almost everyone will have weakpoints. However, just doing the same thing is not the answer. Once you have a solid base any bodybuilder will go back and alter training programs to strengthen those weak points. You can't just say...well i have bad genes, i'll never have a fully developed chest.

[TheJuicer]

Incline cable flies...

[UberSteroids]

Good deal. Looks like I need to focus more on these little details like keeping shoulders back and expanding rib cage more.

One thing I did try before was exhausting the shoulders right before my bench and that seemed to rule out the shoulders out of the press.

I am doing my chest-triceps tonight and will focus on the suggestions you guys made.

I will post later!

Thanks

[higherdesire]

I have taken the angle on my incline bench routine to much less of an angle than i did for many years, and let me tell you I have had a marked insrease in upper/inner development over the last few months.

Lower your angle to the lowest setting for a couple of weeks and see if this works for oyu as well. Also I have been starting my routine with incline while I am the freshest.

[boxer1]

try leaning d/b crossovers, start with a light weight and hold on to a power rack with one arm and lean out, hold your arm out and bring the weight from waist level up in an arc to just under your chin for 10-12 reps, repeat for the other arm, this move has done wonders for my upper inner chest, try to squeeze the muscle when the weight is under your chin

[Darksyde]

scientificially speaking the pectoralis major is one muscle and it fires as one muscle, you cannot target or isolate a particular part of it.

[StritationOrBust]

^^This is just not true.............

[swol_je]

I like to do cable crossovers with the pulley all the way at the bottom and raise it up till my arms are in front of my face. Try and hold it for a five count. That really feels good on my upper middle chest. I might try it one arm at a time just for more isolation next time.

[Matt]

scientificially speaking the pectoralis major is one muscle and it fires as one muscle, you cannot target or isolate a particular part of it.

At last some sense.....

[higherdesire]

scientificially speaking the pectoralis major is one muscle and it fires as one muscle, you cannot target or isolate a particular part of it.

in some regards it is true, but you can target areas of that muscle group. That is one reason to hit from different angles, otherwise flat bench would be all we ever need. we do different excercises though so that we can get a better fuller development, don't you agree?

[FireGuy]

I gotta agree with Higher Desire, If this was the truly the case there would be no need to do more than one single exercise for any muscle. If you look at the insertions of the pectoral muscle it should be easy to see how pushing the arms upwards in an incline movement will activate more muscle fibers in the upper chest than pushing them downwards. Is the WHOLE chest still going to be activated? Yes, but that doesnt mean you cant stress some fibers more than others. Think of doing a straight bar bench press as opposed to a cable of DB fly. The plane of the movement it totally different and the muscle fibers near the sternum need to contract to a greater degree to brings the hands together.

[StritationOrBust]

^^ agreed. Its like saying all you need to do is standard curls for biceps. Yes its a group of two muscles, but there are many different things to develop in it. Length, width, peak, ect. These muscles that are designed by nature to assist in push/pull in many different directions also need to be trained this way for full development.

Kinda silly that this is even a debate. Its accepted by preatty much ever bodybuilder whos even somewhat serious about their training.

[Darksyde]

i didnt make that up, it is science.
so go and argue with them ther scientists and physiologists and have them rewrite all their textbooks with the groundbreaking information you have uncovered. i believe we have had this discussion a few thousand times in the last 10 yrs on all the muscle boards i belong to.
if you have any evidence that is not empirical i would love to hear it.

i notice fireguy you said 'stress some fibers more than others'. that is much more easy for me to swallow than saying you can 'isolate' a part of the chest. angles of pull will definately stress the origin points of this muscle slightly differently as it is connected over quite a large area, from the medial half of the clavicle down through the sternal cartilage of ribs one through six. however it is still only inervated by one nerve, the anterior thoracic from the brachial plexus.

go to school guys, anatomy can be your friend.

[Matt]

^^ If this were true then does that mean if i train my quads from different angles i can reshape them?? Thats to FireGuy...

[Darksyde]

^^ agreed. Its like saying all you need to do is standard curls for biceps. Yes its a group of two muscles, but there are many different things to develop in it. Length, width, peak, ect. These muscles that are designed by nature to assist in push/pull in many different directions also need to be trained this way for full development.

Kinda silly that this is even a debate. Its accepted by preatty much ever bodybuilder whos even somewhat serious about their training.

lemme guess, you got a subscription to m&f
length width peak lol!

[Matt]

i didnt make that up, it is science.
so go and argue with them ther scientists and physiologists and have them rewrite all their textbooks with the groundbreaking information you have uncovered. i believe we have had this discussion a few thousand times in the last 10 yrs on all the muscle boards i belong to.
if you have any evidence that is not empirical i would love to hear it.

i notice fireguy you said 'stress some fibers more than others'. that is much more easy for me to swallow than saying you can 'isolate' a part of the chest. angles of pull will definately stress the origin points of this muscle slightly differently as it is connected over quite a large area, from the medial half of the clavicle down through the sternal cartilage of ribs one through six. however it is still only inervated by one nerve, the anterior thoracic from the brachial plexus.

go to school guys, anatomy can be your friend.

Again another excellent post..

[FireGuy]

I understand the concept of genetics and agree with it to some extent. We cannot change our insertion points or elongate our muscles. If your chest is square or round it is always going to be square or round. A lot of this boils down to definitions. A muscle that increases in size automatically changes its shape to some extent. I am saying that most muscles can be trained to target certain fibers more than others. This is accomplished by changing angles, movements and range of motions. If do an intense workout of incline fly's one workout and then decline fly's the next workout your chest is going to be sore in different areas. It is only logical that this is because we have stressed the fibers in one area to a greater extent than in the other area. I am not suggesting all fibers were not "firing".

That said, if your lats insert high on your waist, you can work you lower lats til you are blue in the face and you will ALWAYS have high lats.

As far as your quad question goes we are talking about 4 major muscle on the anterior aspect of the leg, so yes I believe you can change the shape of your legs by how you train them. Now, if you ask me if you can work the outer portion of your vastus medialis I would say "good luck". But,,,, this muscle is different from the pectoralis major in that it's insertion points only allow contraction through the same plane of motion.

[FireGuy]

scientificially speaking the pectoralis major is one muscle and it fires as one muscle, you cannot target or isolate a particular part of it.

Please look at post #12 of this thread http://forums.steroid.com/showthread.php?t=374997
and explain to me why someone would incorporate all of these different movements and angles if you believe what you are saying about chest.

[Darksyde]

its simple fireguy. change is the essence of growth. changing stimulus on the muscle.
working different angles isnt going to change the genetic shape of your chest, but it will however help maximize what you have available to you (the area that your pectoralis does or can cover).
its all about heavy pressing for me. flys are an afterthought and i dont even really count them as work sets. to say doing some high incline fly is gonna pop out that upper corner of your chest is just not true. the only real answer to filling in those areas is mass.

[StritationOrBust]

Darksyde I agree with you that the pectorals fire as one muscle group. However I believe what fireguy said is true. I never said you could isolate a certain part of the chest. I do think you can target it. From what your saying any range or angle of training on any muscle group would effect it the same. Well if my knowledge is so out of date to be that far off i apologize. But, i don't think so. It seems to me that your taking something out of a textbook and applying it broadly to real life circutstances.


And if you believe this, then let me ask you this. What does your chest routine look like? And if this is such broadly accepted and known fact why do so many pros use chest exercises that are "supposed" to hit the chest from different angles or target different areas of the pecs? Are you privy to information that they don't know? Or have some experience that they don't? I'm really curious about this.