Yo! T-Men!
I’m looking for a couple of techniques for chest exericses that involve the least amount of delt work. I find that flyes take the tri’s out, but I still feel my shoulders working (unless I’m screwing this up). Is there a grip I can use that puts more emphasis on the chest? Dumbells vs. Barbell? Any help would be the shit, yo.
this is a common problem, i train guys n gals all day at my gym and there are a few ways to tackle it.1st try to line the pec muscle sheath along the direction of force,in other words lift your ribcage towards the bar try drawing your shoulders back and down forming a strong bridge.
if this kind of flexibility is beyond you the only way to hit the pecs with free weights is to perform flyes and presses on a decline.
im sure you have tried cross overs and other ‘mickey mouse exersises’ with success but they just dont cut the mustard where mass is concerned.if you can get hold of any study pictures of arnie training chest he was the master.
Gray hit a key point: get the shoulders BACK into the bench. It doesn’t matter whether you do barbell or dumbell bench, just get those shoulders pinned to the bench and keep them there. The best way I’ve found to do this is to get into the bench and put your arms into the “bar on chest” position, then draw the shoulder blades together and down. You’ll feel your shoulder blades go flat against the bench. Now grab the bar while keeping the shoulder blades flat on the bench. This will minimize the delt involvement, and is the best way to avoid shoulder problems. When using dumbells, either do the same thing as before with a training partner then handing you the dumbells, or just flatten the shoulder blades in the starting position (you may need to draw them in a bit more in the lowered position on the first rep). Something else I’ve seen cause front delt pain is heavy military pressing with a barbell. Try switching to dumbells here, it may help.
Try weighted dips. It works for me as far as minimizing shoulder soreness and maximizing shoulder recovery. For months my shoulder progress stagnated because flat and incline barbell and dumbbell presses work the delts pretty hard and when I included heavy shoulder work it was too much. If you do the dips correctly you can get great results in your chest. Some of the newer fly machines ain’t too bad either, but make sure not to neglect the big basic exercises for too long. Maybe it’s just me but I seem to “feel” my chest working more at decline angles.