Archive for January 8th, 2010
I was recently reading a magazine that had really good weight training exercises in it. One of those exercises I found very interesting and wanted to share it with you. It involves the chest using a barbell.
Let’s establish a baseline for these chest exercises. Flat Bench Press targets the whole chest. Incline Bench Press targets the upper chest muscles. Decline Bench Press targets the lower portion of your chest muscles.
Research is showing that if you perform a flat bench press, with a Reverse Grip or underhand grip, it engages the upper pectoral muscles 30% more, than an incline bench press. This same research also showed that the targeted chest muscles were only engaging 5% more of the pecs, than a flat bench press. It makes sense, because the more muscle fibers that are recruited to perform an exercise, the better the exercise.
I haven’t tried this exercise myself, but I will. So I’m not sure if you will have to drop a little weight. I hope you can add this to your list of weight training exercises!