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Hey everybody. It's Kevin Weiss from Body Performance Personal Training, teamed with RipToned fitness products. Today I want to talk about activation of the pectoral muscle. I've talked in previous videos about the lats and also the biceps and the pec is, every muscle is the same. You're looking at attachments and insertions. In order to get an effective stimulus for that muscle, you're trying to make the two go further apart in the extension or in the stretch. And then in the contraction, you're trying to bring them closer together. So the bicep, very simple muscle to understand because of where the origin is and where the insertion is. And those two places come together to cause a contraction.
So the pectoral muscle isn't any different. It's actually quite similar as far as the lat muscle where the insertion is up, or the origin is up quite high and into a small area. But then its attachment is quite long and broad. It starts up at the clavicle and comes all the way down, more towards the bottom of your ribs, almost there. You'll see that in the diagram, just like the lat starts up under the armpit here and then along the spine, it has quite a few different attachments. So what that does is instead of like the bicep where it's a straight angle like that, it actually has several angles.
So that's why it's important when you're trying to work the pectorals or the lats effectively. It doesn't matter if you're a strength athlete, a bodybuilder or a general fitness, anything, the principles don't change. You're going to have to change your angles, whether you're doing pull downs or bench presses or flies to effectively work all of those different angles. And how many different angles you choose is basically up to you. The sky's the limit as far as how many of those you can do. And it's doesn't mean that you have to do one degree difference in your exercises all the way through the workout to get an effective response. You just have to keep in mind that it does have different attachment points and you want to work along those lines.
So a good example, everybody loves to do the bench press, and I don't care if you're doing it with dumbbells or machines or a barbell. It's the same idea and it doesn't matter if you're doing it for strength or for bodybuilding. What your goal is, is to make the origin and the insertion come together to make a complete contraction. So that's a simple way right there. If you're at the side like this, you'll see the elbow is at 90 degrees. So if you were to do a bench press and get maximum stretch, your elbows actually stay high. They still stay under the bar and that's going to stretch the pec. So back, old school bodybuilders, for quite a while, they would do bench presses where they would bring the bar down to their neck because they maybe didn't know the exact reason or the exact science behind it. I'm sure they knew the reason because they could feel it, that they were getting maximum stretch across their pecs.
Now that's also, it's a bit of a vulnerable place for your shoulders as well. So there's a little bit of a downside with that. I wouldn't try and marry maximum stretch like that with heavy weight. So power lifters or people that are just training for general strength, they shouldn't be doing their bench press that way. They should probably have a bit of a middle ground where their elbows are dropping down a little bit and their still getting a stretch. You can try it yourself and you'll be able to tell, that is still lengthening those muscle fibers. But even if I lift my shoulder up like this and do it, my shoulders can still feel that after many decades of training that, yeah, that's a vulnerable position. So a little bit down is still going to be effective, but it's also going to be a little bit safer.
So when you're doing your bench press of... Let's take just a regular grip here and let's split the difference. Power lifters are going to tend to drop it a little bit lower and kind of hit the sternum so that's bringing it down almost like this, always with the elbows underneath the bar, underneath the hands. But then at the top, you're going to be over your shoulders again. Old school bodybuilders or even, you don't have to be an old school bodybuilder to do it because I see people still do it, they'll bring it down more up to the clavicle. So here. But, it's important that the elbows are still staying underneath and you can only go down as far as you can. I can't actually even touch my chest without dumping the bar a little bit and that's not good because now I've completely changed the mechanics of it. So you want to make sure that your elbows are staying in line with the bar and that's my range of motion there.
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• Activation of the Pect...