Every guy that trains in the gym and many woman want maximum chest development. Unfortunately their technique may be robbing them off that growth. We need to take a look at how to reduce the involvement of the deltoids and triceps.
Joint angles
When you contract a Muscle it changes the angle of the joint it crosses. It decreases the angle between the bones that that muscle is moving.
For example
The biceps bring the lower arm bones towards the upper arm bones. The angle between the upper and lower arm bones decreases as the biceps contract. Simple.
When you want to train any muscle group you need to analyse what joints that muscle group is decreasing the angle of and learn to create that movement with weights.
Chest or pectoralis Major
The function of the chest is to decrease the angle of the shoulder joint by bringing the arm towards the midline of the body. This can be done at different angles to hit the upper middle and lower portion of the pectoralis muscles.
The major exercises
The chest can be worked using;
bench press
Incline Press
Decline press
Flat dumbbell press
Incline dumbbell press
Decline Dumbbell press
Flat dumbbell flyes
Incline Flyes
Decline flyes
Cable flyes
Plus various other machines for presses and flyes.
The muscle groups that robs the Chest of growth
Shoulder and triceps rob the chest of growth and this is because of grips and movement of the wrong joints.
Key Notes on form
Scapula retraction: When training chest the scapula needs to be retracted during the movement so that the humorus bones are the prime movers and not so much the shoulder joint.
Grip widths; When doing barbell presses or smith machine presses or any other pressing movements that the grip width is important. Ideally the best grip width is where the lower arm bones are pointing straight up. If the grip is too narrow the elbow joint flexes too much which causes the triceps to work harder and this will not allow the chest to load enough. If the grip is too wide the pectoralis cannot contract much and there is a great load on the shoulder joint and biceps tendon that helps stabilize the shoulder joint. In fact with a wide grip there isn't much of any muscle group being stretched or contracted.
Elbow position: The elbow position is also important and should be under the bar to maximize the pressing force and to be able to retract the scapula.
Chest position: The chest position is important and to achieve a good chest position there needs to be an arch in the back in order to position the chest under the bar and allow contraction of the pectoralis muscles along their line of contraction.
Movement of the wrong joints: if the scapula is allowed to protract so that the shoulder girdle raises this will shift the emphasis from the pectoralis to the deltoids. Therefore the pectoralis will not be able to contract properly and the emphasis will shift to the shoulders and out undue strain on the shoulder joint.
The load is important. If the key technique points of the movement cannot be followed due to excessive weight then the weight will need to be reduced in order to make sure that the exercise is done properly.
Bouncing off the chest. It's important to make sure that the stretch point is controlled because tension increases with stretching. Don't lose the muscle tension by bouncing the weights off your chest.
Once good technique is able to maintained the weights can be increased and most likely the load will be increased beyond what was possible before.
From this pectoralis growth can now be achieved.
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