Have you have wondered why you do exercises that you see on social media? Is it because they’re new to you, or look cool? Have you considered whether or not they are actually going to help you with your goals?
As a professional in the fitness industry it’s my responsibility to explain to the best of my ability to my clients my goal when prescribing specific exercises. Therefore I felt the need to explain this particular exercise which I posted on Instagram recently.
In this particular situation my goal is to train myself in a full range of motion. This means that I will manipulate the exercise(s) to challenge a specific muscle or group of muscles in different angles.
Would you like to know why it is important to workout a muscle in it’s full range of motion? Just comment below and I’ll happily write a new blog post about it.
I’ll try to keep this explanation as simple as possible as the goal here is not to target the 10% of gym users that understand biomechanics but to give the majority of gym users a different option (a potentially more efficient option) of a chest exercise.
Let’s break this exercise down into two. Imagine that in one exercise you only use dumbbells and the other you use a cable machine.
1 – Firstly the movement with the dumbbells, will create a bigger challenge for your chest at the bottom position. Notice that if your arms are straight you need much less effort to hold that position.
2 – Secondly, if you look at the exercise with the cables it will be the opposite. The biggest challenge will be at the top position and it will become easier as your arms come down.
3- Combining both will mean that you will have a big challenge to your chest throughout the entire exercise. This is particularly useful if you want to take your chest to exhaustion faster or if you want better strength gains. If you are a beginner i would start with the breakdowns above and, as you gain strength, progress to the combination.
If you would like to know more please leave a comment below.
