I worked my lower pecs yesterday

[SevenStar]

my friend and I were at the gym, and he kept ranting about how I needed to do some decline benching so I could work my lower pecs. He was all hyped up about it, and I didn't have the heart to tell him, so I worked my lower pecs...

[Serpent]

[IronFist]

Decline benching is good for your lower pecs. It helps bring out the definition at the bottom of the pec. If you want even better definition, you should do high reps because that will help spot reduce the fat around your chest.

If you want more good routines, I suggest you read Flex magazine. The pros list their routines in there and if you follow them you will get buff.

Finally, stay away from steroids. They are bad. Arnold says steroids are bad for you. None of the pros use steroids, so there's no reason anyone else should, either.



IronFist

[SevenStar]

why on earth would you think pros use roids??

[tri2bmt]

I just finished a cycle. My bench has skyrocketed to three-fifty. I stand at 4'6.
I only used a modified Pavel routine.

[monkey mind]

"you should do high reps because that will help spot reduce the fat around your chest."

I have to disagree with Ironfist on this one. As far as I know it isn't possible to spot reduce fat. Your body begins to burn fat for fuel only after 20-30 minutes of aerobic exercise. So, lots of high rep exercises will help reduce overall body fat, but not necessarily fat around the muscles being used.

[IronFist]

Thanks. I guess it wasn't obvious I was being sarcastic in my post about spot reduction. Everything I said in my post was bullshit. You really don't think the pros juice? In fact, this entire thread was sarcasm.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to work my lower abs...

Do I need to hit you on the head again with the sarcasm brick?





IronFist

[monkey mind]

Thanks for your patience. I picked up on some clear sarcasm (I'm not TOTALLY thick), but obviously not all of it. But forgive my ignorance & please enlighten me. What's the big joke about lower pecs/abs?

[IronFist]

The joke is that there is no such thing as lower abs or upper abs. I was making fun of people who think you can work your lower abs or your upper abs. It's all one muscle, you either work the whole thing or you work none of it. The reason there are 6 sections (the "six pack") is because of tendons that are stretched across it. Genetic diversity plays a role, too. That is why some people have abs that appear side by side , and other people's are staggered looking. Also, genetics accounts for why some people only have a 4 pack even when their bodyfat is low enough that a six pack would be visible otherwise.

Same thing with lower pecs. Decline bench does not do anything to the bottom of your pecs. There are "upper pecs," but they are in a different location that what most people think of when they say "I'm working my upper pecs with incline bench." Doing incline bench does not work the upper portion of your pecs any more than flat bench does. It just places more emphasis on the upper pec muscle (i forgot the name), which is actually closer to your collarbone level. I went into detail on this in another post, complete with pictures, but I forgot where it was. Uh, ok I'll make it simple. Incline bench will not bring out the top part of your pecs, like most bodybuilders claim. Neither will decline bench give you more definition or mass in the lower part of your pec. This is for the same reason that you cannot work just your upper abs or lower abs: It is impossible to isolate a section of a muscle. Either the entire muscle contracts, or none of it contracts.

Make sense? Sevenstar was making fun of these upper pec/lower pec people when he started the thread.

IronFist

[SevenStar]

yeah, get it?

[monkey mind]

Thank you gentlemen. I plead ignorance on body building matters, and I appreciate you going lightly on me. But I still don't really agree with a lot of what's in IronFist's post, and so here's my anatomy/kinesiology rant: I come to fitness training from the angles of massage therapy, holistic health, & of course martial arts. So I don't know what body builders have to say about upper & lower pecs but I do know, as you do, that there are upper & lower heads to pec major (clavicular & sternal heads) & that these heads have different actions. It may be true that you can't engage one head without somewhat engaging the other (I don't know), but you can have isometric contraction in one & isotonic in the other. The same thing could be said of many muscles in the body, muscles with more than one head or with fibers running in different directions.

And on to the abs... they're not all one muscle. The six packs are of course one muscle, but there are other abs as well and it is possible to work some of them more than others in different exercises. I wouldn't say that one ab muscle was lower than the others, but in the lower abdomen, transversus abdominus is superficial to rectus abdominus (6 pack). So work focused on transversus abdominus might give more definition in the lower abs.

I'm sure that when it comes to practical training methods & ideas, we are probably pretty close. But I had to (attempt to) clear up this anatomy business, cause that just ain't the way I see it.

Peace.

[SevenStar]

You can't work one area of it without working the other to some extent, which is why you can't isolate upper or lower abs. EMG studies show that as soon as you apply resistance, both the upper and lower abs begin to work.

[IronFist]

Damn, this would be so much easier if I had a chart to point to and could remember the names of the muscles.

Ok.

The pecs have different heads. Yes. My point, which I guess I didn't phrase correctly, is that whatever the name of the main pectoral muscle is, you cannot stimulate just the top of it. Yes, you can work your actual "upper pecs," but when most bodybuilders say they are working their "upper pecs" they are talking about the top of the big pectoral muscle and not the actual upper pecs. It is kind of like saying "I'm working the top of my biceps." You can't do it.

Abs. When I say abs, I'm referring to the rectus abdominus (?), aka the 6-pack muscle. I know there are other "abs," like serrats, obliques, etc. But when 99.9% of people out there talk about their abs, they are reffering only to their 6 pack or lack thereof. Like you said, the 6pack is all one muscle. You cannot work part of your sixpack. Either the entire thing contracts, or none of it contracts. Yes, when you're working it, your obliques may fire a bit for stabilization purposes, but that wasn't what I was talking about. Sorry for the confusion.

IronFist

[ged]

bah, once more i'm going to open my mouth on a subject i know little about.

it seems to me that although you can't work the top head of your pecs without somewhat working the bottom one, you can definitely do exercises that stress the top one MORE...

in my experience, bodybuilders (or 18 year old football players, these terms are interchangeable in my world), when they say that they're working out their 'upper pecs' think they're working out on the bit directly below their collarbone... they don't mean the upper bit of their lower pec head, they mean the upper bit of the entire 'pecs' (pecs=chest), ie, the upper head.

i must have been mistaking your words all this time Ironfist. I thought you meant that there's no way in hell that you can stress different parts of your pecs. maybe you meant pecs as a single head, rather than all the chest muscles. im still confused.

the two heads - in some bodybuilding pictures, you can see a horizontal line across the guy's chest. the top part seems to be about 1/3rd or so of the whole thing. is that the head that you can... not isolate... but concentrate on?