How to train the groove between the chest muscles

There are many ways to exercise. Some people like running; some people like to build muscles. Some people like to do outdoor sports; but more people choose the gym. If you want to build muscles, you need to work hard. Not only do you need to have the correct exercise posture, but you also need to adjust your diet reasonably, especially when exercising your chest muscles, you should consult your coach more often. In addition, many sports enthusiasts want to know how to train the groove in the middle of the pectoral muscles.

Chest muscles

1. Lying Dumbbell Fly

Lie on your back on a narrow bench (20-25 cm wide), hold the bells with both hands, with your forearms and upper arms forming an angle of about 135 degrees. During the movement, do not raise your neck and lift your head off the bench for assistance.

When lowering the dumbbells, focus on the chest seam, and use the tension of the chest muscles to control the slow lowering of the dumbbells. At the same time, breathe in fully and straighten your chest, and the amplitude must be exactly right. When lifting, rely on the contraction of your chest muscles to drive your arms upward until the dumbbells touch each other. This will prevent your shoulders and back from being overly involved in the effort. To make the action more accurate, imagine hugging a large beer barrel. Professional star Melvin Anthony kept repeating in his mind "Hold it! Hold it!" while doing this action.

In addition to maintaining a 135-degree angle between the forearm and the upper arm, the entire arm should be rounded, with the wrist slightly retracted, as if hugging. If you just use your arms to hold the dumbbells tightly and stiffly, it is easy to use your shoulders as the starting point for exerting force. Although it looks like you are trying to do a fly movement, it is actually "appearance in appearance but essence in mind". It mainly exercises the anterior deltoid muscle of the shoulder, and has little effect on the middle seam of the pectoral muscle.

In order to fully stretch the pectoral muscle fibers, the weight used should be moderate, preferably 8 to 15 times per set. The first set should be about 15 times, then do 3 sets of 10 to 12 times, and the last set can be reduced to 8 times, completing about 5 sets in total. The fly exercise is different from the bench press. The bench press can be reduced to 1 to 3 times after multiple sets of training, and the effect is still very good. Flying requires a certain number of repetitions to accumulate stimulation of the midline muscles. Excessive load not only affects the range of motion and stretching effect, but also easily causes damage to the shoulders and elbows.

During training, some people like to hook their necks and lift their heads off the bench for assistance. This is a very bad habit. When you raise your head, you will inevitably hunch your shoulders, which is not conducive to fully breathing and straightening your chest. The force exerted by the shoulder sockets mainly affects the shoulders and back, and has almost no training effect on the chest. To correct this mistake, you can first reduce the weight and set the number of times to about 12, deliberately experience the correct way of exerting force, and then gradually increase the weight after the movement is finalized.

2. Butterfly machine chest press

The butterfly press pec press is also known as the butterfly press fly. Its advantage is that the tension applied to the pectoral muscles is constant and does not change with changes in the position of the arms. Since you can use the "bridge" movement and touch your elbows together, the range of motion can be greater and safer. Not only the middle and lower chest seam (the main stimulation area of ​​the supine dumbbell fly), but also the entire chest seam has a strong stimulating effect, and the upper part of the chest seam can be stimulated by changing the grip form. The correct action is: sit on a stool, hold the handles with your hands, and press your elbows against the baffle. If you feel the sitting position is too high or too low, you can adjust the height of the stool. The range of motion can be adjusted through the holes in the semi-lunar plates on both sides. Use the "bridge" position, which means only keeping your upper back against the backrest. When opening, take a deep breath, straighten your chest, stretch your shoulders back as far as possible, and focus your attention completely on the seam between your chest. Use control to fully stretch your chest muscles. If you practice in front of a mirror, you should pay attention to the stretching of your chest muscles so that you can better concentrate. When closing, the elbow baffles should touch each other, and then pause slightly, and perform peak contraction for 1 to 2 seconds. It will feel more strenuous at this time, unlike when the dumbbells are touching each other, which is less strenuous. The loss of tension can only be compensated by tightening the chest muscles as much as possible, or by separating the arms a short distance apart (without waiting for the arms to be perpendicular to the plane of the body). The number of times is 8 to 15 times per set, and the weight is gradually reduced for 3 to 5 sets.

In order to better stimulate the upper chest seam, you can change the way you hold the handle: stretch your arms out to the side with your fists facing forward, and use your wrists or forearms (depending on the length of your arms) to press against the baffle to squeeze your chest. Since the arms can be crossed, the range of motion is also large. The characteristic of this movement is to fully squeeze the upper chest to make the pectoral muscles on both sides "stand up", which is of course the result we want very much. Do 3 to 5 sets, 8 to 15 times each set.

3. Standing cross puller fly

Stand in the center of the tensioner frame, adjust the length of the cable, and hold the horseshoe stool to do chest squeeze exercises.

The correct way to do it is to lean forward slightly, pay attention to controlling the movement when opening, squeeze the chest muscles as hard as you can when closing, and pause slightly to perform peak contraction. In order to lift heavier weights, some people lean forward so much that the chest squeeze movement becomes a prone fly, and the movement that stimulates the chest seam becomes a training for the posterior deltoid muscles. The point of this movement is to stretch the chest muscles as fully as possible and squeeze them as much as possible. The weight used is secondary.

Although it is generally required that the hands touch each other and then separate, in fact, it is better to cross them.

There are two ways to choose from for crossing. One is to have the left hand on top once and the right hand on top the next time, so that the positions of the left and right hands change equally within a set. The other is that one group is always with the left hand on top, and the next group is always with the right hand on top. Since the crossing movement has a much larger amplitude than touching each other with both hands, it has a better squeezing effect on the chest seam and provides greater stimulation.

This movement is very "flexible" and not easy to control due to the length of the cable, so don't do heavy stretching with too few reps to avoid shoulder injuries. Generally, 3 to 5 sets are done, with 8 to 15 times in each set.

4. Incline Fly

Designed for upper chest seam training, it is divided into two types: dumbbell fly and puller fly.

The dumbbell incline fly exercise should be done on an incline bench with a 30-degree inclination. Too much inclination will cause the tension that should be applied to the pectoral muscles to be lost. When lowering the dumbbells, focus on the upper chest seam, rely on the tension of the stretched chest muscle fibers to control the lowering of the dumbbells, actively inhale and straighten your chest. When raising your arms, use the contraction of your chest muscles to bring your arms together. Since the arms are in a semi-suspended state and are difficult to control, the training focus should be on experiencing the tension of the stretched chest muscle fibers, and complete 3 to 5 sets with 8 to 15 times. Don't force the weight, otherwise your shoulders will be overly tense and the whole movement will be deformed.

To do the incline fly on the puller, just place the 30-degree bench in the middle of the cross puller frame, hang the iron chain with a movable buckle on the pulley buckles on both sides of the feet, adjust the length of the iron chain and the position of the bench, and you can start the exercise. The advantage of the puller is that the tension applied to the chest muscles is constant. Also, unlike the dumbbell incline fly exercise, the load is not distributed due to the inclination angle. For the first group, it is best to use about 50% of the maximum load as a warm-up to feel and determine the route of the movement to avoid injuries due to muscle and joint adaptation. Generally, 3 to 5 sets are done, with a total of 8 to 15 repetitions. The technical requirements are the same as those for dumbbell incline flyes. The focus is on feeling the stretch of the chest muscles and using tension to counteract the load.

The above is about the technical requirements of the fly movement targeting the chest seam. There are two very distinctive supplementary movements in actual training, one is the narrow grip puller push-up, and the other is the heavy weight narrow grip push-up.

Narrow grip puller push-downs are usually arranged at the end of the fly exercise or interspersed in the middle, using a "V"-shaped handle or rope handle, with a weight of 6 to 8 times (after a set of high-rep warm-up), press down to the bottom to resist the load with all your strength, and tighten the chest muscles. At this time, the chest muscles are fully engorged and bulging, which has a unique effect on the squeezing of the chest seam and strengthens the chest contour.

The advantage of the narrow-grip barbell bench press is that the weight is much larger than using dumbbells and pullers, and the number of times can be reduced to about 6 times. Although the amplitude is limited, the intensity is much greater. The distance between the two hands should be 2 to 3 fists wide of the trainee. If it is too wide, it will stimulate the sides of the chest muscles too much and lose the meaning of exercising the middle seam of the chest muscles.

It will be better to insert some shaping movements in the process of exercising the middle seam of the chest muscles, such as crab-like chest-clip shaping, crossed-arm squeezing, etc., which have a good auxiliary effect on shaping the middle seam of the chest muscles.