CHEST TRAINING 101
Ask anyone who has been training for many years the two most common questions asked by strangers and I'll guarantee
you, it will almost be unanimous. The two most common questions asked of bodybuilders are, "how big are your arms, and
how much do you bench press". For eons now big arms and a full developed chest have been the distinguishing
characteristics of masculinity, physically speaking. With chest development it has always been taken one step further
equating chest development with power and hence instead of the question, "how big is your chest? It becomes instead how
much can you bench", since bench press some how got equated with chest development.
That is one myth I will destroy when discussing chest training below and there will be many. You see the crux of the matter
lies above. Bodybuilders are traditionalists, and by and large it is what ruins them. Because of this bodybuilders take such
questions as above, and interpret it to mean that they should be benching and they should know how much their max bench
is. Both of these philosophies are foolhardy and actually will retard someone's progress toward good chest development. If
the old traditions were so great than why wouldn't everyone out there training diligently, not be getting the big thick
dictionary sized full pecs that everyone agrees are the symbol of masculinity.
Faulty logic in training and ego training have amounted to zero gains when it comes to the philosophy behind proper training
for best possible chest development.
I've been training the best of the best for over twenty years and I'll tell you the secret does not lie behind traditions and max
single lifts. No the secret lies in the science of training. I've made many champions and produced scores of people happy
with the development of their bodies, including chest. How? By applying the principles of Innervation Training Theory to their
particular physiques, and lecturing to them over and over again to leave their egos at home when they go to the gym to
train. Train your body, not your ego. And for the record, how much you lift is meaningless. Strength is poorly correlated to
mass, but how much you lift correctly with the targeted muscle group, well, as Shakespeare said "therein lies the rub".
To lay bare the secrets of a great chest let's look first more closely at the main tenets of Innervation Training as it applies to
chest training and development. You see I am not a traditionalist. I am scientist. When people ask me how much I can
bench I tell them "I don't", and I wait for the inevitable look at me like a puppy looking at a reflection on the wall for the first
time. They become more bewildered still, when I tell them I don't do maximums. I go to the gym to accomplish a goal and
train my body, not massage my ego. Now let's look at Innervation Training more closely.
INNERVATION TRAINING
Innervation Training Methodology is a system I developed by focusing on research that involved how and why the nervous
system controls muscle function and muscle action. It becomes obvious from the research that the controlling factor in
training success of any kind, whether athletic, or for development, lies with intensity, not strength. But like motor skills such
as walking, intensity is a learned process, and must be taught for the body to adapt to higher levels and therefore greater
development. But this kind of learning is internal, such as learning to walk. It's the adaptations of the nervous system to new
levels of stress, which determine a specific response. Therefore the stress must be specific as well. You see intensity,
training wise is, more closely correlated to both strength and development, so it should be the training to be able to train
harder and harder that an athlete should be striving for, and NOT training to get stronger and stronger. That is where the
first dead end lies. Without getting into countless scientific definitions the goal of each rep should be MVC (maximum
voluntary contraction).
Only by coming close to that does intensity get higher and when it does proper strength goes up as well. What is meant by
proper strength is that the athlete is only using the targeted muscle to do the work, rather than any muscles just to lift the
weight. This is the difference between the advance trainee, and the rank beginner, or intermediate. The advanced athlete
cares about the quality of contraction and concentrates totally on the muscle he is targeting to lift the weight. The
intermediate athlete is only concerned with the rep, and tries to lift it any way he can. Here is one major difference in
Innervation Training vs. other types of strength training methods. The Innervation training philosophy focuses completely on
internal cues. Therefore the quality and intensity of contraction is more important to the athlete than is the completion of a
rep. (an external cue)
Practically everyone uses how much they lift, for how many reps as a performance parameter. These are external cues. By
using these external cues, you are setting limits in your mind before you even begin a set or a workout. The advanced
Innervation Trained athlete is concerned with the intensity of contraction, the "feel" in the targeted muscle, and how close he
got to MVC, using fatigue and recovery as performance indicators.
Read this again several times to see the huge difference in application and philosophy.
While this must be applied correctly remember as I stated earlier, it must be applied within the confines of "target training".
TARGET TRAINING
Target training has to do with determining the ranges and planes of motion that a muscle functions in. The range of motion
is concerned mostly with the distance of a muscle within a movement or exercise, while the plane of motion is the special
area a muscle is functioning within, or the plane it functions best in. This area of Innervation Training Research was affected
mostly by the research of Paten and Brown (1995)
Their research on "functional differentiation" showed that the Central Nervous System can selectively
activate segments of a
muscle which have the most appropriate line of action for the task at hand. Their research also clearly showed that the angle
or "plane" of motion a muscle was functioning within was as or even more important than the intensity of contraction for
eliciting a MVC for that targeted muscle. What this means then is that exercise selection and form are the most important
considerations of your workout. Walking into a gym a randomly selecting so many exercises for chest is not target training.
Not even close. Not to get off topic, but also it is important to also mention that a workout is not a program. Workouts in
Innervation Training System are designed as part of a bigger picture, the program, which is designed as I stated earlier to
teach the body to adapt to stress by being able to handle greater and greater intensity loads from one program to the next.
Ok, I digressed a bit. Functional Differentiation means it is essential to understand what exercises to select and what
sequences of exercises to select in order to get the most out of that muscle in its most efficient plane of motion.
This is why the bench press is a poor choice, for chest development. The way it is traditionally performed the pectoralis
major is mostly eliminated in that plane of motion using that traditional technique to lift the weight. Now is that to say that all
prone work is out? No. The way to get the chest involved here is to switch to dumbbells and keep your feet elevated on the
end of the bench. What then happens is what I term joint stress transfer. With the feet firmly dug into the ground and the
knees and the hips stable, as in the traditional bench press, the major stress during the bench press is on the anterior
deltoid, the rotator cuffs, the rhomboids, and the pectoralis minor, with triceps being activated at the top of the movement.
No real efficient overload anywhere.
By placing the feet up on the bench, there is no stability through the knees and hips as there was previously. At this point
the stress of stabilizing the working muscles shifts to the shoulder joint totally and at that point, the pectoralis major
becomes the prime mover and will receive the greatest amount of overload which is exactly what you want. So by knowing
how a muscle functions in a specific plane of motion, you can capitalize on that to make the targeted muscle do the most
work. Well, that sounds good but how does one go about that? Two things you need to know for any bodypart and then we
will apply it to chest training. 1) When discussing protein turnover in muscles, Behm (1991,1995) illustrated that the muscle
that was stretched with resistance causes the greater protein turnover. Therefore, the muscle stretched with resistance
receives the most overload. 2) Even simpler, form follows function. To ascertain how to overload the muscle appropriately,
determine what its primary functions are and then duplicate them in the plane of motion within which it functions best.
Because muscles stretched with resistance receive the most overload you must make sure you train the muscle and not the
movement as I will illustrate below explaining chest training
Chest Functions
Basically, the chest performs two functions. One is to draw the arms toward each other and the other is to push away from
the body. This is the basic biomechanics of the pectoralis muscle group. It functions best in the plane of motion from 0 to 40
degrees, from a prone position.
Therefore what does this tell us? Well, for one thing it tells us by and large there are only two movements that mimic the
function of the chest. That would be flyes, and presses. Now because of the plane of motion, we now also know that decline
work is a waste of time.
Anything past 0 degrees is beyond the chest as prime mover. The only pain you would get from decline work is that
associated with extreme stretch with has nothing to do with overload, and would negate your workout productivity, not to
mention being very dangerous to the pec structure in general. So if the pecs function best in a plane of motion of 0 to 40
degrees, and its' main functions are to draw the arms together or to push away from the body, then we now know that the
crux of our chest workout should focus around pressing and fly movements in a flat or inclined position (inclined no more
than 40 degrees).
Technique
I've already hinted at technique above but now I will specify more exact. Remember this rhyme. "Above the eyes for presses
and flyes" So the start and finish part of the rep are still very important. Remember a muscle fully stretched with resistance
receives the most overload. The starting position for most pressing movements will be near the upper pec but about chin
height away from the chest. Do not touch the chest with the bar as this takes you into the plane of motion where the
shoulders take over the stretch, and therefore the pecs are no longer in a max stretch position, and the contraction will
suffer. As you press up and even with fly motions, move the weight "above the eyes" at the top of the movement.
With dumbbell presses and flyes it's important to not go below the parallel position with the shoulders in the start of the
movement to insure maximum stretch on the pecs. If you are doing flyes, as you motion above the eyes employ a peak
contraction by flexing the pecs the rest of the distance without letting the dumbbells touch. This reach and squeeze
technique employed when doing flyes will ensure maximum overload on the pecs and you can fatigue the muscle in half as
many sets.
Again the focus is on internal cues to your work ethic and not just weight and counting reps. I guess you could say the
difference between working the pecs the right way and working the pecs the wrong way is not just a difference between
science and tradition. It's more of a working of the pecs from the inside out, that is from the cleavage outward, rather than
the outside in. The people who go from bench press to incline press to decline press without employing all of the nuances I
discuss above: they all suffer from what I call "bencher's chest." Their chest development looks so so with a sweater on, but
under the clothes it's all form with no
substance. There's the outline but no cleavage, no thickness etc. Mentally from now on
when you train chest think of contracting from the inside of the chest to the outside, which is the opposite way, of the
traditional method of thinking.
So if we tie it all together we can illustrate what a hard chest workout may look like under the Innervation Training System.
The Innervation Training System is divided in two categories. Structural Training and Bodypart Training. Structural Training
is designed to be employed in the off-season to help beginner and intermediate level bodybuilders and athletes, coax their
bodies to adapt to higher and higher levels of neurological or structural systemic stress. Then when they switch back to body
part training their bodies have adapted to this higher level and they are now training at a greater intensity level. Once at the
advance level, there really is no need to vary off-season and on season training provided that the program and the workouts
are structured soundly, and that's a huge "IF". Below I will give you examples of both a structural and a body part chest
workout. Both these workouts are advanced Innervation Training Workouts:
Workout 1: Structural Chest Workout
Exercise Sets/Reps *
Flat dumbbell press (feet up) 5 X's 5 (weight constant)
Incline dumbbell press 5 X's 5 (weight constant)
Low incline flyes 3 X's 8-10
Seated machine press 3 X's 8-10, followed by 1 strip set
Workout 2: Bodypart Chest Workout (advanced)
Exercise Sets/Reps *
Incline barbell press 3 X's 5 (weight constant)
Incline dumbbell press 3 X's 8-10
Flat dumbbell flyes 3 X's 10-12
Seated machine press 1 strip set
Seated flye machine 1 strip set
* note that all sets are post warm-up sets and are done to failure.
This second workout is one of my personal favorites.
Of course the science of training only begins with Innervation Training. The fact of the matter is Innervation Training
Workouts are grueling, very grueling. Once you learn proper technique and proper workout form and understand the
importance of having a program and not just a collection of workouts, what to do then? Well, with workouts this punishing,
workout performance and recuperation need to be addressed in order to get the maximum benefit of each. I am a peak
performance advocate. There is no way to get peak performance from such workouts without understanding the importance
of supplementation. Remember, you need to supplement to enhance workout performance and to speed recovery. The best
choices of products to accomplish these goals are listed below.
