Most Overrated Exercises - The Bench Press for Chest Development

Most Overrated Exercises - The Bench Press for Chest Development

Most Overrated Exercises - The Bench Press for Chest Development

Do you feel like your bench press is doing good things for your functionality? About 10 years ago, it was common logic that a bench press had near to no transferability to life. Since our culture is not one of wisdom, it is only inevitable that a concept like this rears its ugly head back to the top of the fitness mountain again. So many people nowadays have brought back the bench press, insisting it aids with performance. From what I read there is some evidence to support that a bench press is an effective exercise. What is not clear though is who conducted the study and whether or not the scientists had a stake in the outcome of stating it was a good exercise. Based upon what I am looking at recently in the fitness industry, it appears people have confirmation bias in the field of exercise science.

Another thing to mention is that there are no longitudinal studies relating to exercise and sustainability, which at the end of the day is all I really care about seeing. If an exercise cannot withstand the test of time without injuring someone or causing severe dysfunctions, it belongs in the trash. Anyway, here is my perspective on the bench press. There is an alternative promoted on this video also. Hope you guys enjoy.

Naudi

 

TRANSCRIPT

Naudi Aguilar:
Hello, and welcome to yet another video tutorial. Today I'm going to be discussing the relationship between shoulder pain and bench presses. I'm from a long time ago going to the gym, I would always notice people you know, hitting a heavy set of decline incline or just regular benchpress. And you'd always see them doing something like this where you kind of start cranking on their shoulder a little bit, because they feel that pain, there's several factors for this problem, one of the main ones can be the fact of how far you're going how the depth of what you're going into with the benchpress.

And then even beyond that, how your how the muscles on the backside relate to the muscles on the on the front side. So if you're doing a deep bench press, and you're retracting the shoulder blades all the way back like this, and you have no rib cage support on the back on the back end of the spectrum, typically what you're going to find yourself with an anterior rib cage shift going forward like this, and eventually not having pec engagement and then your deltoids over overtaking that load.

So if you're the kind of person that's always retract trying to retract your shoulder blades, that could be one reason why you're feeling the shoulder pain on the benchpress. Because there just is no tension happening in the pit packs, you overly retracted the shoulder blades too far to the point where now these muscles have kind of been rendered a little bit unstable and useless, not useless, just a little more unstable.

I want also to give you guys another perspective on things that the PEC major doesn't operate in and of itself. So when you're working on the on the PEC major, you have to think that it there's interdependent muscles firing on the body that enable the PEC major to work. So when you're laying down on the ground, you're missing critical points of tension on your body that help the PEC major activate better. And again, I'm talking primarily from functional contexts.

Okay, now I'm what I'm going to try and do is talk about the relationship between the PEC major, the latissimus, dorsi. And the glutes. This is something that most people in general don't talk about with regard to pec training. But I think it's really, really important because eventually, you got to think that if you start exercising your pecs too much in isolation, that could potentially take away from muscles like your lats and your glutes. And to take it a step further, if you don't learn to work those muscles all together in one shot, you could end up dealing with some kinds of pain or injuries later on and the shoulder might be the least of your issues later on.

So what I'm going to do is try and explain some things. Uh, as you guys know, I'm a big, big proponent of the anatomy train system. And I'm going to try to just try and explain to you guys what I'm looking at what I'm seeing here. Okay, so what we have right here are called the functional lines as Tom Meyers depicts from the anatomy trains. And what I want you guys to focus on is how the PEC major itself, if you actually look at the origin insertion relationships, and actually look at myofascial force transmission, meaning how muscles connect to muscles, you're going to see that the PEC major has direct relation to the rectus abdominus your actual abs, and it has a direct correlation right here to your upper adductors.

Okay, now, if you also think about the contact points between the PEC major and the latissimus dorsi, they're very similar to one another. And if you look at the relationship between the latissimus dorsi, to the glute max, I guess if we look at the left shoulder here, if we look at the lats to the right glute max, and then all the way to the vastus lateralis, you're going to notice that there's a huge relationship anteriorly and posteriorly, with the pecs to the rectus abdominus and the abductors also along with the lats, and the glutes.

These are myofascial continuity that happen all the time in functional movements, or whether you're running you're throwing, whether you're cutting laterally, these networks of muscles are always working all the time. And in general, the obliques come along for the ride, I don't have that actual that poster with me right now because I really just wanted to keep it more basic. But when you start looking at the external and internal obliques, the anterior oblique slings, they have direct connectivity to those pec major to the PEC major muscles.

So what I want you guys start considering is that the PEC major needs to be exercised with other muscles, if you don't want to create deficiencies later on. Of course, if you're a kid and you're in your teens or in your 20s, or even early 30s, this may not appear that important to you. But once you start hitting your mid 30s 40s and 50s This is when it starts coming together in terms of the pain that you will feel in your body, the less connectivity that you have with your pecs, your lats, your glutes down to your vastus lateralis likely the more pain you're going to feel when you're in your 40s and 50s.

And really that's what functional patterns is about is trying to prolong the your movement for as long as possible without feeling some kind of pain. That's my concern is a priority for what I do. I'm just trying to do whatever I can to make healthy decisions. So what I'm going to do right now is I'm going to show you guys a technique and I showed him this on many other video tutorials prior and I'm going to try and explain why you need to do this exercise and I'll show you guys some things that you need to maybe execute with it. And so that way you you might be more inclined to want to practice this exercise later on with yourself. So what I'm going to be doing over here is actually coming to a polling machine.

Okay, so I have this set up Sir about shoulder level, okay, so for one way you can do if you're going to do a, any kind of a shoulder exercise or pec exercise, you could even do a standing pack exercise. This is a way of actually engaging the PEC substantially, okay, because now what we're doing by especially if we employ some rotation, you guys will see I'm kind of rotating my trunk here. And I finished throughout there.

Now connecting the pecs of the pecs to the obliques I'm connecting, because I'm pulling, I'm involving the left the right lat here, coupled with the left glute, there's a connection between all systems here. And that's going to essentially enable me to use this in everyday life, as long as the brain doesn't lose that connection I'm going to have, I'm going to develop my packs, but I'm going to develop the pecs with the lats with the glutes.

And then as I get older, I'm not going to be feeling the pains and I'll still be able to move well, but what I want to actually do is take this through more of a range of motion, because if I'm just pressing here, and I'm standing here, yeah, I'm taking the pectoral range of motion, but the legs are not really going through a range of motion coupled with that the goal that I have in mind here with doing this exercise, this technique is that we actually get an involvement, a concentric engagement of my right pec, to my right hip flexors and a little bit into that right adductor because that's going to connect along with that.

And but then also at the same time, I want to get this left glute connected with my right lat, as I'm pulling myself into this movement over here with my right leg. Okay, so by me doing this now, essentially what I'm doing through this contralateral step press, I'm connecting the pecs, along with the abs, I'm also connecting them with the glutes and the lats in one motion. We're getting all this connectivity here.

Now I've many videos where I've explained what you need to do here, I'll go maybe through some brief explanations on what you want to do. If you're looking at me from a linear view or from an anterior view, you want to probably your primarily your legs, to stay underneath your hips, and that to stack underneath your shoulders. And what you're essentially going to do is just rotate your body, take a step forward and get a basic level, that's what you're gonna do.

And you finish the range of motion here. At this point, I got myself my pec engagement, I got my pressing action. And now the pecs are going to be firing through this range of motion. Okay, you can even do variations where you bring the arm out, almost where you're doing almost like a pec fly. These are things that you can do as well, you guys will see. Now I covered a pec fly. Along with that contralateral step press.

Just be sure that when you practice an exercise like this to you have your intra abdominal pressure, engage your TBA, the core muscles, the deep core muscles are engaging to stabilize your spine, and you had your ribs expanded, that are in a way that's going to connect the diaphragm to the transverse abdominus while you do a motion like this, okay, so I'll do a few more repetitions. It's a very, it's a pretty simple exercise.

It's simple on the surface. Again, there's small details that need to be addressed when you do an exercise like this. But this is for this is going to be kind of a this is going to be a fairly easy exercise to do at a superficial level. So again, I take my step, and I press. And right now immediately, especially if you do that chest fly one, where you're going here, now you're incorporating the glutes, the quads, you're connecting the entire fashional structure, the neural myofascial structure, along with those pecs, and now when you approach your 40s 50 6070s, as you get older, you won't have to worry about the deterioration of one your physiology.

But number two, your joints and your and your tissues. I myself never wants to go through any kinds of joint surgery, I don't want to go through any type of surgery, I don't want to take any I don't I'm not the type of person that wants to ingest medication. I'm trying to live as naturally healthy as I possibly can, without any kinds of intervention, the evolutionary process produce a very powerful human being through all sorts of various forms of stimuli that we had to adapt to whether that's ice ages, you know that there's all sorts of different catastrophes that we've had to adapt to. The human being is very strong and it's up to people in terms of what I want to do.

What I want to emphasize is that we bring back this inner strength within ourselves so we can repair our tissues naturally so we can live a long healthy life. I hope you guys found this video to be informative. I will see you in the future with more. This is naudi Aguilar reminding you to train intentionally and not habitually. Take care.

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