Whaat's going on everyone ?! I've recently posted a topic about back width and thickness (Back width and thickness seperated or not ?) and i want to do the same for chest so that it will be clearly understood!

My opinion is that pressing movements (B. Press, D.B. Press, Pushups, Chest Dips etc.) are for chest thickness and exercises like Chest flyes, Crossover Flyes, Peck deck are for width. Am i right or am i missing something? An upload of the anatomical image of the chest and a good explanation would be much appreceated!

Thank you.

John

I think this is actually quite a good topic and one that a lot of people are unsure of due to other YouTube 'gurus.'

The simple answer is you cannot affect chest 'width.' Chest width would suggest you are actually lengthening the points between the muscles origin and insertion point which is physically impossible. Yes as your chest grows is may appear 'wider' but this is something you can't specifically work on. All chest exercises will affect overall growth of the chest. It is only the change is angles which affects different parts of the chest. For example, incline presses, flyes etc work the upper portion of the chest.

Have you read my article on chest development?

Improve your chest developement

Ye, i 've red it! You don't mention anything about width or thickness and that's why i made that topic. :)

Yeah that's why I answered your question. I just offered you the article for a bit more info on the chest as a whole.

Presses are compound and flyes are isolation exercises. There are many bodybuilders who never even touch flyes. Presses are going to add to the overall mass of your chest period due to its greater release in growth horomones and creating protien synthesis compared to flyes. When your chest grows it's going to become thicker and wider. People have always tried to tell me flyes work the inner and outer portion of the chest when there is only the upper and lower which is why I believe flyes are good for shaping the chest but it will not work the outer and inner portion to make it wider.

I agree there isn't a way to effect chest width, but if you want to make it look like your chest is 'wider', I think working on the upper part of the pecs with incline exercises etc. would help give you that desired look.

The body is naturally wider towards your upper body, so I think working the upper pecs would give the illusion that your chest is growing in width.

actually adawg both your point and quote are slightly incorrect, the ideology that the flys hit the inner chest comes from the fact that the pressing movements other than DB press are limited in their chest activation, in order to get the best contaction your hands must come together during the movement, depending on the distance between your hands equals less over all chest activation, since the chest contracts from the outside in, reducing its contraction equals less fibres hit on the inside of the chest. my wording isnt great but hopefully someone understands what im saying and can either reword it or agree haha

Adawg is actually correct on this one. You dont need to fully activate a muscle to get to grow optimally. You just need to activate as many fibers as possible. Chest presses activate more muscle fibers than chest flys. It might not be 100% activation for all fibers but it matters not. Thats why you dont just do 1 set. If you could achieve 100% activation, there wouldnt be a need to do a 2nd set. So we do 4-5 sets for compound exercises to take advantage of the "splash-over" effect. First set will get the job 60% done, 2nd set will get you up to 90% and by the time you are at set 4, you are at 99% growth possibility. Doing flys on top of that is a waste of time if you are natural.

Same with legs. If you think leg extensions or even leg presses will do anything for you (except burn calories) after 5 sets of heavy squats, you are not efficient with your time.

you amuse me whisper, chest presses activate more muscle fibres but not in the chest, if you're comparing which activated more chest muscle fibres the fly or cross over wins hands down, as for natural vs un natural you seem to be quite obsessed with limiting natural athletes lately, i can tell you now if people grew from doing 4 sets of dumbbell presses then everyone would be an adonis by now, but it doesnt work that way, you cant achieve your full growth potential through 4 sets, TUT range of motion, variety of exercise, angles at which the muscle have been hit, all comes into play, then you have to take into account the intensity the total time of the workout the oxygen levels in your blood stream the possability that your body could transport more nutrients to the muscles, you cant say natural lifters only need to do 4-5 sets for full activation -.-' the way workout routines are generall set it is to begin with a compound then the other movements are there to increase intensity, TUT and over all bloodflow to each individual head of that muscle, i.e with chest day, i start on flat bench, slowly work upto m 6 rep max, once i get to that i stroll off into doing some incline dumbell presses and incline flys, round 2 i do decline bench with standing cable crossover.... you going to call me un natural or am i just wasting my time doing all those movements for that well rounded chest ive worked so hard to achieve?

i can tell you something right now after 5 sets of HEAVY squats im just getting started on legs and so is everyone else, and as for the first set being 60% activation and not needing to carry on lifting aftr set 4... bollocks, you treat every set as if its the working set, you squeeze as if your gains depended upon it, even when benching the bar, i can pump up my chest pressing the bar, heck if i wanted to i can hold that bar not press it and still activate my chest to the point of no return, as for once you achieve 100% activation, thats when the workout begins, if you stop when you feel the best contraction of the workout then you're walking out after your warm up, hence why most guys wont grow, once you get that awesome contraction, we all know the one im talking about, THAT is the sign that we are starting to grow, you gain muscle through tricking your body into believing it is needed, YOU on the other hand seem to be telling your body not to worry it can pack on a pound or 2 every year you're happy with that, why are you gaining so little? oh yeah thats right because you walk out the gym as soon as youve warmed up and if you say you dont walk out after 5 sets then youre either un natural or wasting your time in the gym and if you say otherwise to that then you're wasting out time with such garbage information.

"you dont need to fully activate a muscle to get to grow optimally" okay then how do you get optimum growth of each muscle if you cannot fully activate such muscle? any lack of activation in the muscle puts more strain on the ligaments and tendons involved in the movements.

Guys,

I think Kostas (Whisper) and Jake (Wilkinson207) are both correct. We all know that the way to make a muscle grow, whether you are natural or using chemical supplementation, is to give it a reason to grow. This means putting it in a situation where the body recognizes that the muscle's current state is not enough to handle the requirements put on it - hence it gets bigger and stronger. How you create this reason is the important part and here is where training and exercise come in.

If I read both of your posts, I think the take away is that you don't have to stress every fiber to make a muscle grow to some degree and if you want maximum size and strength you must stress 100% of the fibers. I agree with this and here is how I see it. We all know there are two ways to progressively overload a muscle - you either make it lift more weight or you make it do more over time. So for example you can do sets where you raise the weight each time and you try to increase the poundages each time and each training session. You typically focus on a single exercise at a time and you keep the reps relatively low (4-6) and rest time high (Progressive Overload). Then there are things like supersets, giant sets, and drop sets. Here you either raise or drop the weight but you do multiple exercises (2 or more) in succession with little or no rest inbetween and relatively high reps (8-12). You focus on a few exercises at once (Increased Volume and Intensity).

Both will produce results and both will cause the muscles to grow since you are taxing both muscle fiber types (Type 1 and 2) to varying degrees and you are hitting the most muscle fibers. How much growth, how much strength, and how much muscular endurance you gain is up to you. As Jake said, you need to treat each set and rep as working sets. Full range of motion, complete muscle contraction, and hitting a muscle from as many angles as possible is critical. As to Kostas's point, the key balancing act one has to hit is to train a muscle enough so that it will grow but not too much that it actually causes the muscle to breakdown. This is especially important for natural athletes as they don't have the added advantage of faster recovery and protein synthesis that athletes using anabolics have. Everyone is unique so what might be more than enough training of a muscle for one person may not be enough for another. One needs to learn their body and what works best thru trial and error.

The ones who get training, diet, and rest down solid for their individual body are the ones who grow the biggest and get the strongest based on their genetic potential - regardless if they are natural or use anabolics :-)

John

Solid summary -- great post John!

Wow wow wow.!! Here is another thing! You mentioned that leg presses will do nothing after heavy sqats! I do 5 sets of 5 rep heavy squats then do 5 sets of one hamstring exercise and then i go to 5 sets of 8-6 reps at leg presses!! You are saying that the presses is just a loss of time and calorie burn ? Why is that?? If you are right it means that i've been done a completly wrong leg workout about a year now!!!

My chest routine is for example:

• 5 sets x 5-6 reps (HEAVY) B.B Presses
• 4 sets x 8-6 reps Inc. B.B Presses
• 4 x 10-6 D.B Inc. D.B Presses (1 drop for cns and muscle stress)
• 4 x 12-10 Chest Dips
• 4 x 10-6 D.B Presses

On the other hand, on my leg routine, i do 5 sets of really heavy squats, then move on to some hamstrings and then 2 exercises leg incline presses and straight leg presses superseted with calfe raises....

According to Kostas (Whisper) those 2 workouts are BAD workouts and a loss of time????? Thats the whole point i got from Whisper's post.. I am sorry if i got it wrong and you didn't mean tose Kostas.

Awesome post John and very helpfull!! Just one question here. Can i combine progressive overload and the other type (supersets etc) for muscle growth? Because that's why i am doing. Not only for chest, foe every muscle. There are some standard, i would say, exercises that i try to lift heavier and heavier on low reps and i do them ussualy at the starting of my training, and other exercises that i like do superset them or dropset or just try to fleeex the muscle ass possible ass i can and do the best mind-muscle connection when doing the exercise...

Is that a good general way of training?

John