Was reading spill from November : http://www.T-Nation.com/strength-training-topics/1545 but can’t comment on it so thought to make a thread.
[quote]Say you’re lying face-up on a bench holding a couple of dumbbells. If you simply press them straight up, you put your pecs under a certain amount of tension. But if you use the same dumbbells and do a slightly wider flying motion, you expose them to greater tension. An even wider fly exposes them to the greatest amount of tension.
Makes perfect sense, right? That’s why the fly is thought of as the purest pec movement.
Given that observation, Telle said, “Why then not start a set with heavy flyes and as the athlete fatigues, gradually move the dumbbells closer to the body? That way, you get maximum tension on every set.”
Thus were born Jerry Telle’s “Dumbbell Fly-Aways,” a movement I often do to this day[/quote]
I was wondering if anyone tried this out? I had similar thoughts years ago but didn’t actually think to write it down. Although I didn’t think to do it in 3 separate sets but rather, gradually flexing the elbow joint as you got tired to “cheat” the weight up with the shorter lever in the fashion of doing a drop set continuously without rest.
Besides chest flies, I am wondering if anyone trains their upper back this way.
For example: you can start with locked-elbows for bent-over lateral raises (elbows-up) and gradually bent your elbow as your traps or rear delts (or possibly triceps) get too tired to continue, until you are doing rear delt rows.
Except doing both at once and not using a bench to stabilize.
I imagine there is a way you could do this with the traditional elbows-in rowing that is done to target the lats.
So basically if you did that, you could do it with a locked elbow (top position would be similar to a triceps kickback) and then as you got too tired, let the elbow bend more and more.
This would allow more volume for the shoulder/back muscles to be done with less fatigue on your biceps/grip, which is good if they’re limiting factors or people want to avoid them. Not to mention a good alternative for people who don’t have access to heavy weights.
I can’t find an animation for what I’m describing in this last case, it’s straight-arm shoulder extension similar to what people do on lat pulldowns, but with a smaller range of motion that has ascending resistance as you extend it (like a kickback, or a row).
This has similarities to how people say “row to the hip” and might be actively extending the elbow via triceps so that the hand is not under the elbow but perhaps slightly behind it.
I’m not sure what the technical term for that would be.
The major diff between using reverse fly-aways as opposed to pec fly-aways would be that the more you straighten the arms, the more triceps work in a shortened position (like top of kickback), whereas with flies, the more they’re straightened, the more the biceps work in a stretched position (like bottom of preacher curl).
To me that makes them seem a lot safer (no risk of elbow hyperextension damaging ligaments) and a lot easier to transition (to make easier, triceps only work eccentrically, as opposed to biceps having to work concentrically to bend elbow).
In terms of the wrist, it would also be a good balance. Assuming a neutral/hammer grip, chest flies work the wrist abductors (radial deviators, towards thumb) and rear delt raises work the wrist adductors (ulnar deviators, towards pinky)