What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
Today I'm going to show you how you can start building your upper chest.
Especially if a shoulder injury has more of the traditional chest training options pulled
out of your arsenal.
Even if you're not dealing with a shoulder injury – like a torn labrum, or a torn rotator
cuff, or an impingement; something like that – but still you're looking to add a new
exercise to your chest training arsenal to get a bigger upper chest; this one is going
to fit both bills.
Of course, we're going to start with anatomy, right?
The science behind the strength because the muscle marker doesn’t lie.
You see, if we start and look here we will understand that the exercise we can get to
allow us to train around our injuries and still hit our upper chest is going to steal
from the function of a neighboring muscle.
If we look at the chest – the upper chest here – you can see pretty clearly, it sits
right like this.
This is the upper chest.
The clavicular portion, which attaches to the clavicle – or your collar bone – and
it comes right down here, and it heads toward your upper arm, into the bicipital groove
up on the humerus.
Now, the front delt – which is right next door – you can see in here it also attaches
to the outside of the collar bone, a little bit further away, and comes down, and around,
inside here, and attaches also to the deltoid tuberosity, but on the same bone.
So what does that mean?
It's a couple inches apart here, it's a couple inches apart here.
It means that they share a lot of the same functions and if we understand that we can
actually steal from the function of the front delt to train the upper chest in a safer way.
The more traditional options like an incline bench press presents a problem for somebody
if they have an injured shoulder because of the elevation component.
When we add elevation to an exercise – like a press, an overhead press, an incline press
– those that deal with shoulder problems get a lot of pain because you're closing down
the space inside that joint.
So if you have that torn rotator cuff, or if you have an impingent you're going to feel
that – or just a tendonitis there – you're going to feel that when get that arm elevated
above shoulder height.
So that's a problem.
Flys.
I've said it.
You guys know how I feel about flys.
I did a version of a fly that I actually do like – it's over here.
It's a floor fly, and why I like that versus the unsupported fly.
But besides all that, the fly itself – if you're dealing with a shoulder problem – you're
going to make it worse because you're actually leaving the anterior shoulder capsule much
more vulnerable because of the movement itself.
As the arm goes back behind your body here you're allowing the anterior shoulder capsule
to get stressed as the head of the humerus moves forward.
It's not going to feel comfortable.
So two of the more classic exercises really won't work and maybe you'll abandon your chest
workout altogether, but you don’t have to because if you look here, again, at the neighboring
muscle and the function you can actually come up with a good exercise.
So we know that the front delt is responsible for a front dumbbell raise.
You can see, I always like to say "follow the fibers", the fibers from the front delt
run down in this direction here.
So that means from here to here, if we move our arm in that same direction, the front
delt is getting a lot of the work.
Okay, great.
What can we do to get this to do more of the work?
Well, all we have to do is get the arm to move more at this angle.
You can see that we can do that very easily by just stepping out a little bit here so
you can see, and we're going to drive the arm from a little bit away, up, and across
the body that way.
Here, and across.
Again, are we getting some front delt?
Of course we are, but that's okay.
They prefer to work together.
That's why our body is setup, the anatomy, in such a way that they're actually pretty
damn close together, and they originate and attach in a lot of very close proximity together.
So we can do this, but by shifting the angle we're making the line of pull more favorable
here for the upper chest.
So we can come across like this.
Now why is this even a great option?
Because we've addressed the two biggest issues with being unable to perform those other exercises.
The first is, we're not getting elevation above the shoulder.
It starts and it ends here with the arm at, or below shoulder height.
So we don’t get that elevation.
Secondly, we don’t get any of that vulnerability of the anterior capsule because our arm isn't
coming out, rotating out this way, or even away from our body here.
Certainly, it's not unsupported.
So we can take that dumbbell, move it up, and across our body this way, and you can
see that we allow ourselves to really target this upper chest area with one, much safer
move.
So guys, we put the science behind the strength here for a reason.
We break out the muscle markers for a reason.
To allow you guys to see what it is that we're talking about so you can understand it and
apply it to your own training.
When you have a better understanding of how things work it makes you much more empowered
to attack your training in a smart way and get so much more out of it.
That's what the whole purpose of ATHLEANX is about.
If you're looking for a program that puts the science back in strength, head to ATHLEANX.com
right now and get our ATHLEANX training program.
In the meantime, if you've found this video helpful leave your comments and thumbs up
below.
I'll be back here again in just a few days.
See ya!