I’ve been to the gym regularly for about 5 years now and my upper chest have always been under developed. It was not only until the past 6 months a friend gave me a simple suggestion to focus on upper chest and nothing else during my chest workout days. I took up the challenge and found that after 6 months, my upper chest has grown substantially.

I key which I found helped me was that since I focused just on upper pecs, I was able to set my mind to feel and stretch and focus on that part of my chest more intensely. I found that, through habbit, I was able to relax the lower chest while flexing the upper muscles with each repetition – this also helped with much lower weights (I used 3-4kg dumbbells and now use 5kg for incline flies). I find that using low weights and really concentrating to use only the correct muscles will build a great upper chest (i.e. chest work outs usually incorperate the triceps, and general chest…try to isolate the upper chests through technique and mind power).

One step away from not laying in bed at night thinking……. but instead not having a bed, but sleeping in the said machine….

Also, there should be a button on the machine to do this pullover fly in reverse, from bottom to top

Nautilus shaped cams should provide optimal resistance path, the fly movement should have a seperate cam from the copmbined pullover movement.

Adam, if you ever want to write an article for this website, send it over. It would be great to have someone like you adding their two cents.

I just want to comment on josh’s post as I think opening up to the idea of lets sets and more concentration on form, weight, intensity, rest and growth is key to solving many of these connundrums….. then I want to comment on this Upper Chest Article.

josh – I agree with Ray Burton. I happen to subscrbe pretty much to Mike Mentzer’s principles. Check out his HIT priciples with an open mind…. Basically, in my case I train chest once every 12-22 days, using 2-5 exercises. That’s 2-5 sets every two and a half weeks on average. That’s for GROWTH, for an advanced trainer. I sometimes grow. I never lose muscle or decline, unless ill, very unluc ky, or neglectful, and that is rare. I do chest with back (2-5 sets), and on another day I do shoulders and traps (3 exercises, 3 sets) with arms (4 total sets) and squat (1 sets after warm ups), and I rest for 9-22 days. Also and I do core training (including neck and rotator cuff) on another day or maybe tagged onto each session., so it may end up more frequently for the core, but Im less advanced there. This is all for growth, and the conditioning that comes with it.. To burn calories I run 2-4 times per week (since it’s not HIT), and for other conditioning I do an HIT sprints session every 7-14 days, and heavy punchbag (medium intensity I guess) when I feel like it. Frequent training let’s say to half of the amount you describe, is useful for quick progress for people in their first 6 months of hard training – and becomes redundant or counter productive after 12-18 months. This is a conservative guide. HIT principles also work for beginners, although beginners must practise and teach the body the error of their ways – hence in my opinion a beginner can do six or even 8 high intensity sets per bodypart, once per week, or even with some basic exercises, they can get away with twice per week now and then (but less sets)…… bearing in mind they are not lifting heavy weights, compared to what they will be lifting 12 months later…….

Back to the Upper Chest: a very good article. I actually looked into this last night, using my Tortora anatomy and physiology textbook, because I noticed that my upper chest was lagging behind my lower chest and shoulders now, compared to how it used to be say 12 years ago….. and I came up with a few new exercises, which are remarkably similar to the suggestions in the article……Okay, here is the detail:

Firstly, my chest upper chest seems to be lagging is because of two exercises I have neglected (dips and incline press).

Second, I think that the point about upper chest stretching may be relevant to some people, but for me it’s not a factor. I don’t see how I have any more scar tissue there as opposed to anywhere else on my upper body. It gets strectched through hanging, chinups, etc, just as much as other parts of the body. Chest streching would benfit my whole chest, I guess.

With regard to the debate about fibres and inner and outer, yes it’s clear that inner and outer are a seprate debate. In fact while it’s wholly true that anatomically inner and outer fibres cannot be isolated through tension – because they are the same fibre – you have to factor in stretching, and the angle. In other words, if you do flyes with a heavy heavy weight and strech right out, of course your outer chest is at the end of the lever and is going to hurt and get pulled out of shape more than the inner part ! This growth or compensation or hardening is not actually due wholly to the tension action. The ‘angle’ factor is the fact the the lower (sternal) chest fibres generally go straight across, angled about 5 degrees downwards. In other words….. when you bench press you are bringing the arms together to some good extent, but you are also bringing the arms towards the head and above it (in most cases), and other muscles such as the lats and triceps are strongly used, whereas in the case of flat flyes, the deltoid (internal rotation) is really the only other muscle used, AND the added factor is that flyes pretty much hit the exact function of those lower fibres…….so in effect, the pecs can get ‘more’ wider than they already are getting with the bench press, and maybe this is another reason why growth seems to be – or actually is – greater when specifically ‘going wide’ with the grip, doing streching flyes, etc.

With regard to the debate about the two heads, it seems that the pecs are unique. The triceps, teres, biceps, etc, all have sepearate heads. As we know, we can emphasise one over the other, if we have the skill. But they are different to the two pec heads, because in those cases all the heads are attached to the same bone as their counterparts. With the pecs, the lower head inserts at the arm (shoulder) and originates at the sternum, whilst the upper head inserts at the arm and orignates at the clavicle.

What does this mean? Well, the pecs are primarly designed to move the upper arm closer to the middle of the body. That is why there are constructed as they are, in terms of the fibres’ direction. Now, the upper pecs almost always assist in this, or get duly compressed, hence being ‘forced’ to assist. However, the upper pecs are designed to help squeeze the arms in the direction of the neck, more than the sternum. So when we do bench press, we are using both, but using the upper pecs to a lesser degree, as in relaity the bar is never going ‘up and back’ that much. But with this bench press, we are in a very strong position lifting heavy weights, so it is valuable all-round for the chest. With flat flyes, it’s similar, but even less on the upper pecs, because there is less weight (an assumption?) and less ‘backward’ movement (again, based on most people’s technique).

Okay, incline press effects the shoulders more (although not that much more) than the flat bench. The incline bench puts the arms in an ‘overhead’ position ESPECIALLY IF WE START NEAR NIPPLES AND PRESS THE WEIGHT BACK ABOVE THE HEAD. In fact, you cant avoid pressing the weight back, as gravity deems it unsafe on an incline to try to keep the weight forward. Okay, so instead of a 90-100 degree angle of arms on the flat bench, we have a 100-135 degree angle. Hence more use for the upright, ‘going towards the clavicle’ as well as being squeezed together, part of the pecs, which is the upper pecs.

The article comes up with some great exrecises and I came up with remarkably similar ones. However, the big ommision is Dips !!!

Dips pull the arms together (both pecs), use the pec minor (pushing down), and yes, at the same time use the upper pecs (pushing down, squeezing towards the calvicle!) And that’s why dips (if done leaning foward and not back, which is for tricpes) give a graet pump in the upper chest!

Adam