Can anyone else besides me crack their chest. Sometimes it feels so tight i just spread it out and it cracks. I think dips are the cause but I couldn’t care less. Oh, and my mom thinks my weight gain(I just topped 200 lbs) is unhealthy. 
so you’re popping your ribs?I might cringe if I heard that…but I can crack my whole back,all the fingers and wrist,and all the toes and ankles on command.
I can do that too…it’s just your sternum.
Yeah, happens to me too, but only sometimes, and it hurts, so I don’t do it.
It feels like I’m tearing the muscle insertions of my pecs off the bone. Not pleasant.
Happpeeens to me too, not all the time, but sometimtes it does where you basically just stretch your arms out and it cracks, kinda weird feeling lol.
It always happens to me on my first rep doing flies.
I can crack my sternum when I lean my head back. It does not hurt but it’s still makes me think I did some damage at some point. It reminds of what Ian King said in one of his articles…when you increase the weight too rapidly on dips you die. The ribcage asplodes.
“Never use a load you can’t handle with good form. There’s a risk in this movement and until you’ve seen a sternum “pop out” or felt your ribs sublux (partial dislocation?) you probably don’t appreciate this! Don’t go there!”
http://www.T-Nation.com/findArticle.do?article=224king2
[quote]DooMMOoD wrote:
Can anyone else besides me crack their chest. Sometimes it feels so tight i just spread it out and it cracks. I think dips are the cause but I couldn’t care less. Oh, and my mom thinks my weight gain(I just topped 200 lbs) is unhealthy. :)[/quote]
FINALLY!!!
Someone has used the correct “I couldn’t care less” instead of the increasingly popular “I could care less”.
T-nationers, Learn from this man.
ps. No sorry my sternum doesn’t crack, although my mum also thinks my weight-gain is unhealthy.
This happens to me although I would term it more of a “popping” sound… happens when I stretch & warm up with weighrs before doing shoulders… Feels weird but doesn’t hurt like there is an air bubble in my sternum that let go. Damn this cartilage 
[quote]Dave_ wrote:
DooMMOoD wrote:
Can anyone else besides me crack their chest. Sometimes it feels so tight i just spread it out and it cracks. I think dips are the cause but I couldn’t care less. Oh, and my mom thinks my weight gain(I just topped 200 lbs) is unhealthy.
FINALLY!!!
Someone has used the correct “I couldn’t care less” instead of the increasingly popular “I could care less”.
T-nationers, Learn from this man.
ps. No sorry my sternum doesn’t crack, although my mum also thinks my weight-gain is unhealthy.
[/quote]
I think he could care less. After all he started a thread about to discuss it.
Happens to me. Only started happening last year. It can be painful at times, but cracking it is the only thing that gives me some relief when it feels really tight.
I’ve asked the chiropractor about it, and he said that sometimes it can be from the ribs or even spine. But he wasn’t sure what causes it to do that (moving out of place, tension build up, etc.).
This used to happen to me a lot so I tried to do some research to see what was going on. It didn’t make sense to me because in Anatomy and Physiology I learned that popping or cracking joints is gas bubbles in the synovial fluid located in bursa surrounding synovial joints (joints that move)breaking up and dispersing into the fluid.
The gas recollects over time and the joint can pop again. The problem is, no where along the sternum to my knowledge is there movement, so there isn’t a synovial joint to pop. I wondered where the popping sound is coming from.
Through some limited research I found one doctor who said that there is nothing to worry about if it isn’t accompanied with pain, another doctor who said it was probably costrochondritis, and a third who said it might be a tiny fracture in the sternomanubrial joint and that x-rays sometimes miss these fractures. He advised to get a CT scan or an MRI.
Another theory is that the sternomanubrial joint isn’t fused together properly. With most of the research I sifted through, I realized that most doctors aren’t aware of this problem and treat the patient like they are crazy or just say it probably isn’t something you need to worry about.
However, it is clear that this is very common. You’d think we would know more about it.
Are there any experts out there who want to chime in?
Happens to me too.
I was real bad (loud, and almost painful, but very relieving) when I started benching relatively heavy again, after not lifting heavy for a while.
It usually cracked at night, and not always the night of my benching days.
I still get it now, but not as hard of a crack, and sometimes I get a couple little ones when I take a deep breath.
It’s become almost as much of a habit as when people crack their backs or knuckles, and is almost as relieving.
My shoulder often cracks too when I’m driving. I feel the build up when my arm is holding the steering wheel for a while, and sometimes it will crack almost every 30 seconds for 10 minutes straight.
I don’t know if it’s at all associated with stress, but I notice it more in my shoulder when I’m stressed out. Maybe I allow for more of that fluid to expand to a gas when I’m stressed???
I can crack my sternum and a bunch of joints. Docs don’t know much about it cause it usually is meaningless unless accompanied by pain.
used to happen to me on decline db flies and beyond parallel weighted dips. Never been painful though. It stopped after I started taking Flameout along with the cracking in my elbow joints from heavy overhead presses.
i can crack mine too, thought i was the only one, whew. haha
Happened to me a few months ago, doing weighted dips on power rings. Now all forms of dips are very painful.
I popped my sternum doing weighted dips and the pain that followed felt like a heart attack. I went to the Dr. and he told me I had costochondritis. That only lasted about two weeks. The Motrin 800’s relieved the pain completely.
No, my chest does not pop. And it sounds freaky.
But I can crack my tailbone. Yay glute activation!