Weight Training Tips and Articles

Don’t Neglect The Upper Pectoral Muscles

December 16, 2007 on 4:46 am | In Chest, Weight Training Exercises |

  The bench press is easily the most popular weight training exercise to build the chest, or pectoral, muscles. However, if you bench press too much on a flat bench and not enough on an incline press you may overdevelop the lower pectorals as compared to the upper pectorals. This will give your chest a droopy look - not something you want if you are trying to build a great looking physique.

  To avoid overdeveloping the lower pecs, you must do at least as many sets of incline bench presses with barbells and dumbbells as you do of flat bench presses. While flat benches will hit the upper chest muscles some, incline bench presses will directly target them better.

  If you’ve been lifting for a while and have overdeveloped your lower pectoral muscles you may even want to do away with flat bench presses altogether and only do inclines, or start your chest weight training workouts with inclines and do flat bench presses later. You can also do flyes while lying on an incline bench to hit the upper pecs. Building the upper pectorals with incline bench presses and flyes is a good idea even if you haven’t overdone it with the lower pecs since it’ll enhance your physique.

  Incline bench presses are basically done the same way as flat bench presses. Lie on an inclined bench, contract your upper back muscles to pop your chest out, arch your back, lower the weight to your chest and lift it back to the beginning position. If you have shoulder problems you may not want to lower the weight all the way to your chest when you incline press.