The Best and Worst Stretches For Your Chest

If you wanted to know the right way to stretch your chest, then you have come to the right place. In this video, I am going to show you the best way to stretch your chest that will not not only help your posture, but will make sure you continue to have healthy shoulders in the process. Not only that

there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t see someone hammering away at a chest workout to grow their chest only to overlook one of the most important parts of the equation when they’re done stretching and even then of those that do save some extra time for a stretch if what they do looks like this they’re getting it wrong and that’s why I made this video what’s up guys Jeff Cavalier athletes. com physical therapist and pro athlete trainer look when it comes to the peex it’s sort of a paradoxical muscle because you have two different PEC muscles that you want to make sure you’re taking care of number one you’ve got the vanity side the PEC major which is what everyone is in the gym trying to build bigger and stronger but you still have to learn how to stretch it and what I showed you before is not how you do it but then there’s this other one over here this is the PEC minor and this is the one that actually sets you up to do all of your chest training and to keep your shoulders safe in the process and this is the one that gets no attention so the first thing you need to know before you talk about gains is how do I stretch them properly well we’re going to focus on that PEC minor first and the one thing I want you guys to see really quickly here is that on this muscle it inserts on this area right here called the Coro process and why that’s important is look what it’s attached to not just a tiny little bone but it’s actually part of the shoulder blade so if you’ve got something that’s tight that’s yanking on this the whole shoulder blade and shoulder posture is going to get thrown off and so what happens when we have a tight Peck Miner is three different things number one when it’s pulling on the shoulder blade the first thing it does is pull down this way you can see if I already make that tight it’s going to round the shoulder forward and I’m sure you probably recognize this posture if you haven’t really been stretching out this muscle the next thing that it does is it actually rounds the shoulder blade around the corner we call it protraction okay so it’s pulling down and in this direction the third thing that actually does is pull the shoulder down downward rotation of the scapula so whenever you want to stretch a muscle your job is to Simply unwind what it does so you want to do the opposite of all three the first thing you want to do is get the Shoulder back instead of forward back how do we do it you got to use something in the gym the corner of a of a squat rack or at home the corner of a doorway and all you want to do is just push yourself into that corner of the doorway pushing the head of your humorous right here that big rounded portion of your front delt up into that doorway or side of the rack okay from here I’m positioning it back the next thing I want to do is get that retraction of the scapula so while I’m here retract the shoulder blades pull them back together you’re basically doing this actively to really squeeze your shoulder blades together with that in place h of the humorous up here shoulder blades retracted now we have to get upward rotation of the scapula instead of that downward rotation and that’s really easy to do because all you have to do is raise your arm up overhead as you raise your arm up your shoulder blade will raise will rotate up in this direction and if you do this properly you’re going to feel that stretch right in this muscle and you can literally see it lengthen with the muscle markers we have a length that’s established right about here when we get set up in this position and we raise it up you can see the elongation that’s happening here and your goal is to do this 30 to 60 seconds twice in a session and then what I want to see you do this for best effect is on the day that you’re training chest do it at night and then also because we heal a little bit shorter overnight I want to see you do it the next day too if you’re training chest twice a week that means you’re going to do this four times both on the days that you train chest and also at night time and also the next morning now we have this other muscle here and we’re talking about the PEC major now there are three different heads to the PEC major we have the upper clavicular head right that’s the area that a lot of us don’t have good chest growth in that upper shelf then we have the major sternal head here in Black then we’ve got that little abdominal head that sort of frames the bottom or lower Peck line you can stretch all of them with a a slight tweak to how you do it but you’re not going to do that because what happens when you do that is a couple things number one you’re disrupting normal shoulder biomechanics and actually setting yourself up for an injury because when I do this okay what it does is it tends to shift the head of the humoris or throw it Forward into that anterior shoulder capsule and one thing you don’t want to do is continually weaken or over stretch the anterior shoulder capsule the posterior capsule is a different story but here creates more shoulder instability and and by doing this stretch you you might feel it but you don’t need to do that because the PEC actually inserts right here on the upper arm the humorous right about at Mid sternal level and if we can stretch it by moving the arm in this position here it doesn’t matter what’s happening at the elbow that has no effect if we open the elbow or close it on the position or the insertion of the peex here so instead of getting extra long and creating a lot of torque on the shoulder what I want you to do is the same type of idea you keep your arm slightly bent you stabilize the head of the humoris here up against the inside of the frame and then all you’re going to do is rotate away cuz all you’re trying to do at this point is separate this point from the sternum from this big heavy bone in your chest if I can get the sternum further away from my arm here then I’m going to get that stretch on the chest without having to create all that extra torque by lengthening my arm out now again I’m looking at a 30 to 60c hold but how do we stretch to different areas if I want to get more of that lower chest and all I got to do is raise the arm a little bit higher but nothing changed that heavy humorous to stabilize up against the inside of the door or rack and I’m just rotating again and I can feel that intense stretch downward if I want to get more of the upper chest all I have to do is sort of position or or or or uh line up the lower portion of my forearm and do the same thing rotate out but keeping that shoulder pulled backwards you can see that now getting that stretch more on those upper fibers no matter what area you’re doing here you’re going to aim for that 30 to 60 seconds now how does this affect muscle growth well some studies will show that you can actually stretch your way to bigger muscles and to do that you just keep stretching statically that being said it does take a really long time and I don’t think it’s the most effective or efficient way to get chest growth but the other way to do it is by incorporating stretch into the exercises that you’re doing and that’s where you get exercise recommendations like a chest fly and here’s the reason why I don’t like this because a chest fly to me or sort of the you know typical Arnold fly is basically putting us in the same position at the bottom that was what I didn’t like about that other stretch that vulnerability to the anterior shoulder capsule especially because we’re unsupported here there’s nothing to give me any kind of safety net in this position and a lot of times people wil