Incline Flies for Upper Chest

What do you guys think of this exercise?

I did a search and it is not mentioned very often. One of the only places I found it mentioned was in John Davies Renegade Workout Article.

My upper chest is lagging a bit so I’m trying to find some ways to stimulate some growth.

I’m already doing incline and standing presses (barbell and dumbell).

I tried some incline flies this week and it seemed like it might be a good exercise.

What do you all think?

Any other recommendations?

Thanks

I wouldn’t say I’m experienced enough to give you a positive or negative response to whether it’s an effective exercise or not. Furthermore, there seems to be a bit of a long-term debate on here about ‘sections’ of the chest, or whether you can emphasize any one part of it or not. I believe CT has written an article with his views on the topic that may be of interest to you, though I’m afraid I don’t remember the title.

But my general rule of thumb is this, if you’ve tried something new, and it seems to be effective, keep doing it. If you’ve done it over and over and it’s yielding no results, well then change it up.

I know that may seem common sense, but it would seem that too often people lose sight of the fact that we’re not all the same, and as such some variations of things work better for some than others.

Best of luck

Thanks Sabre T,

I’ve read some of the opposing view points on this subject. I’m far from an expert but I’m with CT (and many others I think).

It makes sense to me that different angles emphasize different parts of the chest. If nothing else the variety should help keep the body from adapting to an exercise.

Anyone do incline flies or are they a waste of training time?

I haven’t done them for quite a while, but I’ve started powerlifting. In the past the most effective way I have used them was with CT’s OVT where I would do a set of 5 heavy Incline DB presses followed immediately by a set set of 5 very light, super slow incline flyes. So a set might go like this:
Incline DB 80 X 5
Incline Flye 15 X 5
rest 60
repeat to 5 sets.

PS: I forgot to add that I use as low of an incline angle as possible. The higher the angle is, the more shoulders come into play and with flyes it’s very obvious. The movement just doesn’t feel right. Probably somewhere in the 30-45 degree range is where I am.

http://www.T-Nation.com/readTopic.do?id=459751

Don’t know if you already saw this but Alessi incorporates incline flies into one of his programs in the Train for Your Frame article.

I like them just because they seem to improve mobility in my thoracic spine (my upper back “cracks” sometimes when I do them).

I think they’re great. I think heavy isolation work is generally underated around these parts for growth. It can be a very effective tool in addition to compound work. For me in particular, the way I’m put together biomechanically, my shoulders and tris do much of the work when I’m benching even when the chest.

Flies and cable work really help to add mass to my chest. And while not necessarily hitting ‘separate’ areas of the chest I do think that different forms of lifting such as incline and decline work place greater stress on particular parts of the chest.

Thanks for the input gentlemen.

I think I’ll try working them in for a while. I think my pressing movements are arm and shoulder dominant as well.

Just didn’t want to waste valuable training time on a dangerous or hokie movement.

[quote]smallmike wrote:
http://www.T-Nation.com/readTopic.do?id=459751

Don’t know if you already saw this but Alessi incorporates incline flies into one of his programs in the Train for Your Frame article.

I like them just because they seem to improve mobility in my thoracic spine (my upper back “cracks” sometimes when I do them).[/quote]

Thanks for the link Mike. I’ll check this out.