How to get a worked and marked pectoral in the gym: the exercises that you cannot miss

The pectoral is one of the muscles that attracts the most attention in the world of fitness. To achieve optimal development of this muscle group, it is necessary to take into account some aspects such as the functions it performs or the exercises that we should take into account to train it. Anatomical parts and functions of the pectoral The pectoralis major is a muscle that crosses a single joint, that of the shoulder. It originates from the sternum and is inserted into the arm after crossing the shoulder. Due to its fan shape, the pectoralis major is divided into two parts: The portion originates along the sternum and inserts into the biceps groove of the shoulder. The clavicles, portion originates from the clavicle and also inserts into the biceps groove. Traditionally, these portions are known as the lower and upper pectorals. These two portions perform the same action, horizontal shoulder adduction, that is, the actions of pushing and hugging. But also, the portion is responsible for extending the shoulder and the clavicles, for flexing it. This is raising and lowering the arm in the sagittal plane. Lastly, the pectoral also internally rotate the shoulder. What should we take into account when selecting the exercises? To make correct use of the different activities that we have at our disposal, we must know the moment arm peaks that occur in each of the functions that we have previously described. The moment arm is the distance between the place where a force acts and the place where the moment occurs (insertion of the muscle in the joint). In the abduction/adduction movement in the frontal plane (bringing the arm closer to the body) the moment arm peak occurs between 41º and 64º of shoulder abduction. Let's visualize as a reference that an arm raised and parallel to the ground would be 90º degrees of abduction. In the shoulder flexion-extension movement (raising and lowering the arm forward) the moment component increases from 25º degrees of shoulder flexion to 71& or, that is, to just below parallel. In the horizontal adduction/abduction movement of the shoulder, the pectoralis major is the muscle that has the greatest moment arm compared to the deltoid, subscapularis, or. Horizontal abduction/adduction is bringing the arm closer to the body, keeping it elevated and parallel to the ground, as when we clean the surface of a table with a cloth. Knowing this, another thing that we have to take into account is the degrees of inclination of the bench when we perform any type of press, and that is that the inclination or decline that we use can affect the activation of the pectoralis major. Traditionally it has been said that inclining the bench produces greater activation in the clavicles or upper portion of the pectoral and that declining it does so in the lower portion. The problem with this is that there are studies that do observe this phenomenon and others that do not find significant differences. Be that as it may, we can summarize this topic in that: The flat bench press would be a safe option for activating all portions. The incline press may activate the upper pectoral bundle more, although from 40º there are no significant differences. The decline press activates the lower pectoral bundle more. Knowing what we know now, we can wisely choose the exercises that we will use for our pectoral training. If we want to emphasize the clavicles, portion, we are interested in inclined presses, either with a bar or dumbbells. The use of dumbbells provides us with greater travel and freedom when it comes to abducting and rotating the shoulder more or less. The presses can provide us with mechanical tension, but we must not forget the metabolic stress that we can achieve using pulleys. So, if we want more focused work on metabolic stress for the clavicles, a portion of the pectoral, we also have to include exercises such as the upward pulley crossing. If we want to emphasize the portion, we will benefit from including a flat bench press, decline press, parallel dips, descending pulley crossovers, and a peck deck. The latter is to focus on more metabolic work.