What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
Today I want to show you how to build a bigger chest with lighter weights.
As a matter of fact, it becomes incredibly important, especially here in chest training,
because we tend to focus on wanting to rule out weights.
Through exercises like bench-press, inclined bench-press.
However, if you're not getting the focus, and that attention through your chest, you're
not getting optimal contraction, and activation of your chest.
Which means you're going to hold yourself back.
That's when light weights actually become critical, and they actually become really,
really effective because you're not used to using them.
You've got to back off on the ego a little bit here, but it actually works.
So here's what we have to do: you take a much lighter set of dumbbells than you're used
to.
Especially to try this.
What we want to do is a couple things.
First, and foremost, you have to pre-activate your chest.
There are two ways we could do it.
Posturally – I've shown you how to do this before.
We're in the bottom position here, you pre-activate by getting your chest to be proud of the shoulder,
in other words, a lot of times our shoulders tend to dominate because we let them round
in at the bottom.
So the shoulder is ahead of the chest.
Jessie, we come all the way down below on the side here.
You can see that the shoulder is more prominent than the chest.
But I can get the chest to be more prominent than the shoulder by getting my shoulders
back.
From here, now with the chest being active here, in the front of this, when I go to initiate
a contraction the likelihood that it's going to lead the way is higher.
That's what we want.
The second thing about activation is actually trying to activate.
So when I'm down here what I'm going to do is I'm going to actually try to tighten my
armpits.
From here, tighten my armpits.
Here, tighten my armpits.
Get a little bit of that chest pre-activation.
I'm going to show you here in a second as I stand up what this does.
What we're trying to do is that.
I'm not moving my arms.
I'm just trying to tighten my armpits and get more activation here of the chest.
We could do that in this bottom position just by tightening.
Now, with this pre-contracted, when I go to initiate the contraction there will be a lot
more work being done by the chest because you activated it first.
But that's just the beginning because now it's how you do this exercise that matters.
We tend to have it fall apart in this place, too.
What happens is, at the bottom, whether we pre-contract, or we don't we tend to focus
on the dumbbell as the item that we want to move up, and down.
This is what it looks like.
Now the problem with this is, you're forgetting the major function of the chest.
The thing that differentiates it from the triceps and from the shoulders that are also
helping out with this exercise.
That is the adduction component of your upper arm in the exercise.
So the chest wants to bring the upper arm.
Forget this.
Forget all of this.
The upper arm, from here to here, it wants to bring this across your body.
That's what it's trying to do.
That's what differentiates it from those other two muscle groups.
So if you want to have the chest do the work, then this needs to happen.
When we do this you're not getting much of that.
You're starting out down here, and you're bringing it to, about, here.
Down here, to here.
When we have so much more room to go.
We can adduct it from here, all the way across.
There are two things that will help with that.
One: changing the direction of the dumbbells as you come up.
Because, if we come to the top we run out of room.
It's better than this, but you still run out of room.
So if you were to turn them, now you've got that extra range of motion.
But more important than that – because many people can bench just like this and get great
results – more important than that is, again, not focusing on these dumbbells.
People will bring them up and think that they're getting them closer, but the elbows are staying
out.
So what you want to do is, you want to focus on your biceps because your biceps are attached
to that important part of the arm that we just talked about.
So as I come up the biceps lead the way.
Here.
Get your biceps to come together.
You're never going to make it – I hope, unless you have some really bad anomaly of
your anatomy – but you want to get them together, as far as they can.
Elbows go out on the way down, pre-activate with a little bit of a contraction here, and
then drive the biceps together.
Down, and out with the elbows, drive the biceps together.
It's so damned hard to do it this way because my chest is working so much harder than it
normally is.
Down, drive the biceps together.
And you can see that, yeah, I'm only using 30lbs here, and I'm used to using a lot more.
However, I'll be damned if my chest ever worked that hard.
So do you abandon your heavy training?
No.
You want to use that to create tension, and overload.
However, if you want to get a more focused overload on your chest from the very first
time ever, then you need to start incorporating some sets that are lighter, but done with
a lot more focus.
I promise you, you will have a much bigger impact on how big your chest will ultimately
be.
They will be more effective than your heavy training alone if you combine them with your
heavy training.
This is the perfect complement and t's the one that, yes, requires you to check that
ego at the gym door.
But I promise you much, much better results in doing by incorporating it.
Guys, if you're looking for a program that puts the importance where it needs to be – it's
not just the exercises, it's how you do the exercises.
That's what matters the most.
I try to coach you through everything we do in our programs to make sure you're getting
the most out of them.
Use the program selector in the link below this video to find the program that's best,
and most suited to your current goals, and form there I'll take over the rest.
I will coach you through, give you my best, and show you how to do everything the best
way to get the best results for your time.
If you've found the video helpful leave your comments and thumbs up below.
Let me know what else you want me to cover and I'll do my best to do that for you in
the days, and weeks ahead.
All right, guys.
See you soon.