[quote]Professor X wrote:
[quote]The Mighty Stu wrote:
IMO there’s no such things as exercises for ‘mass’ or ‘shape’ or any of that nonsense that used to get battered around in the 80’s. A muscle either works hard, or it doesn’t.
S[/quote]
While I agree that you can’t “shape” a muscle, some movements like flyes should not be considered primary mass builders because without massively strong supporting muscles, you simply can not move enough weight to stimulate enough muscle growth.
That is how the flye got its label as a “shaping” exercise when that term really just meant that it is great at the end of a workout to bring more blood into the area and for overall volume.[/quote]
Eh, I always maintained that you don’t need the ‘most weight possible’ to stimulate growth because there are many more factors involved (as you no doubt know). Additionally, it’s my thinking that flyes got labeled as a ‘shaping’ movement simply because if you consider the flat bench press for a moment, your hands are spaced apart, you’re on your back staring at the ceiling, and you’re not getting that really tight pec squeezing contraction that makes all the inner fibers and striations pop out.
Doing a flye though, or similarly a cable crossover, you get that deep deep stetch, as well as that fiber splitting contraction, which along with the hands coming closer together, gives the illusion of a rounder, shapelier, and if lean, fibrous muscle. Both movements are perfectly capable of forcing blood into the area and creating that engorged feeling we’ve all experienced, but IMO, it’s just another instance of skewed perception creating a false premise.
Not a horrible thing, and certainly not the only one amongst traditional bodybuilding dogma, but if you consider guys who actually developed much better chests (size and shape) via flye and cable dominant programs (I always use Ken Waller as my go-to example), it just reinforces what many kinesiologists and DPTs will tell you (and Yates as well); a muscle contracts fully, or it doesn’t.
Not looking to get into an argument, just throwing out my opinions.
S