Youโre working on your chest. Twice a week you go into the gym and youโre bench pressing like thereโs no tomorrow, but somethingโs not quite right. Every time you press something in front of your body you feel like youโre missing some strength. Maybe something aboutย your diet isn't quite cutting it. Maybe youโre incorporating the heavy bag into your workouts, and your punches donโt have the strength and speed you expected.
Maybe itโs just the definition of your pecs. Youโve spent all of this time working on it, and the shape just isnโt there yet. It sounds like youโve been neglecting your inner pecs. This part of your pecs is responsible for so much of the movement of your arms that itโs easy to miss out on the exercises that will really blast them. Take some time to learn more about your inner chest, and more importantly a few exercises that will really put you head and shoulders (and chest) above the rest.
Any time you want to work out a specific part of your body itโs important to learn what it does and how it works in order to really get the most of your workout. This is probably part of how you ended up here in the first place. So listen up, weโre gonna jam some knowledge in your head.
Your pecs are a huge set of fan-shaped muscles, they donโt call them the pectoralis major for nothing. Well, the reason isnโt really because of their size. Your pectoralis major sit on top of the pectoralis minor, so itโs more about position than girth, but your pectoralis major are much larger and theyโre responsible for much more movement than the pectoralis minor.
They basically make up the entire top half of the front of your torso. If youโd like toย get technical for a second๏ปฟ๏ปฟ๏ปฟย (and you should) they begin on the anterior surface of the sternal half of the clavicle, extending down to the cartilage area of your sixth to seventh ribs. You can feel this yourself. Put your hand on your collar bone and move your arm around. You can feel your clavicle being pulled around by your pecs. Try tracing from there and down your sternum while moving your arm around, and youโll get a clear picture of the size and shape of your pecs without having to cut anything open or look at any weird cross-sections.
All of those muscle fibers stretch across your chest and inserts themselves into the upper joint of your humerus. Itโs part of theย complex jungle of tendons and muscles๏ปฟย that make up your shoulder joints. Itโs also why your arms are able to lift and press so much weight. Thereโs just a lot of pure muscle involved in moving your upper arm around.
Something else youโll notice while experimenting with the position of your pectoralis major is that theyโre not engaged in every single โmovement your arm makes. Thatโs because your pecs are responsible for three major movements of your humerus. Those are flexion, adduction, and internal rotation. Those words sound complicated, but really theyโre pretty simple.
ย Flexion is just flexing, technically that means reducing the angle of a limb and the joint itโs attached to, so in this case, any movement you make that decreases the angle between your upper arm and your shoulder.
Adduction is the opposite of abduction. Itโs easy to remember this one. Abduction is what aliens do, they take something away from Earth, so adduction is bringing it back towards yourself. Your pecs bring your arms back towards your body (technically the midline of the body, but you get it.ย
Internal rotation is the weirdest one to imagine, but it means any rotation towards the central axis of your body. This one is easy to replicate. Put your arms down by your side and twist your arm in towards your body. Any time you make that movement is an internal rotation, so arms up above your head or parallel to the ground, that specific twist is brought to you by your pecs.
Thatโs a lot of responsibility for your pecs to take on, and theyโre huge, so working them out completely involves a lot of work. Itโs easy to see now how anybody could miss out on thoroughly working out every single part of their chest.ย Your inner chest specifically is hard to get to, itโs responsible for the internal rotation and flexion that just arenโt what come to mind first and foremost when we think of our chests.
These 7 exercises are excellent examples of how to cover the often-neglected inner chest movements. If you slot these into your workout routines youโll start seeing results in no time.
Dumbbell chest flyes are pretty simple. If youโve ever sat down on the pec deck, then you know the basic movements required to pull this exercise off. Weโre doing them with dumbbells because they allow for more comfortable positioning with your hands, and once youโve become more comfortable with them, you can add in a twist of your arms to dig deep into your inner chest and cover the broadest possible range of motion. We think theyโre much more effective than the dumbbell bench press.
After youโve become accustomed to this exercise, you can turn your dumbbells 45 degrees before bringing them back down to your sides. Once youโve done this bring them back up into the starting position and twist them back into the hammer position you started with and repeat until youโve finished your set.
The hammer squeeze press is something you can do with an extra piece of equipment if youโre feeling fancy. You can incorporate a medium size ball like a volleyball or a soccer ball into this one. If you opt for a ball here, the fine motor control required to keep your arms steady enough throughout the entire exercise are going to lend you an incredible amount of mind-muscle connection allowing you to really hone in on the details of the motions your pecs allow you to make with your arms.ย
The ball is totally optional, and honestly, it shouldnโt be introduced until youโre confident that your inner chest strength is up to snuff. This is an excellent exercise for forcing you to work on the flexion and adduction of your pecs at the same time.
Adding a ball here is as simple as pressing the ball in between your weights and not dropping it as you press the weight upwards. The motivation to keep a ball from hitting your face as well as forcing you to keep your arms an equal distance away from each other the entire time will be excellent for your inner chest training.
Chest dips are amazing for your chest. Theyโre way more effective in fully activating your pecs than something like the bench press, and theyโre an excellent compound exercise. When you do your first chest dip youโll quickly realize how many muscles itโs going to take to stabilize you in the position. The stabilization and the form youโre going to be using during this exercise are the keys to making this exercise an effective addition to your routine.
Chest dips are also going to be excellent for developing your upper chest and inner chest holistically, which should always be your goal in the long run. Developing a certain set of muscle groups for a time in order to keep it from lagging behind is great, but always make sure to work out the full range of motion for your entire body.ย Plus the tricep action doesnโt hurt either.ย
The ground and pound alternating press is great for several different reasons. Itโs an exercise built around maximizing your compound movements and engaging as much of your chest as possible for the entire duration. The weight of the cable pulley is being pulled up behind you the entire time youโre doing this exercise much like a cable crossover, so even when youโre in the neutral starting position youโre still putting tension on your muscles. The movement of the ground and pound press is also going to see you reaching across the central axis of your body, this is great for that difficult to replicate adduction motion that your inner chest muscles love making. Youโre also going to be internally rotating your arms and keeping tension on that movement the entire time youโre going through these motions.
Dumbbell pullovers are similar to skull crushers, but a few tweaks to the exercise make this an amazing movement for your pectoral muscles. It combines the flexion and adduction of your lower chest, and itโs easy to pack on a lot of weight here as you progress.ย
Dumbbell pullovers can also be done with resistance bands or barbells, so youโre not limited to dumbbells if thatโs not your tool of choice. Remember to keep your hands close to each other throughout this exercise. We suggest sticking with a dumbbell to make that easier, but thereโs nothing wrong with a close grip barbell variant. Whatever your body is most comfortable with is always the best road to success.
If youโre struggling with keeping the weight balanced, you can experiment with raising your hips off of the bench slightly. Getting more stability under your belt is going to help with your core strength as well as methodically turning your pecs into solid steel as you build and industrialize your pectoral muscles.
Diamond push-ups are the apex push-up. Kiss the standard push-up goodbye. They're the best push-up variation to graduate into while you build up your pec strength. The diamond youโre making with your hand focuses the body weight youโre pressing into the center of your mass, making your chest pull out all of the stops.ย
For a calisthenic exercise, diamond push-ups are amazing at what they set out to do. Theyโre the prime example of using your bodyโs full natural range of motion to achieve results in hard to reach places. Sometimes compound exercises create blind spots, but some keen understanding of your body and its mechanical functions will grant you the ability to pull the most out of every exercise you add to your toolbox.
The plate squeeze press is a pec exercise at its purest. The action of squeezing that amount of weight between your arms is basically targeting the trickiest areas of your pecs by brute forcing the motions theyโre responsible for making. Itโs really simple, and itโs something you can add onto your workout without scrounging up any more equipment. If youโre bench pressing, you can round out your session by plucking a plate off of your bar and getting some squeeze presses in before you leave for the day.
If youโre having trouble with two plates try pressing the same amount of weight with three smaller plates. The increased friction will keep the plates from sliding around allowing you to focus on the pressing motion. This also means that when youโre looking for more challenge, you can crank up the difficulty by squeezing larger weights and fewer plates.
