Train Like an Athlete by ATHLEAN-X (Video Podcast)

There are many different chest exercises for building a bigger chest. The key to selecting which chest exercise you’re going to do is to make sure you actually do the ones that work. In this video, I’m going to show you two versions of a cable fly that are completely worthless. One is actually hard to believe that it was even conceived by anyone with even a single workout under their belt. The modification of it, is nearly just as bad.

The idiocy of this chest exercise underscores a very important point when it comes to programming workouts. Be careful who you get your advice from. Anyone can grab a cable and pretend to know what they are talking about but lack every bit of understanding about human biomechanics. This is actually downright irresponsible and dangerous. Here on our channel, we make sure you aren’t needing these wasteful exercises. By putting the science back in strength, I show you there are much better options. Here is no exception.

So why is this newest chest exercise such a waste of time? There are three main reasons. The first of which is that in an exercise stated to help you get a great chest contraction, the lack of full horizontal adduction at the shoulder limits how full that contraction actually is. Stopping with the arm in the neutral position and not crossing midline is like bringing a biceps curl up to the mid point. Full chest contraction can only occur with the arm crossing midline, period.

The next issue is that the chest exercise shown by Jesse lacks the concentric or active shortening of the chest muscle. Just because you change the position of the limb under a single isometric contraction doesn’t mean that you are achieving active shortening of the pecs or a concentric contraction at all. While isometrics have a place in your training and should definitely be included, they also should come with the understanding that one of their main benefits is that they allow for a much stronger contraction than a traditional concentric.

This means, you should be able to increase the weight that you use isometrically and train with a weight that exceeds what you would lift concentrically if properly programmed. This is where the entire exercise falls apart again. Due to the starting position of the exercise occurring with your chest in its weakest point in the range of motion, you are forced to use an extremely light weight. By the time that arm gets into the peak contracted state, the light weight that was used and dictated by the starting position is far too little of a challenge where you want it the most.

Instead of trying to achieve results through meaningless exercises, it would be better to do the cable fly press shown at the end. First, because the flys are being done with cables you have the ability to keep the resistance on the pecs throughout the range of motion (most notably at the top in the peak contraction state of the chest). Secondly, you can cross midline and get full horizontal adduction at the shoulder (something that is not possible in a traditional dumbbell fly). Thirdly, the lockout position of the cables at the bottom prevents overextension of the arm and injury to the shoulder joint that is all too possible with dumbbells when doing a fly on a bench unsupported.

Beyond that however, much more effective than the standing cable reverse fly (which is stupid if I haven’t mentioned that) you have the ability to use heavier weights that are better suited to match your strength in the contracted position of the exercise and are not holding back your entire exercise by virtue of being a slave to what you can lift in the weakest point of the exercise.