What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
So you're training at home and you're3 running a little bit short on your upper chest exercise
options.
Not after watching today's video.
I'm going to show you how to draw on the use of dumbbells and barbells so that you have
a great option when you don’t have access to them and it's really accomplishing the
same thing.
If you look at the actual exercise when you're using a barbell, what is the main difference
when you're doing a barbell press inclined, versus flat?
It's the position of the arm.
So if you look at what's going on with the arms, the arms would be pressing this direction
here, if it was a flat bench-press.
But if we were to sit up at an incline the arms are going to go in this position here,
and they're going to push at that angle.
Why is that?
Well, to target the upper chest is clavicular fibers here that run from our clavicle – which
is this bone right here.
You might even be able to hear it knocking on me.
It runs down toward our arm.
So to get here, it picks the arm up in this direction.
So when we come across our body and push from here we're going to get more of that upper
chest when we do that.
So we can mimic that just by going to the floor and doing the exact same thing.
If you get into a pushup position here and you preset the arms, now you're going to be
able to put yourself in that same position.
So you don’t get your arms underneath your body this way.
You put your arms out in front of your body at about that angle.
Almost 45 degrees from where you start.
Now if you're a beginner you would do this from this position here, on your knees.
You're going to just let yourself guide down until your face is down between your hands,
or if you're on a more advanced, you're going to lift up a little bit here into more of
a pike position.
You're going to still do the same thing.
You're going to dive down, let your elbows flail out, and then when you push back, you
push through the heels of your hands, and you almost try to touch your biceps together.
So what I'm doing is, I'm pushing through the heels of my hand here, and I'm trying
to bring my biceps together.
Just like this.
Here, and bring my biceps together.
They're not going to actually touch, obviously, because my hands can't move.
But what I am going to do is allow a little bit of that extra adduction of the chest to
make this even better.
I am going to show you one tweak you can do to make that better.
The idea is, if I do this right toward you guys here, by coming down at this angle, I'm
just recreating the incline bench-press here, done, here.
So I come this way, like this, hands close together, dive down, let the arms fly out,
push back, squeeze, squeeze.
Dive down, squeeze.
Down, squeeze.
Right in through here.
Down, and squeeze up.
Now, what was I talking about in terms of making that better?
You can make it better by adding an adduction component because we know that one of the
biggest functions of the chest is to bring the arm across the body.
One of the major limitations to regular pushups and bench-press is that you always stay out
here and you're never even worrying about the adduction of the arms.
Well, you can do it in a fixed position by not worrying about what's going on with your
fixed arms, but what's going on with your moveable torso.
So I could take my body and rotate it on a fixed arm to get adduction at the shoulder.
So here's what it looks like.
If I'm in here – and I'll do it on my knees here to start.
If I'm in here, I push down here, and as I come up I rotate my torso to the right.
So I'm just rotating my body to the right and you can see about how much of that is
rotating this way.
Down, come up, and I rotate.
Now, what has happened here?
I covered this with a flat pushup before.
What's happened is, I've created that much adduction because I come down, and then I
rotate here which creates a relative adduction of the arm against the torso.
Your body doesn’t care whether it's the arm moving on the chest, or the chest moving
on the arm.
It's just that you're getting the adduction, with is a function of the chest.
So you can see, when my arms are here and I rotate I'm going to get more of the activation
of the full chest.
Again, here, rotate, more activation of the full chest.
Then when we add that component of elevating the arms we're going to get the activation
of the chest all the way around from the upper fibers all the way down.
So you can take this new move and input it into any of your workouts at home and you've
got a much better option for training your chest than just relying on regular, fixed
hand pushups, or any other variation that you might do.
Even dips, once you're working a little bit more of the lower chest, and of course, still
with that same fixed hand placement with no rotation.
I hope you guys see that there are no excuses though, when it comes to training at home.
Don’t let training at home be a limitation on the results that you see because it's just
not true.
As a matter of fact, if you're looking for a program that, step by step, lays it out,
removes all the excuses, and also shows you that you don’t need a single piece of equipment
– no bars, no bands, nothing; not a single dumbbell.
Head to ATHLEANX.com and get our ATHLEAN0 program.
In the meantime, if you've found this 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 in the days
and weeks ahead.
All right, guys.
I'll see you soon.