Muscle Mag Right Angles for a Bigger Chest

By Bill Geiger, MA
Photos by Paul Buceta
Model Fouad Abiad
Location: Fitness Fanatix

Every beginning bodybuilder knows that you need to include flat-bench, incline and decline movements in your workout to work your chest from all angles. That's a good start — if you want to continue progressing like a beginner. While you may be accustomed to thinking that working the chest involves only three major angles, the reality is that you'll maximally develop every muscle fiber in your pecs — and add variety to your workout— if you start taking a closer look at all those in-between angles, such as the one midway between the incline and flat-bench positions, that you may have been missing. Not only will you hit all the muscle fibers more efficiently, but you'll kick-start muscle growth in your chest as well.

Raise your hand if you've fallen into a comfort zone and are guilty of: Always using the same angle on the incline bench. Always using the same angle on the decline bench. Always positioning the pulleys to the top position of the cable apparatus. Always grasping the bar in a barbell press at the same grip width. Instead, towork your pecs like never before, you're going to focus on all those angles you've been skipping. By using an adjustable bench on your pressing and flye moves, an adjustable set of pulleys on your cable crossovers, and including grips with different widths on barbell presses, you can multiply the number of ways you work your chest, each way working the muscle fibers just a bit differently. The minor changes you make from one set to the next may seem insignificant, but small angle changes have been shown to have a big impact on muscle stimulation and growth

WHY USE SMALL ANGLES
"To understand the concept of exercise angles, you need to know the basic structure of muscle," says Jim Stoppani, author of Encyclopedia of Muscle & Strength (Human Kinetics, 2006). "One important but surprising fact is that individual muscle fibers rarely run the entire length of the muscle. Muscles are actually composed of a sequence of one- to four-inch segments of muscle fiber linked together.

For that reason, you can't think of muscle fibers as being synonymous with the actual muscle. This is critical, as the growth of each muscle fiber depends on whether it is actually stimulated during a particular exercise. In many cases, muscle fibers remain unused and just go along for the ride during a lifting movement. Whether the fiber is used depends not only on the amount of resistance but also on the angle of the exercise and the specific range of motion used in the exercise. If the angle (such as in the flat bench press versus incline bench press) and the range of motion (such as partial movements versus full range of motion) do not call a specific muscle fiber into action, no growth will occur in that fiber. To make sure you hit each fiber and stimulate it to grow, you have to use a variety of exercises. And even for a given exercise, you must use variety. For example, on dumbbell bench presses, you can adjust the angle of the bench from a 30-degree incline to a 45-degree incline in as many increments as the benches will allow."

IN YOUR WORKOUT
Making minor adjustments to work thechest from slightly different angles means shifting much of your routine away from barbell bench presses using a fixed bench. To hit the pec fibers from in-between angles, you'll have to either start performing dumbbell presses on an adjustable bench or wheel the bench over to the Smith-machine station. Here's how to get the most from each of the moves: Many flat benches can be adjusted to any number of incline angles, but remember that the steeper the bench, the more the front delts kick in. If you raise the bench from one set to the next (see "Multi-Angle Dumbbell Press/Flye Routine"), you'll soon realize you're typically not as strong on incline moves, so don't expect to continue using the same weight from one set to the next. You can also employ this multi-angle approach to decline benches as well, but most don't come all the way up to the flatbench position. Getting the dumbbells into position is always tricky with decline presses, too.

The multi-angle approach isn't restricted to presses; try the same top-to-bottom approach with your flyes as well. You may find here, too, that you're stronger in some bench positions than with others.On the Smi th machine, use the adjustable bench (flat to incline or multi-angle decline) to work your pecs from all angles with barbell presses. The only downside: When you change the bench angle, the bar hits your chest in a slightly different spot, meaning you'll have to fine-tune the bench position (relative to the bar) each time you change You can even apply this small-angle training principle to cable crossovers. Many bodybuilders are locked into the mentality of isolating the lower pecs using the upper pulleys and targeting the upper pecs with the lower pulleys. In fact, there are a number of angles in between the two settings, so try any number of them to shift the emphasis to include the lowest fibers in the lower chest to the highest fibers in the upper chest.

An adjustable bench can also be used with cable flyes. While the bench can be angled from a number of different positions, you'll still want to keep the line of pull from the lower pulleys. While bench-press stations typically have fixed benches, that doesn't mean you can't change the angle of emphasis by changing your grip width. Most bodybuilders know that close-grip bench presses target the triceps, but they hit the inner-pec fibers strongly as well. Very wide-grip benches work the outer fibers (and shoulders), so including a range of grip widths can work the pecs from the inside to the outside.

The workouts presented here offer a variety of approaches to using multi-angle training in your chest workouts. You can follow them as is (using the lower-rep /heavier-weight approach for the compound pressing exercises and slightly higher reps for the single-joint moves like flyes), making minor adjustments from one set to the next, or create your own. In fact, you can flip the workouts and start each from the opposite bench position (that is, when it says start with a flatbench move, start with a highly inclined move instead and work in the opposite direction), do more than one set at each stop, or alter rep ranges to continue shocking the pecs. Experiment and see what works best for you.

The multi-angle approach means you may need only a few pieces of equipment to complete your chest workout, making this a great tool for individuals who train at home or those who don't want to fight the crowds at the gym. Get settled on your piece of equipment — and don't let anybody work in. Ultimately, you want to let go of the notion that flat-bench, incline and declinemoves are the only ways you can work your chest in favor of an approach that views every change made to a standard exercise as creating a different exercise. In fact, you can even apply that philosophy to how you train other muscle groups as well.