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I was looking at some Dorian Yates - Blood & Guts Trainer - Chest & Biceps Episode 1 on YouTube.
Dorian Yates states traditional bench press is a shitty pec exercise; he quite openly says people should do more decline bench press which works the whole chest not just the bottom and is a smarter way to do bench press, does anybody do decline bench press?

stickupkid wrote:I was looking at some Dorian Yates - Blood & Guts Trainer - Chest & Biceps Episode 1 on YouTube.
Dorian Yates states traditional bench press is a shitty pec exercise; he quite openly says people should do more decline bench press which works the whole chest not just the bottom and is a smarter way to do bench press, does anybody do decline bench press?

Agreed that traditional flat chest presses are far from optimally effective - but disagreed on declines being better or working the "whole chest". At issue is the functional plane of the muscle. The pectorals primarily move the humerus, rotating it laterally. To a degree, chest presses can simulate this. However, to complete the rep, your anterior deltoids and triceps necessarily engage to push the weight straight up. In essence what happens is your delts engage to bring the weight to where your arms make about a 110-120 degree angle (elbow to elbow), and then your triceps are pulling your lower arms straight at the elbow while your pecs pull the humerus at the shoulder (and as such the rest of the limb) and up the weight goes.

No matter what kind of press you do, incline, flat or decline, this always happens. This is half of what makes presses (of any sort) less the optimal. The other piece of the puzzle is at the top of the rep, the resistance diminishes. Flys are particularly bad in this respect - the arch of the arm to perform a dumbbell fly makes it so at the top of the rep it's actually the biceps and triceps holding the weight in place, and not the pecs at all (go ahead and do one and hold the weight at the top, you'll see what I mean). Presses aren't quite as awful, but a fair amount of load does transfer from the muscles to just the bone structure, especially if your form isn't up to snuff and you let the elbows lock out at the top of the rep.

It's also not possible to work the pectorals without engaging the deltoids - the biomechanics are such that since you generally start a chest exercise with the arms at around 180 degrees apart, your deltoids will begin the movement since the pectorals literally can't. Don't take this to mean you should start with your arms closer - only do that if there's a shoulder issue at play, since you do want to catch the pectoral from right where it engages all the way to peak contraction.

That said, the decline is effective, and for many more effective than flats and inclines, but it has absolutely zip to do with working the "lower pecs". You do not have lower pectorals any more than you have lower abs or lower calves or lower biceps or lower eyeballs. The muscle is a single muscle, with heads at 6 intracostals, the clavicles, and the sternum, and it inserts at the humerus. What happens with declines is you do, in fact, to a small degree, better engage the intracostal heads, but more importantly, the positioning is such that you are simply not going to have your elbows as far flared, which means less engagement of the triceps and biceps, and less load transferred to them.

If you really want the absolute "king" of chest exercises, fall back on the same wisdom we use for all other muscle groups - work the muscle across its functional plane. For chest, this is rotating the humerus, so we're talking pec deck and cable flys. The pec deck is a no brainer, but the cable fly fixes the issue dumbbell flys have of decreasing resistance toward the top of the rep. Since it's a cable, the strain as you work through the movement is always directly across the pectoral's plane - the muscle is trying to rotate the arms in, and the cables try to pull them back the other way. From there, yes, inclines will hit the clavicular head a bit more, and yes, declines make the form easier to maintain, and yes, flat bench is effective.

TL;DR - Made-up bodybuilder muscle parts are made-up, declines little bit better than flats, cables are king.

Arthur Jones once said the best chest exercise was decline bench press so you might be on to something but I would not discard incline bench press just swap flat for decline and give it at least 6-8 weeks and see if you see any progress.

If you could get to use a pec fly machine that is a more superior chest exercise, to add to your tool box. Remember for a complete chest workout you need a pressing motion and a squeezing motion to fully hit all chest fibres.

Hi guys,..
Decline Bench Press is the very important exercise for the lower chest,..its clear your chest at the lower level which looking nice,..

My understanding, which is somewhat limited, is that the chest is only one muscle. . . . hence, no "lower chest".

JohnOregon wrote:My understanding, which is somewhat limited, is that the chest is only one muscle. . . . hence, no "lower chest".

Yup. You have a lower chest as much as you have an inner eyeball.

Thanks for all replys guys appreciated and very interesting.

JoH at the moment I have no way of doing pec flies but I do have a lat cable pulldown station and was thinking of using the high cable pulley and doing one arm crossovers, or maybe I could try one arm pec flies by lying on the floor using the low cable pulley with the full chain and stirrup attachment what do you think?

stickupkid wrote:Thanks for all replys guys appreciated and very interesting.

JoH at the moment I have no way of doing pec flies but I do have a lat cable pulldown station and was thinking of using the high cable pulley and doing one arm crossovers, or maybe I could try one arm pec flies by lying on the floor using the low cable pulley with the full chain and stirrup attachment what do you think?

I'm trying to think what the machine looks like and can't... can you give me a model I can look up or maybe a link to a picture of what you're talking about? For some reason in my mind the mental picture is a bit akin to a contortionist and I can't fathom you'd wanna tie your self up in knots...

Very grossly drawn I know it's my version of a Lowry painting There I am lying on the floor using the stirrup attachment from the low pulley doing a one arm pec fly



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This is my lat tower.



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I also have no pec deck or dual cable but I do have a powertec high & low cable pulley and do a one arm fly like the picture image 1 below shows but with one arm

image 1


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You could also do one arm cable crossover like the picture image 2 below shows but with one arm

image 2



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You could also do one arm kneeling crossover like the picture image 3

image 3



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