Build the Biggest Hood in Your Hood: Three Moves to Grow your Pecs
by Joseph Giandonato, PhD, MBA, CSCS
Whether your objective is to fill out a dress shirt to impress female coworkers on Zoom calls or intimidate fellow dads in your subdivision, all roads will lead through movements aimed at building bigger pecs.
Barbell bench presses are great, no doubt. They afford substantial external loading which culminates in developing strength, but don’t fully tap into the growth potential of the pecs.
Anatomy Refresher
The pecs, as you may recall from your 8 a.m. A&P lectures from two decades ago OR the time you rushed to assimilate the chest workout of a professional bodybuilder while hovering over an airport newsstand, unwilling to part with $9.45 for a semi-gloss binding congested with advertisements and bro-science claims before bolting like Usain to your gate at the other end of the terminal – flex and adduct the upper arms and internally rotate the shoulders.
Bench pressing taps into the pec’s role in flexing the upper arms, but not as much as its role in adducting the upper arms — though more shoulder adduction transpires on the flat bench than incline.
Enter the Dumbbell Fly
Dumbbells have been lauded as joint-friendlier options to barbells as they enable lifters and athletes to vary their grip and the degree to which they alter their arm angle — whether abducted or adducted in relation to the torso. Dumbbells also permit a greater range of motion — unless of course you find yourself relegated to using old school urethane encased Ivanko dumbbells — which can be as cumbersome as window unit air conditioners to hoist and move through a desired ROM.
Dumbbells are also required for one of the most under-utilized mass building movements in the arsenal of serious lifters — the dumbbell fly.
Dumbbell Fly
Incline Dumbbell Fly
Recently, dumbbell flyes garnered well-deserved recognition as muscle builders. An investigation comparing the fly and the dumbbell press found that the fly elicited comparable improvements in hypertrophy over a 10-week period comprising bi-weekly training sessions. Both delivered increases in muscular thickness of the pectoralis major among experienced lifters. Flyes extend the range of motion and require immense eccentric muscle action while the pecs undergo a deeper stretch as the resistance arm — which is already lengthened with the dumbbell in-hand — moves further away from the axis of rotation of the shoulder.
Are we suggesting that presses are swapped out for flyes? No, but flyes make a great addition to most training programs as they confer improvements in hypertrophy and muscular endurance all the while sparing the shoulders and elbows of enormous stress accompanied by heavy presses. Further, flyes performed through a full range of motion will enable an athlete or lifter to get stronger in the bottom portion of the bench press — a territory where lifts are missed and a bulk of pec injuries occur.
Deficit Push-up
Push-ups are one of the most versatile and identifiable movements out there. They’re utilized as punishments for missed tackles and to stimulate growth resulting in added slabs of muscle of the pectoralis, deltoids, and triceps when performed in sets by the dozens. However, most people are leaving potential growth on the table — or in this very case — the floor. Since push-ups from the floor are actually performed from a slight incline as the torso generally remains higher than the heels and doesn’t migrate below the hands during the descent.
If a deeper stretch is desired, push-ups should be performed with a deficit — the torso should be suspended over the ground the entire time with the hands placed atop dumbbells, medicine balls, or the handle of kettlebells positioned at the same height as surface the feet are elevated on. Generally, a pair of dumbbells and an adjustable bench at your local gym can serve as supports to facilitate deficit push-ups, though arrangements at home or outdoors might require a bit of creativity and DIY structural engineering.
The greater stretch and increased range-of-motion associated with deficit push-ups will transduce forces through the muscles encapsulating the shoulder girdle to which they are unaccustomed. Slightly extended ranges of motion nudge muscles into their elastic zone, stimulating muscle fibers in previously uncharted territory. This process, which entails activating mechanosensors in muscles, has been shown to potential to stimulate metabolic pathways associated with muscle growth, such as mTOR.
Reverse Grip Dumbbell Bench Press
Flip your grip and tap into other regions of your pectoralis muscles. A flipped or supinated grip has been shown to activate more fibers of the clavicular aspect of the pectoralis major in comparison to supinated grip per the findings of an EMG analysis. Though a flipped grip will temper the ability to handle heavier loads, the stretch during the eccentric and contraction during the concentric will provide a quick reminder that the pectoralis muscles working hard.
With the dumbbell movements, it is inherently critical to adopt the “muscle intention” mindset and attacking them as “loaded contractions”. Forcefully contract the pectoralis muscles which collectively flex the shoulders and draw them inward during flyes and presses performed with a full range of motion where the dumbbells nearly meet at the conclusion of a repetition.
Conclusion
Pepper in some of the above-mentioned movements to complement your chest training, spare your musculoskeletal health, and drive improvements in your bench-pressing performance. And most importantly, fill out some dress shirts to look imposing in your company headshot on Outlook.